There was death in its blinding whiteness, death in its numbing torpor death in its piercing cold; but beyond was life and wife and honour and reward. The sight of the snow drove Mir Khan to more desperate means, for, without some critical success, beyond the Palári he dared not go, since his opponents might be able to count on reinforcement, and the pass close behind him. But to Terrington the pressure of the enemy now became less serious than the difficulties of the road. His men soon learnt the value of snow as a protection, and snow entrenchments were much more rapidly constructed than stone sangars. But with every march the strength of his coolies was declining, and they could scarcely carry their reduced loads. The horses, barely able to keep their footing on the frozen ground, became at once exhausted when the deep snow was reached, and had to be killed and eaten. This brought him almost to the end of his fuel, and left the wounded to be carried by effectives who were already beginning to feel the strain of constant fighting and the toil of forcing their way through a foot's depth of snow. Moreover every hour of ascent brought them into an air perceptibly rarer, and increased grievously the stress of every added effort. On the second day they reached the terrible region of the winds, and for three hours waited helpless in a blast of icy crystals that cut the face till it bled, and froze the eyelids with the tears that it brought to them, and made every breath a pain. The storm struck without warning. The snow ahead seemed suddenly to rise on end; the next instant the awful gray mist of ice was tearing past them. For those three hours it was impossible to move or to see. The air seemed as thick as a river jellied with snow, and even when the eyes could be opened, the clotted whiteness hid the end of one's arm. Where the men clung together in frightened and shivering groups, the wind piled drifts on the lee side up to their necks. It seemed as though the snows of all the mountains was being swept into the sea, and yet scarcely a flake fell upon the rear-guard, fighting some few hundred feet below.