The guides, keeping in the tracks of the animals, marked off dangerous places with their sticks; and behind them rode Lenox, muffled to the eyes in poshteen and Balaklava cap, his league of leg barely two feet off the ground; his keen little pony--long since christened 'The Rat'--almost as trustworthy on dangerous ground as the donkey himself. And wherever he led, all self-respecting Kashmiri ponies would follow,--even into a crevasse! Through four mortal hours they plodded on, a strange procession of muffled figures, leaving in their wake a dark, contorted track, as though some wounded thing had writhed its way upward through the frozen snow. And by one o'clock the crest was in sight! "The gods favour those who go forward!" Chundra Sen had spoken truth. Another half hour would see them through the worst; and Lenox--scarcely able to believe in his good fortune--urged The Rat to renewed exertion, and shouted to his men to hurry on. But the gods are nothing if not capricious; and the 'advanced guard,' reaching the summit, found no promised land spread out below them, but a mass of blue-black cloud, heavy with snow, surging up the valley, with the rush of a tidal wave and the breath of an iceberg, blotting out creation as it came; till it shrouded the little band of men--'unconquering, yet unconquered'--in a sinister twilight, cold as Death's own self. There was nothing to be said or done. They simply stood still, and waited for the end:--the Asiatics with the phlegm of fatalism; Lenox with the stillness of despair. "Checkmate," he muttered grimly. "Two hours of this will about finish us off." In two seconds his moustache was frozen to his face; his limbs numbed, so that movement became imperative. Mechanically he dismounted, stamped his feet, and beat his arms across his chest as the others were doing; a proceeding about as effective as thimblefuls of water flung on a fire. For every moment the iron clutch of frost tightened and penetrated; even, it seemed, to the life-blood in his veins. But through its deadening influence the thought of Quita struck like a knife-thrust. "God help her!" his heart cried out in bitter rebellion against his own helplessness to shield her from pain. "It will hit her hard. But she has grit;--and her art. She will live it down." For five awful minutes the darkness held; and the men waited;--free yet helpless, like castaways on an open sea. Yet no snow fell. Suddenly Lenox was aware of Brutus rubbing against his leg, plainly demanding what was wrong. He stooped and caressed the ugly head of his eight years' companion and friend. "Rough luck on you, old chap. You never asked to come." For answer Brutus licked his woollen glove. And as he straightened himself, Chundra Sen came up and saluted. "Captain Sahib, it is strange. No snow falls; and the darkness moves--moves. May be it is not the storm itself; but a cloud that will pass."