The gale was now a perfect fury. It must have been blowing seventy miles an hour, and the contact of this north wind with the warmer cloud bank from the south was making a perfect hurricane vortex of half frozen vapor around these high summits. Everybody was exhausted with fighting against it, and chilled with cold. Mr. Rogers and Art, however, kept shouting back encouragement as each fresh cairn was picked up, and as Mr. Rogers knew the trail, and they had a map and compass, there were only a few delays while he or Art prospected ahead at blind spots. Alternately lying on their faces on the frozen, wet rocks to get their breaths, and pushing on into the gale, they struggled ahead for what seemed hours. Actually it was only half an hour. Half an hour to go 440 yards! Suddenly, out of the vapor, not twenty-five feet ahead of them, loomed a small, gray shanty. “Hoorah!” cried Art and Mr. Rogers. “The hut!” CHAPTER XI TO THE SUMMIT, SAFE AT LAST They dashed to it, and opened the door. The hut was a tiny affair, with a lean-to roof. It faced to the south, with a door so narrow a stout person could barely squeeze in, and one tiny window. It would hold about six people without undue crowding--and here were eight! “Peanut’s only half a one,” said Art, cracking the first joke since the storm began. Into the hut, however, all eight of them crowded. Inside, they found two or three blankets hung on a string, and nothing else except a sign forbidding its use in any save cases of emergency. “I guess this is emergency, all right,” said Rob, as he helped to wrap the girl in a pair of dry blankets, and put the third blanket about her companion. The boys all wrapped up in their own. Rob then got out his first aid kit, and gave the girl some aromatic spirits of ammonia, which revived her so that her hysterical sobbing stopped. “Here, take my pack,” said Lou, “and use it for a pillow.” The young man, who was nearly as pale as the girl, and almost as exhausted, took the pack and placed it in a corner. Then they laid the girl on the floor, with her head upon it. Her fiancé bent over her. In cases like this you don’t think of other people being around. He kissed her, and all the boys turned their faces away, and Peanut rubbed the back of his hand suspiciously across his eyes. “Guess he’s glad we’ve got her safe in here,” Peanut whispered--or rather he spoke in what was merely a loud tone, which amounted to a whisper with the gale howling so outside. “I guess we’re all glad we’re in here,” Frank replied. “Look out there!” They looked through the window into what at first appeared to be the thick cotton batting of the cloud, but closer inspection showed them that it was snow. The cloud was condensing into snow! “Whew!” Peanut whistled, while the tiny cabin gave a shiver as if it were going to be lifted from its foundations. “Lord, what a gale!” said somebody else.