The vision was extraordinarily real and vivid, I remember, and, considered in connection with a certain subsequent event, in all ways most remarkable, but it passed as swiftly as it came.

Then my senses left me.

I saw a light again.  I heard a voice, that of Leo.  “Horace,” he cried, “Horace, hold fast to the stock of the rifle.”  Something was thrust against my outstretched hand.  I gripped it despairingly, and there came a strain.  It was useless, I did not move.  Then, bethinking me, I drew up my legs and by chance or the mercy of Heaven, I know not, got my feet against a ridge of the rock on which I was lying.  Again I felt the strain, and thrust with all my might.  Of a sudden the snow gave, and out of that hole I shot like a fox from its earth.

I struck something.  It was Leo straining at the gun, and I knocked him backwards.  Then down the steep slope we rolled, landing at length upon the very edge of the precipice.  I sat up, drawing in the air with great gasps, and oh! how sweet it was.  My eyes fell upon my hand, and I saw that the veins stood out on the back of it, black as ink and large as cords.  Clearly I must have been near my end.

“How long was I in there?” I gasped to Leo, who sat at my side, wiping off the sweat that ran from his face in streams.

“Don’t know.  Nearly twenty minutes, I should think.”

“Twenty minutes!  It seemed like twenty centuries.  How did you get me out?  You could not stand upon the drift dust.”

“No; I lay upon the yak skin where the snow was harder and tunnelled towards you through the powdery stuff with my hands, for I knew where you had sunk and it was not far off.  At last I saw your finger tips; they were so blue that for a few seconds I took them for rock, but thrust the butt of the rifle against them.  Luckily you still had life enough to catch hold of it, and you know the rest.  Were we not both very strong, it could never have been done.”

“Thank you, old fellow,” I said simply.

“Why should you thank me?” he asked with one of his quick smiles.  “Do you suppose that I wished to continue this journey alone?  Come, if you have got your breath, let us be getting on.  You have been sleeping in a cold bed and want exercise.  Look, my rifle is broken and yours is lost in the snow.  Well, it will save us the trouble of carrying the cartridges,” and he laughed drearily.

Then we began our march, heading for the spot where the road ended four miles or so away, for to go forward seemed useless.  In due course we reached it safely.  Once a mass of snow as large as a church swept down just in front of us, and once a great boulder loosened from the mountain rushed at us suddenly like an attacking lion, or the stones thrown by Polyphemus at the ship of Odysseus, and, leaping over our heads, vanished with an angry scream into the depths beneath.  But we took little heed of these things:  our nerves were deadened, and no danger seemed to affect them.