I knew I did not have half a minute in which to
decide upon my course; for it became increasingly difficult
to hold the horses back, and they were fast sinking away.
During this short breathing spell I took in the situation.
We had come up in a northeast direction, slanting along
the slope. Once on top, I had instinctively turned to
the north. Here the drift was about twenty feet wide,
perfectly level and with an exfoliated surface layer. To
the east the drift fell steeply, with a clean, smooth
cliff-line marking off the beginning of the descent; this
line seemed particularly disconcerting, for it betrayed
the concave curvature of the down-sweep. A few yards to
the north I saw below, at the foot of the cliff, the old
logging-trail, and I noticed that the snow on it lay as
it had fallen, smooth and sheer, without a ripple of a
drift. It looked like mockery. And yet that was where I
had to get down.
The next few minutes are rather a maze in my memory. But
two pictures were photographed with great distinctness.
The one is of the moment when we went over the edge. For
a second Peter reared up, pawing the air with his forefeet;
Dan tried to back away from the empty fall.
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