hundred yards had been gained, perhaps two—each desperate foothold fraught with peril of a plunge into the yawning abysms to left and right—when suddenly he spied a figure on a twilit spur ahead.
Panting, he paused. It must be Stoddard! Yet it seemed too small, too ghostly.
Professor Prescott waved, but even as he looked for an answering signal, the figure vanished.
"My eyes!" he muttered to himself. "I'm getting snow-blind."
Then he called aloud:
"Jack! Oh, Jack! Hello!"
Only an echo greeted the call, and he did not repeat it but pushed on silently, conserving his energy.
Was there truth after all in those persistent rumors of the natives about the snow people who inhabited the upper slopes of the Himalayas? His tired brain toyed with the idea, to be cut off sharply by the cheery call:
"Hi there, Professor! Hi-ho!"