They were loaded at last, and the gorge looked very desolate when the half-breed vanished with his dogs beyond the summit of the bank. He was not a man of much conversational powers, but they had found his company pleasant in the grim solitudes. Andrew had hired him at an outlying Hudson Bay factory, where he had had no trouble in obtaining food. The fur trade was languishing thereabout, and prospectors for timber and minerals were made welcome. The Scot in charge of the lonely post had, however, no dogs for sale, though he engaged to transport a limited quantity of provisions to a point which one of the company's half-breeds, despatched on another errand, would pass with his team. Andrew considered Carnally's caution well justified. Their supply of food was scanty, and the journey attended by risks enough; but he could sympathize with Graham. It was snowing hard, the wind was rising, and there was no sign of a camping-place in all the desolation. They had gone a long way since sunrise, and were too tired to think of lengthening the journey by looking for a better place to cross the river. They went forward, carefully avoiding the hummocks, and winding around the larger cracks. Andrew was too occupied in picking his way to notice that Graham had fallen some distance behind; but when he had skirted a tall hummock, a sharp cry reached him, and he stopped in alarm. He could see nothing except a stretch of rugged ice and a high white bank fading into the driving snow. Their companion had disappeared. "Guess he was straight behind us!" cried Carnally, as they turned back, running. Andrew fell over a block of ice, but he was up in a moment, for the cry came again, and when they had passed a black pool he saw what seemed to be the head and shoulders of a man projecting from a fissure. He sprang across a dangerous crack and as he ran he saw Graham's face turned toward him, with a strained, tense look. Carnally was a pace or two in front and had seized Graham's arm when Andrew came up and grasped his collar. They dragged him out of the crevice and set him, gasping breathlessly, on the ice, with the water running from one of his moccasins. "You were only just in time," he said after a moment or two. "There was snow across the crack and it broke under me. Couldn't crawl out, with my pack dragging me down." "It's blamed unfortunate you got your moccasin wet," Carnally remarked. "It ought to come off right away, but we haven't another. Think the water has got through?" "I'm afraid it has; the back seam opened up a bit yesterday. But my feet are so cold I can hardly feel." "If Mappin hadn't played that trick on us, you'd have a sound dry pair to put on. But you want to keep moving, and it's getting dark."