VII

They say that men who know the sleep of exhaustion in the snow find no awakening on the hither side of death....  The hours passed and the moon sank down below the white world’s rim.  Then, suddenly, there came a little crash upon his breast and neck, and Hibbert—­woke.

He slowly turned bewildered, heavy eyes upon the desolate mountains, stared dizzily about him, tried to rise.  At first his muscles would not act; a numbing, aching pain possessed him.  He uttered a long, thin cry for help, and heard its faintness swallowed by the wind.  And then he understood vaguely why he was only warm—­not dead.  For this very wind that took his cry had built up a sheltering mound of driven snow against his body while he slept.  Like a curving wave it ran beside him.  It was the breaking of its over-toppling edge that caused the crash, and the coldness of the mass against his neck that woke him.

Dawn kissed the eastern sky; pale gleams of gold shot every peak with splendour; but ice was in the air, and the dry and frozen snow blew like powder from the surface of the slopes.  He saw the points of his ski projecting just below him.  Then he—­remembered.  It seems he had just strength enough to realise that, could he but rise and stand, he might fly with terrific impetus towards the woods and village far beneath.  The ski would carry him.  But if he failed and fell ...!

How he contrived it Hibbert never knew; this fear of death somehow called out his whole available reserve force.  He rose slowly, balanced a moment, then, taking the angle of an immense zigzag, started down the awful slopes like an arrow from a bow.  And automatically the splendid muscles of the practised ski-er and athlete saved and guided him, for he was hardly conscious of controlling either speed or direction.  The snow stung face and eyes like fine steel shot; ridge after ridge flew past; the summits raced across the sky; the valley leaped up with bounds to meet him.  He scarcely felt the ground beneath his feet as the huge slopes and distance melted before the lightning speed of that descent from death to life.

He took it in four mile-long zigzags, and it was the turning at each corner that nearly finished him, for then the strain of balancing taxed to the verge of collapse the remnants of his strength.

Slopes that have taken hours to climb can be descended in a short half-hour on ski, but Hibbert had lost all count of time.  Quite other thoughts and feelings mastered him in that wild, swift dropping through the air that was like the flight of a bird.  For ever close upon his heels came following forms and voices with the whirling snow-dust.  He heard that little silvery voice of death and laughter at his back.  Shrill and wild, with the whistling of the wind past his ears, he caught its pursuing tones; but in anger now, no longer soft and coaxing.  And it was accompanied; she did not follow alone.  It seemed a host of these flying figures of the snow chased madly just behind him.  He felt them furiously smite his neck and cheeks, snatch at his hands and try to entangle his feet and ski in drifts.  His eyes they blinded, and they caught his breath away.