“Well,” said Raymond with a long breath, as he rose to his feet; “that might be as bad as an avalanche.”
“If you went down into it,” said Sidney, “you would probably not have a very soft fall. We must have missed the road. I don’t believe it comes up over a place like this.”
“No, it can’t. We’ll have to go back and hunt for it. Jiminy! If we went over that ice-field we’d run across polar bears next time.”
“I’ve had enough bear for this trip,” declared Sidney, as they turned back on their tracks. “It’s a shame to lose this time, and we’ve got to hustle to reach the top before night.”
“I don’t believe we can do it, Sid; I’m about played out now.”
“We’ve simply got to do it. Let me carry your blankets for a while, Ray.”
“Not much! I’ll carry them myself.”
The boys, on arriving again at the moraine, after some search found that the trail turned to the right, but was covered with fresh snow, which was the cause of their missing it. It followed along the side of the glacier for a distance, and then over the ridge into a smaller ravine that was not filled with ice.
While the next ravine was not the bed of a glacier, it contained very much more snow. At the height to which the boys had reached by that time the storms during the day had been more frequent and more severe, consequently there was a great deal of fresh snow, which made traveling very much more difficult.
At first the trail climbed along well up on the left side of the ravine, and in that exposed position it was not filled uniformly with soft snow. In places the snow had failed to lodge, or had been swept away by eddying gusts, and those places came with sufficient frequency to mark the road for the travelers.