From the snow on the shelf protruded one arm, then another, and a moment later the snow plastered figure of Sandy rose up, hip deep in soft snow.
“Hold on while I get a rope!” shouted the Corporal.
“We’ll haul you back up,” seconded Dick. “Are you hurt much?”
“I’m alright,” came Sandy’s shout, a bit faint, but welcomely spirited. “Got a few bruises is all.”
Then Corporal McCarthy was back with a rope, and was paying it out over the shelf. Sandy quickly got hold of his end and fastened it about his waist. In a moment the combined strength of the two on the ledge had hauled Sandy to the safety of the shelf where the sledge had lodged.
“Gee, I was never so glad to see anybody in my life!” exclaimed Dick, banging his chum on the back with a lusty hand.
“Hey, watch out where you are hitting me,” complained Sandy. “That sledge made me sore all over when it shoved me down that bank. And, say, I thought I was gone when I rolled over that shelf.”
“Lad, you’re one of the luckiest fellows that ever lived,” Corporal McCarthy put in, “but now let’s tie into this sledge again and not let those fellows ahead of us beat us to the top too far.”
An hour more of back-bending toil and they joined Constable Sloan and the others, who already had reached the top of the glacier.
While they all rested, Dick and Sandy looked curiously about them. Level ice, covered with snow, stretched for considerable distance on either hand. Long, zigzag cracks, or fissures, formed curious designs on the glacier’s summit; while now and again they could hear a deep rumble, like distant thunder, which, Constable Sloan said, was due to new cracks forming in the ice, and sometimes caused by a fragment of the glacier breaking off and falling into a fissure or into the sea far away across the island.