The Colonel had come to that point where he resented the Boy’s staying power, terrified at the indomitable young life in him.  Yes, the Colonel began to feel old, and to think with vague wrath of the insolence of youth.

Each man fell to considering what he would do, how he would manage if he were alone.  And there ceased to be any terror in the thought.

“If it wasn’t for him”—­so and so; till in the gradual deadening of judgment all the hardship was somehow your pardner’s fault.  Your nerves made him responsible even for the snow and the wind.  By-and-by he was The Enemy.  Not but what each had occasional moments of lucidity, and drew back from the pit they were bending over.  But the realisation would fade.  No longer did even the wiser of the two remember that this is that same abyss out of which slowly, painfully, the race has climbed.  With the lessened power to keep from falling in, the terror of it lessened.  Many strange things grew natural.  It was no longer difficult or even shocking to conceive one’s partner giving out and falling by the way.  Although playing about the thought, the one thing that not even the Colonel was able actually to realise, was the imminent probability of death for himself.  Imagination always pictured the other fellow down, one’s self somehow forging ahead.

This obsession ended on the late afternoon when the Colonel broke silence by saying suddenly: 

“We must camp; I’m done.”  He flung himself down under a bare birch, and hid his face.

The Boy remonstrated, grew angry; then, with a huge effort at self-control, pointed out that since it had stopped snowing this was the very moment to go on.

“Why, you can see the sun.  Three of ’em!  Look, Colonel!”

But Arctic meteorological phenomena had long since ceased to interest the Kentuckian.  Parhelia were less to him than covered eyes, and the perilous peace of the snow.  It seemed a long time before he sat up, and began to beat the stiffness out of his hands against his breast.  But when he spoke, it was only to say: 

“I mean to camp.”

“For how long?”

“Till a team comes by—­or something.”

The Boy got up abruptly, slipped on his snow-shoes, and went round the shoulder of the hill, and up on to the promontory, to get out of earshot of that voice, and determine which of the two ice-roads, stretching out before them, was main channel and which was tributary.

He found on the height only a cutting wind, and little enlightenment as to the true course.  North and east all nimbus still.  A brace of sun-dogs following the pale God of Day across the narrow field of primrose that bordered the dun-coloured west.  There would be more snow to-morrow, and meanwhile the wind was rising again.  Yes, sir, it was a mean outlook.

As he took Mac’s aneroid barometer out of his pocket, a sudden gust cut across his raw and bleeding cheek.  He turned abruptly; the barometer slipped out of his numb fingers.  He made a lunge to recover it, clutched the air, and, sliding suddenly forward, over he went, flying headlong down the steep escarpment.