Five times in the next twenty minutes Attatak told her her cheeks were frozen. Twice Attatak had been obliged to rub the frost from her own cheeks. Each time the intervals between freezings were shorter.
“Attatak,” Marian asked, “can we make it?”
“Canok-ti-ma-na” (I don’t know.) The Eskimo girl’s face was very grave.
As Marian turned about she realized that the storm from below was increasing. Snow, stopping nowhere, raced past them to go smoking out over the mountain peak.
She was about to start forward when again she caught sight of a dark spot on the mountain side above. It looked like the mouth of a cavern.
“If only it were,” she said wistfully, “we would camp there for the night and wait for the worst of the storm to pass.”
“Attatak,” she said suddenly, “you wait here. I am going to try to climb up there.” She pointed to the dark spot on the hillside.
“All right,” said Attatak. “Be careful. Foot slip, start to slide; never stop.” She looked first up the hill, then down the dizzy white slope that extended for a half mile to unknown depths below.
As Marian’s gaze followed Attatak’s she saw herself gliding down the slope, gaining speed, shooting down faster and faster to some awful, unknown end; a dash against a projecting rock; a burial beneath a hundred feet of snow. Little wonder that her knees trembled as she turned to go. Yet she did not falter.
With a cheerful “All right, I’ll be careful,” she gripped her staff and began to climb.