Our host looked back at us.
"Turn around?" he repeated. "I'm not going to turn around."
My companion measured the road with his eye.
"It is sort of narrow for a turn, isn't it?" he said. "What will you do—back down?"
"Back nothing!" said our host "I'm going through."
The pioneer in him had spoken. His jaw was set. The joy that I had felt ebbed suddenly away. I seemed to feel it leaking through the soles of my feet. We had stopped in the shadow. It was cold there and the wind was blowing hard. I did not like that place, but little as I liked it, I fairly yearned to stop there.
I heard the gears click as they meshed. The car leaped forward, struck the drift, bounded into it with a drunken, slewing motion, penetrated for some distance and finally stopped, her headlights buried in the snow.
Again I heard a click as our host shifted to reverse. Then, with a furious spinning of wheels, which cast the dry snow high in air, we made a bouncing, backward leap and cleared the drift, but only to charge it again.
This time we managed to get through. Nor did we stop at that. Having passed the first drift, we retained our momentum and kept on through those that followed, hitting them as a power dory hits succeeding waves in a choppy sea, churning our way along with a rocking, careening, crazy motion, now menaced by great boulders at the inside of the road, now by the deadly drop at the outside, until at last we managed, somehow, to navigate the turning, after which we stopped in a place comparatively clear of snow.
Our host turned to us with a smile.