Part 18 (1/2)

”What a place to ski!” said Joe.

”Wow!” yelled Bob, ”you bet! You'd get some jump at the bottom, too.”

Mills grinned. ”About as far as whichever place you're going to when you die,” he said, as he began to uncoil his three ropes, fastening them together.

”What's the big idea?” asked Bob. ”That snow's soft; you wouldn't slip in that.”

And, to prove it, he started down the rocks, and out on to the snow-covered glacier.

Mills suddenly spoke with a sharp note Joe had never heard him use.

”Come back here!” he said.

Bob came.

”Now, Joe,” he said, ”you go first on the rope, because you've got spikes in your shoes. We've got to look out for creva.s.ses. Sound your footing when it looks suspicious. We'd need Alpine stocks to go far.”

He fastened one end under Joe's arms.

”You next, d.i.c.k, to brace if Joe goes under. Then the rest of you, and I'll be the rear anchor.”

He made the rope fast around d.i.c.k, twenty feet behind Joe, then told Bob and the girls to hold it fast at equal intervals, and fastened the rear end around his own waist

”Now, Joe, let her go,” he said.

Joe went down the rocks, and out on the great snow-field, tilted like the roof of a house. It was soft, as Bob had said, but not like ordinary soft snow. It was more like walking in cold, wet, rock salt, and the footing was anything but sure. Joe went cautiously, slowly climbing upward and outward at the same time, and as he looked below him, down that smooth, glistening, white slope, and realized that if he once got started sliding he would probably go half a mile and shoot off the lower edge into s.p.a.ce, he felt his heart, for a minute, go down somewhere into his boots. So he looked up, instead of downward, and felt better.

Everything went well for some hundreds of yards, and the whole party, on their rope, were well out on the great snow-field, when Joe saw just ahead of him a very slight depression in the snow. Bracing with his right foot, he put his left forward, and hit this depression smartly. It caved in! He tried to spring back, yelling to d.i.c.k to brace, but his right foot, with nothing but snow for the spikes to hold in, slipped, and he felt himself going down. He had no time to think, only just a terrible flash in his brain of accidents he had read about to Alpine climbers, before the rope caught him under the armpits with a cruel yank; he hung for a minute surrounded by the wet, cold snow which was falling down his neck, and then he felt himself being tugged up again by d.i.c.k.

Mills had come up, bringing the rope around Bob and the girls in a loop, by the time d.i.c.k had him out.

”Hurt?” he asked.

Joe was poking snow out of his neck, and loosening the grip of the rope under his arms.

”I--I guess not!” he panted. ”Gee, that gave me some surprise, though. I thought something was coming, and tested it with one foot, but the other slipped.”

”We ought to have ice axes,” Mills said. ”The snow's getting too thin.

Back's the word.”

Joe looked around at the rest of the party, and saw that Lucy and Alice had turned deadly pale, and even Bob was looking sober.

”Are you sure you aren't hurt, Joe?” Lucy asked.

”I'll get dinner, O.K.,” Joe answered.

Meanwhile Mills had approached the hole where Joe went under, and called the rest to come and look, one by one, while he and d.i.c.k braced the rope.