The prospector paused to take the cup, then said:  “I guess likely we won’t make the summit this trip.  We’ve got to hustle to get down before it turns soft.”

“Oh, but we must make the summit,” exclaimed Marcia, taking up her alpenstock.  “Why, we are all but there.”

“How does it look ahead?” inquired Frederic, walking along the buttress.  “Heard you chopping ice.”

“I was cutting steps across the tail end of a little glacier.  It’s a gliddery place, but the going looks all right once you get past.  Well, likely you can make it,” he added shrilly, “but you’ve got to be quick.”

The life of the trail that sharpens a man’s perceptives teaches him to read individuality swiftly, and this Alaskan who, the first day out on a long stampede, could have told the dominant trait of each husky in his team, knew his party as well as the risk.  Golf and tennis, added to a naturally strong physique, had given the two sisters nerves of steel.  Marcia, who had visited some of the great glaciers in the north, possessed the insight and coolness of a mountain explorer; and all the third woman lacked in physical endurance was more than made up in courage.  The man, though enervated by over-indulgence, had the brute force, the animal instinct of self-preservation, to carry him through.  So presently, when the buttress was passed, and the prospector uncoiled his rope, it was to Mrs. Feversham he gave the other end, placing Morganstein next, with Elizabeth at the center and Mrs. Weatherbee second.  Once, twice, Banks felt her stumble, a sinking weight on the line, but in the instant he caught a twist in the slack and fixed his heels in the crust to turn, she had, in each case, recovered and come steadily on.  It was only when the gliddery passage was made, the peril behind, that she sank down in momentary collapse.

Banks stopped to unfold his pocket-cup and take out his flask.  “You look about done for,” he said briskly.  “My, yes, that little taste of glacier was your limit.  But you ain’t the kind to back out.  No, ma’am, all you need is a little bracer to put you on your feet again, good as new.”

“I never can go back,” she said, and met his concerned look with wide and luminous eyes.  “Unless—­I’m carried.  Never in the world.”

Morganstein forced a laugh.  It had a frosty sound; his lips were blue.  “Excuse me,” he responded.  “Anywhere else I wouldn’t hesitate, but here, I draw the line.”

The prospector was holding the draught to her lips, and she took a swallow and pushed away the cup.  It was brandy, raw, scalding, and it brought the color back to her face.  “Thank you,” she said, and forced a smile.  “It is bracing; my tensions are all screwed.  I feel like climbing on to—­Mars.”

Frederic laughed again.  “You go on, Banks,” he said, relieving him of the cup; “she’s all right.  You hurry ahead before one of those girls walks over a precipice.”

He could not persuade her to take more of the liquor, so he himself drank the bracer, after which he put the cup and the flask, which Banks had left, away in his own pockets.  She was up, whipping down her fear.  “Come,” she said, “we must hurry to overtake them.”