onorous, an unfrozen torrent roared like a
beast, it seemed within twenty yards, and was dumb again on the instant.
Now, too, the horns began to cry, long, lamentable hootings, ringing
sadly in that echoing desolation like the wail of wandering souls; and
as Percy, awed beyond feeling, wiped the gathering moisture from the
glass, and stared again, it appeared as if he floated now, motionless
except for the slight rocking beneath his feet, in a world of whiteness,
as remote from earth as from heaven, poised in hopeless infinite space,
blind, alone, frozen, lost in a white hell of desolation.

Once, as he stared, a huge whiteness moved towards him through the veil,
slid slowly sideways and down, disclosing, as the car veered, a gigantic
slope smooth as oil, with one cluster of black rock cutting it like the
fingers of a man's hand groping from a mountainous wave.

Then, as once more the car cried aloud like a lost sheep, there answered
it, it seemed scarcely ten yards away, first one windy scream of dismay,
another and another; a clang of bells, a chorus broke out; and the air
was full of the beating of wings.

IV

There was one horrible instant before a clang of a bell, the answering
scream, and a whirling motion showed that the steersman was alert. Then
like a stone the car dropped, and Percy clutched at the rail before him
to steady the terrible sensation of falling into emptiness. He could
hear behind him the crash of crockery, the bumping of heavy bodies, and
as the car again checked on its wide wings, a rush of footsteps broke
out and a cry or two of dismay. Outside, but high and far away, the
hooting went on; the air was full of it, and in a flash he recognised
that it could not be one or ten or twenty cars, but at least a hundred
that had answered the call, and that somewhere overhead were hooting and
flapping. The invisible ravines and cliffs on all sides took up the
crying; long wails whooped and moaned and died amid a clash of bells,
further and further every instant, but now in every direction, behind,
above, in front, and far to right and left. Once more the car began to
move, sinking in a long still curve towards the face of the mountain;
and as it checked, and began to sway again on its huge wings, he turned
to the door, seeing as he did so, through the cloudy windows in the
glow of light, a spire of rock not thirty feet below rising from the
mist, and one smooth shoulder of snow curving away int