Clearly I must have been near my end.
"How long was I in there ?" I gasped to Leo, who sat at my side, wiping off the sweat that ran from his face in streams.
"Don't know.

Nearly twenty minutes, I should think." "Twenty minutes! It seemed like twenty centuries.

How did you get me out?
You could not stand upon the drift dust." "No; I lay upon the yak skin where the snow was harder and tunnelled towards you through the powdery stuff with my hands, for I knew where you had sunk and it was not far off.

At last I saw your finger tips; they were so blue that for a few seconds I took them for rock, but thrust the butt of the rifle against them.

Luckily you still had life enough to catch hold of it, and you know the rest.