"Oh, Bonny, it is so good to hear your voice again! Wasn't it awful? and how do you suppose we can ever get back?"
"Get back!" cried the other. "Well, if we had wings we might fly back; but there's no other way that I know of. We must be a mile from our starting-point, and even to reach the foot of the place where we dove off we'd have to cut steps in the ice every inch of the way. That would probably take a couple of days, and when we got there we'd have to turn around and come down again, for nothing except a bird could ever scale that wall."
"Then what shall we do?"
"Keep on as we have begun, I suppose, only a little slower, I hope, until we reach the timber-line, and then try and follow it to camp."
"I wonder if we can?"
"Of course we can, for we've got to."
Painfully the lads gained their feet, and with cautious steps began to explore their surroundings. They walked side by side for a few yards, and then each clutched the other as though to draw him back. They were on the brink of a precipice over which another step would have carried them.
While they hesitated, not knowing which way to turn nor what to do, the clouds below them rolled away, though above and back of them they remained as dense as ever, and a view of what lay before them was unfolded.
Rocks, ice, and snow; sheer walls on either side of them, and a precipitous slope forming an almost vertical descent of a thousand feet in front. There were but three things to do: Go back the way they had come, which was so wellnigh impossible that they did not give it a second thought; remain where they were, which meant a certain and speedy death; or make their way down that rocky wall. They crept to its brink and looked over, anxiously scanning its every feature and calculating their chances. The first thirty feet were sheer and smooth. Then came a narrow shelf, below which they could see others at irregular intervals.
"There is only one way to do it," said Bonny, "and that is by the rope. I will go first, and you must follow."