“Hope he’s successful,” Sandy sighed, picking up another armful of wood to throw on the fire. “You’ve shown good judgment in sending him, Dick.”
“But it’s not a very pleasant morning,” said Dr. Brady.
Dick glanced at the lowering sky, at the black clouds rolling up from the horizon and nodded grimly.
“Yes, that’s the worst part of it, if we should have a blizzard Toma might as well come back. He’d lose Lamont’s tracks and could never find him.”
“Not in a storm,” agreed Sandy. “It would be almost impossible. But let’s hope that that won’t happen.”
Yet happen it did. They were out on the trail by that time, mushing slowly along the edge of a wide ravine, their faces toward the wind, which was very sharp and penetrating. The loose snow, covering the drifts, was awhirl by now, sweeping around them. Yet this preliminary barrage was as nothing compared to the terrific onslaught that followed. A fearful darkness descended over the earth, for the light was smothered as the snow gods hurled their challenge.
Dick and his party did the only thing possible under the circumstances. They blindly sought out the nearest shelter and clung there, helpless and as impotent as babes, mere human specks in a tremendous vortex of wind and snow. Night had fallen when finally the sky cleared. Everywhere around them were mountainous drifts, battlements, peaks and even pinnacles, showing white and ghostly in the pale starlight.
As the little party straggled forth from its shelter, the earth presented an aspect of strangeness, of newness, so entirely different from its original appearance, that one could almost believe that he had been transported in some mysterious manner to another world.
“I honestly believe,” Sandy gasped, “that all the snow in the universe has been gathered together and dropped down in this one place.”
“It certainly looks like it,” agreed Dr. Brady, as he took a step forward and slid waist-deep into a drift. “How are we going to break trail? I certainly pity your friend Toma. Do you think it will be wise to push on until we hear from him?”