In front of us was sheer mountain side, for a depth of over two miles, the width of about a thousand yards, which had been covered with many feet of snow, was now bare rock.  Piled up against the face of our hill, almost to its summit, lay a tongue of snow, pressed to the consistency of ice and spotted with boulders that had lodged there.  The peak itself was torn and shattered, so that it revealed great gleaming surfaces and pits, in which glittered mica, or some other mineral.  The vast gulf behind was half filled with the avalanche and its debris.  But for the rest, it seemed as though nothing had happened, for the sun shone sweetly overhead and the solemn snows reflected its rays from the sides of a hundred hills.  And we had endured it all and were still alive; yes, and unhurt.

But what a position was ours!  We dared not attempt to descend the mount, lest we should sink into the loose snow and be buried there.  Moreover, all along the breadth of the path of the avalanche boulders from time to time still thundered down the rocky slope, and with them came patches of snow that had been left behind by the big slide, small in themselves, it is true, but each of them large enough to kill a hundred men.  It was obvious, therefore, that until these conditions changed, or death released us, we must abide where we were upon the crest of the hillock.

So there we sat, foodless and frightened, wondering what our old friend Kou-en would say if he could see us now.  By degrees hunger mastered all our other sensations and we began to turn longing eyes upon the headless body of the yak.

“Let’s skin him,” said Leo, “it will be something to do, and we shall want his hide to-night.”

So with affection, and even reverence, we performed this office for the dead companion of our journeyings, rejoicing the while that it was not we who had brought him to his end.  Indeed, long residence among peoples who believed fully that the souls of men could pass into, or were risen from, the bodies of animals, had made us a little superstitious on this matter.  It would be scarcely pleasant, we reflected, in some future incarnation, to find our faithful friend clad in human form and to hear him bitterly reproach us for his murder.

Being dead, however, these arguments did not apply to eating him, as we were sure he would himself acknowledge.  So we cut off little bits of his flesh and, rolling them in snow till they looked as though they were nicely floured, hunger compelling us, swallowed them at a gulp.  It was a disgusting meal and we felt like cannibals:  but what could we do?

CHAPTER V

THE GLACIER

Even that day came to an end at last, and after a few more lumps of yak, our tent being gone, we drew his hide over us and rested as best we could, knowing that at least we had no more avalanches to fear.  That night it froze sharply, so that had it not been for the yak’s hide and the other rugs and garments, which fortunately we were wearing when the snow-slide began, it would, I think, have gone hard with us.  As it was, we suffered a great deal.