This time it looked more pronounced, and a lot less innocent. Almost up to where we stood the snow began to slide slowly and gently downward, a few feet at a time, then halting, but always resuming its curious motion at shorter intervals. Looking all round us, we saw that the slide was becoming more and more general; as far as the eye could reach, the great white mantle was sliding and stopping, sliding and stopping, rucking up here and there over a rise in the ground, with an effect like a gentle swell of the sea. Then at last my fuddled wits began to grasp what was really happening. There were millions of tons of snow on that vast mountain side. The layers next the earth were melting, causing the great mass to lose its grip. It would all slide soon. There would be an avalanche. 'Quick!' cried Philipson. 'If we have something to keep us afloat we may have a chance--otherwise none. Take off your packs!' We opened out the two rolled tents and folded them flat, into a sort of raft about five feet square, ribbing this with the tent-poles and rifles laid crosswise on the under side and lashing the whole tightly with guy ropes. There was barely time to complete the work before the rush was upon us, swirling round us thigh-deep for all the world like the urge of a strong current sweeping in over flat sands. We flung ourselves on to the raft, which immediately started to ride down on the shifting snow. For perhaps a minute the motion was pleasantly gentle. Philipson took advantage of this breather to allot us positions: he himself sat forward, holding the stoutest of the tent-poles, which he had kept out, in his hands like a paddle; Poyning and I were just behind him, gripping the ropes with one hand and Philipson's sheepskin with the other; while the two Chinese servants squatted behind us, their orders being to hang on like leeches themselves and catch any man who might be jolted out of his seat and swept backwards. It was a good move, turning our gear into this queer, toboggan-like contraption: without it, we should have sunk into the rapidly deepening, down-sliding mass, and been smothered in an instant. As it was, our raft for a time rode the avalanche to admiration, being too broad to sink in, and checked by the rib-like poles and ropes that went under it from adding the speed of sliding to the pace already given it by the moving snow. Soon, however, matters changed considerably for the worse. The avalanche was gaining force and volume, but with a decrease in the slant of the mountain side the resistance was increasing, so that there became more and more evident a tendency for the surface snow to roll on over that deeper down. Three times we were struck by a heavy wave from behind and well nigh "pooped." More than once, grazing it by inches, we shot past a sharp snag of upstanding rock, against which the snow was breaking and spouting into the air in a high cascade.