“Hey!  You!  Here comes the string.  Tell me when you’ve got it.”

A small pocket-knife, weighted on the end of the string, slid down the ice.  Smoke got it, opened the larger blade by a quick effort of his teeth and one hand, and made sure that the blade was sharp.  Then he tied the sheath-knife to the end of the string.

“Haul away!” he called.

With strained eyes he saw the upward progress of the knife.  But he saw more—­a little man, afraid and indomitable, who shivered and chattered, whose head swam with giddiness, and who mastered his qualms and distresses and played a hero’s part.  Not since his meeting with Shorty had Smoke so quickly liked a man.  Here was a proper meat-eater, eager with friendliness, generous to destruction, with a grit that shaking fear could not shake.  Then, too, he considered the situation cold-bloodedly.  There was no chance for two.  Steadily, they were sliding into the heart of the glacier, and it was his greater weight that was dragging the little man down.  The little man could stick like a fly.  Alone, he could save himself.

“Bully for us!” came the voice from above, down and across the bulge of ice.  “Now we’ll get out of here in two shakes.”

The awful struggle for good cheer and hope in Carson’s voice decided Smoke.

“Listen to me,” he said steadily, vainly striving to shake the vision of Joy Gastell’s face from his brain.  “I sent that knife up for you to get out with.  Get that?  I’m going to chop loose with the jack-knife.  It’s one or both of us.  Get that?”

“Two or nothing,” came the grim but shaky response.  “If you’ll hold on a minute—­”

“I’ve held on for too long now.  I’m not married.  I have no adorable thin woman nor kids nor apple-trees waiting for me.  Get me?  Now, you hike up and out of that!”

“Wait!  For God’s sake, wait!” Carson screamed down.  “You can’t do that!  Give me a chance to get you out.  Be calm, old horse.  We’ll make the turn.  You’ll see.  I’m going to dig holds that’ll lift a house and barn.”

Smoke made no reply.  Slowly and gently, fascinated by the sight, he cut with the knife until one of the three strands popped and parted.

“What are you doing?” Carson cried desperately.  “If you cut, I’ll never forgive you—­never.  I tell you it’s two or nothing.  We’re going to get out.  Wait!  For God’s sake!”

And Smoke, staring at the parted strand, five inches before his eyes, knew fear in all its weakness.  He did not want to die; he recoiled from the shimmering abyss beneath him, and his panic brain urged all the preposterous optimism of delay.  It was fear that prompted him to compromise.

“All right,” he called up.  “I’ll wait.  Do your best.  But I tell you, Carson, if we both start slipping again I’m going to cut.”

“Huh!  Forget it.  When we start, old horse, we start up.  I’m a porous plaster.  I could stick here if it was twice as steep.  I’m getting a sizable hole for one heel already.  Now, you hush, and let me work.”