the slope.

In the face of this common peril, personality called a truce, and she
pushed on with him blindly, leaving it to him to choose the way and set
the pace. But their own tracks down the incline had filled with incredible
swiftness; soon they were completely effaced. And, when the noise
subsided, he stopped and looked about him, bewildered. He saw nothing but
a breadth of sharply dipping slope, white, smooth as an unwritten scroll,
over which hung the swaying, voluminous veil of the falling snow. He put
his hands to his mouth then, and lifted his voice in a great hail. It
brought no reply, but in the moment he waited, somewhere far below in
those obscured depths, a great tree, splitting under tremendous pressure,
crashed down, then quickly the terrific sweep and roar of a second
mightier avalanche filled the hidden gorge.

Morganstein caught her arm once more. "We must get back to that shoulder
where it's safe," he shouted. "Banks will come to look us up." After that,
as they struggled on up the slope, he fell to saying over and over, as
long as the reverberations lasted: "Almighty God!"

As they ascended, the snow fell less heavily and finally ceased. It became
firm underfoot, and a cross wind, starting in puffs, struck their faces
sharply with a promise of frost. Then strange hummocks began to rise. They
were upheavals of ice, shrouded in snow. Sometimes a higher one presented
a sheer front shading to bluish-green. They had not passed this point with
Banks, but Morganstein shaped a course to a black pinnacle, lifting
through the mist beyond, that he believed was the crag at the shoulder.
She stumbled repeatedly on the rough surface. Her labored breathing in the
great stillness, like the beat of a pendulum in an empty house, tried his
strained nerves. He upbraided her for leaving her alpenstock down the
slope. But she paid no attention. She looked back constantly; she was like
a woman being led away from a locked door, moving reluctantly, listening
against hope for a word or sign. So, at last, they came to the rock. It
was not the crag, but a hanging promontory, where the mountain broke in a
three-sided precipice. The cloud surged around it like an unplumbed sea.

They crept back, and Morganstein tried again to determine their position.
They were too high, he concluded; they must work down a little to round
the cliffs, so they took a course diagonally into the smother. Then he,
too, began to lose alertness; he