ake up," he cried thickly. "Wake up! Don't you see we're out of that
hole? Come, Banks will be here any minute. Come, wake up."

She made no response. The sun had set; it was growing bitterly cold, and
there was little protection under the crag. It was a place where cross
winds met. Torn fragments from the sea of cloud below drove against the
pinnacle. It was like a lofty headland breasting rolling surf. Frederic
stood erect and sent his voice down through the smother in a great shout.
It brought no answer, and he settled helplessly on the shelf beside her.
It began to hail furiously, and he dropped his face, shielding it in his
arms.

The storm passed and, rousing himself, he searched his pockets vainly for
a match to light his remaining cigar. Later he went through them again,
hoping to find a piece of chocolate--he had carried some that morning--but
this, too, was without result. He fell to cursing the packer, for
appropriating the port and tinned things that were missing at lunch-time.
But after that he did not talk any more and, in a little while, he
stretched himself beside the unconscious figure at the foot of the crag. A
second cloud lifted in a flurry of snow. Every hidden canyon sent out
innumerable currents of air, and gales, meeting, lifted the powdery crust
in swirls, wrapping them in a white sheet. Finally, from far off, mingling
with the skirling pipes of the wind came a different, human sound. And,
presently, when the call--if call it was--was repeated, the man sat up and
looked dully around. But he made no effort to reply. He waited, listening
stupidly, and the cry did not reach him again. Then, his glance falling to
the woman, a ray of intelligence leaped in his eyes. He rose on his knees
and moved her so there was room for his own bulk between her body and the
rock. He had then, when he stretched himself on the snow, a windbreak.

The wind rushed screaming into the vast spaces beyond the mountain top,
and returning, met the opposing forces from the canyon and instantly
became a whirlwind. It cut like myriads of teeth; it struck two-edged with
the swish, slash of a sword; and it lifted the advancing cloud in a mighty
swirl, bellied it as though it had been a gigantic sail, and shook from
its folds a deluge of hailstones followed by snow. Through it all a
grotesque shape that seemed sometimes a huge, abnormal beetle and
sometimes a beast, worked slowly around the crag, now crawling, now
rearing upright