And meanwhile we were fast climbing the pass.

We had left the others an hour--nearly two.

The sun was declining; the time, I supposed, about half-past three.
If he would only let me come within reach of him! Or if anything would fall out to take his attention! When the pass presently widened into a bare and dreary valley, strewn with huge boulders and with snow lying here and there in the hollows, I looked desperately before me, and scanned even the vast snow-fields that overhung us and stretched away to the base of the ice-peak.

But I saw nothing.

No bear swung across the path, no izard showed itself on the cliffs.