"Come on," he said quietly, "we'll make it somehow, or we'll go down together."
Mounting the tilting monster, they stationed themselves at its very edge and stood there motionless, a boy and a dog in the very midst of one of nature's most stupendous demonstrations of power.
A long minute passed—two—three. They were now ten feet in air; the shelf, a yawning distance still before them, appeared to frown down upon them. To the right of them an ice-pan half the size of the one on which they rode, having come within some ten feet of the wall, broke and crumpled down with a crash.
Still their cake glided on. Now they were fifteen feet from the shelf, now ten. A running jump for the boy would land him safely on the ledge. But there was the dog. There came a creaking grind, a snapping, crashing sound, then silence. The pan had broken in two. Half of it had broken off under the strain. The part on which they rode still stood firm. They were now twenty feet in air. A dark pool of water lay beneath them. The boy gave one glance at the blue heavens and the blinking stars; then, stooping, he picked up the dog and held him in his arms. He stood there like a statue, a magnificent symbol of calm in the midst of all this confusion.
With the ice still gliding upward, holding his breath, as if in fear that the very force of it might send the hundreds of tons crashing to the abyss below. Phi waited the closing of the gap.
Eight feet, seven, six, five, four.
"Now!" he breathed.
His right foot lifted, his left stiffened, his body shot forward.
The next moment there was a sickening crash—the ice-pan had broken in a thousand pieces. But the boy and the dog, saved by a timely leap, lay prone upon the surface of the rocky cliff.
For some time the boy lay sprawled upon the rocky ledge motionless. This last supreme effort had drawn out his last reserve of nervous energy. Amid the shrill scream of grinding ice rising from the tossing mass below, he lay as one whose ears are closed forever to sound.