It ended with the two congressmen resting in the meadow, while Mills, Dick the guide, Joe, the girls, and Bob, climbed up some way over the rocks without any trail, and reached at length a place where the vast snow-field seemed to be sliding down past them, like a huge, silent river. Of course, it did not move, but it gave that illusion.
“What a place to ski!” said Joe.
“Wow!” yelled Bob, “you bet! You’d get some jump at the bottom, too.”
Mills grinned. “About as far as whichever place you’re going to when you die,” he said, as he began to uncoil his three ropes, fastening them together.
“What’s the big idea?” asked Bob. “That snow’s soft; you wouldn’t slip in that.”
And, to prove it, he started down the rocks, and out on to the snow-covered glacier.
Mills suddenly spoke with a sharp note Joe had never heard him use.
“Come back here!” he said.
“Now, Joe,” he said, “you go first on the rope, because you’ve got spikes in your shoes. We’ve got to look out for crevasses. Sound your footing when it looks suspicious. We’d need Alpine stocks to go far.”