“Where are the others?” I asked the cacique.

“Smothered in the snow; two minutes more and we also should have been smothered.”

“Let us go back and see.  They may still live.”

“Impossible!  We could not get back if we had ten times the strength and were ten instead of two.  Listen!”

The roar of the storm in the gully is louder than ever; the drift, now higher than the tallest man, grows even as we look.

Fifteen men buried alive within a few yards of us, yet beyond the possibility of help!  Poor Gahra!  If he had loved me less and himself more, he would still be enjoying the dolce far niente of Happy Valley, instead of lying there, stark and stiff in his frozen winding-sheet.  A word of encouragement, a helping hand at the last moment, and he might have got through.  I feel as if I had deserted him in his need; my conscience reproaches me bitterly.  And yet—­good God!  What is that?  A black hand in the snow!

“With a single bound I am there.  Gondocori follows, and as I seize one hand he finds and grasps the other, and we pull out of the drift the negro’s apparently lifeless body.

“He is dead,” says the cacique.

“I don’t think so.  Raise him up, and let the sun shine on him.”

I take out my pocket-flask and pour a few drops of aguardiente down his throat.  Presently Gahra sighs and opens his eyes, and a few minutes later is able to stand up and walk about.  He can tell very little of what passed in the gully.  He had followed Gondocori and myself, and was not far behind us.  He remembered plunging into the snow-drift and struggling on until he fell on his face, and then all was a blank.  None of the Indians were with him in the drift; he felt sure they were all behind him, which was likely enough, as Gahra, though sensitive to cold, was a man of exceptional bodily strength.  It was beyond a doubt that all had perished.

“I left Pachatupec with fifteen braves.  I have lost my braves, my mules, and my baggage, and all I have to show are two men, a pale-face and a black-face.  Not a single maiden.  How will Mamcuna take it, I wonder?” said Gondocari, gloomily.  “Let us go on.”

“You think she will be very angry?”

“I do.”

“Is she very unpleasant when she is angry?”

“She generally makes it very unpleasant for others.  Her favorite punishment for offenders is roasting them before a slow fire.”

“And yet you propose to go on?”

“What else can we do?  Going back the way we came is out of the question, equally so is climbing either of those mountain-ranges.  If we stay hereabout we shall starve.  We have not a morsel of food, and until we reach Pachatupec we shall get none.”

“And when may that be?”

“By this time to-morrow.”

“Well, let us go on, then; though, as between being starved to death and roasted alive, there is not much to choose.  All the same, I should like to see this wonderful queen of whom you are so much afraid.”