I fear that your horse has fallen a victim." Assisting the knight, who in spite of his armor was sorely bruised and exhausted, they made their way back to the refuge.

Cnut and the archers were all bleeding freely from various wounds inflicted upon them in the struggle, breathless and exhausted from their exertions, and thoroughly awe-struck by the tremendous phenomenon of which they had been witnesses, and which they had only escaped from their good fortune in happening to be in a place so formed that the force of the avalanche had swept over their heads.

The whole of the road, with the exception of a narrow piece four feet in width, had been carried away.

Looking upward, they saw that the forest had been swept clear, not a tree remaining in a wide track as far as they could see up the hill.

The great bowlders which had strewn the hillside, and many of which were as large as houses, had been swept away like straws before the rush of snow, and for a moment they feared that the refuge had also been carried away.