But the thought vanished as quickly as it came; there was no shelter, no blankets, nothing but the meager warmth of what fire he might be able to gather, and that would fade the minute he nodded.
Already the temperature had sunk far beneath the freezing point; the crackling of the ice in the gulleys of the road fairly shouted the fact as he edged back once more from the radiator to his seat.
An hour--and three more after that--with the consequent stops and pauses, the slow turns, the dragging process up the steeper inclines of the road.

A last final, clattering journey, and Barry leaped from the seat with something akin to enthusiasm.
Through the swirling snow which sifted past the glare of his headlights, he could discern a sign which told him he had reached the summit, that he now stood at the literal top of the world.
But it was a silent world, a black world, in which the hills about him were shapeless, dim hulks, where the wind whined, where the snow swept against his face and drifted down the open space of his collar; a world of coldness, of malice, of icy venom, where everything was a threatening thing, and never a cheering aspect except the fact that the grades had been accomplished, and that from now on he could progress with the knowledge that his engine at least need labor no longer.

But the dangers! Barry knew that they had only begun.

The descent would be as steep as the climb he had just made.

The progress must be slower, if anything, and with the compression working as a brake.