It was impossible to sit still, and jumping down, he lighted the lamp, but found it hard to replace the glass.  The shack throbbed, the table on which he put the matches shook, and there was a rattle of crockery, but this was drowned by an overwhelming roar.  The avalanche was pouring down a gully near the shack, and he leaned against the table, deafened, until it passed.  Then he heard the turmoil of a tremendous cataract and imagined the snow was plunging into the river and deflecting the current upon the other bank.  The sound gradually died away and he could hear detached noises; great pines, broken rocks, and soil, rushing down behind the fallen mass.  There were heavy splashes, and then a strange, unnatural silence.

“It’s finished,” Festing remarked.  “Rather alarming for the first time, but one gets used to it.  You can put out the light and go back to bed.”

Charnock did so and soon went to sleep.  In the morning they found that the most part of the avalanche had fallen into the river, but its tail remained, resting in a steep cone of snow and broken trees and soil, against the bank on which they had built the frames.  The top of the cone extended far up the hill, but, owing to the sharpness of the pitch, its bottom, which covered the frames and rockwork, was thin.  Festing sent half the men to cut this portion away, and the others up the hill to haul posts for the snowshed to the top of the slides.  It was obvious that a very heavy weight rested on the buried work, but the pressure was uniform, unlike the jarring of a train, and he did not feel disturbed.

About four o’clock in the afternoon he came to see how much progress the shovel gang had made, and Charnock, who superintended their labor, showed him what they had done.  They had cut a gap in the cone, and part of the rockwork was exposed nearly to the bottom.  On each side, the snow ran down to the water in a uniform smooth slant, except where broken trees projected from the surface.  Above, the mass of snow rested on the shelf that would carry the track and on the top of the half-finished work.  It glittered with a yellow flush where it caught the fading light, but in the hollow its color was a dull, cold blue.

By and by they examined the wall.  So far as they could see, the stonework bore the unusual load well, but in one spot there was a crack between two courses.

“I’ll get up there in the morning and see if it’s worth while to drive in a few wedges,” Festing remarked.  “You had better watch that bank of snow.  Some of it will probably break away.”

“We have had two or three small falls,” said Charnock, and Festing beckoned one of the men.

“Come up the hill in the morning, Tom.  I’m going to clear the log-slide or break a new one.  Which d’you think would be best?”

While they talked about it, a shower of snow fell on Charnock, who stepped back.

“Watch out!” he cried.  “There’s more coming!”