Still, it's rather a long time since breakfast." He glanced at the girls, and appeared relieved when Ida said: "I think we would better push on a little further before we stop for lunch." They plunged into a snow-drift to the knees, and when they had floundered through it for thirty yards or so Weston sank suddenly well over his waist.

He flung himself forward, and with the help of Kinnaird wriggled clear, but when they looked down there was empty blackness beneath the hole he had made.
"It's a snow-bridge, I think, sir," he said.

"The creek's running under it.

Anyway, I didn't touch anything solid with my feet." Kinnaird's face grew graver.
"If you're right," he observed, "it would be wiser to work around." They spent an hour doing it, and then, crossing knee-deep, they sat down on a ledge of jutting rock while Weston laid out a simple meal.
It was very cold in the shadow of the peak, and a bitter wind that seemed to be gathering strength whistled eerily about the desolation of rock and snow.

They were wet to the knees, and Weston fancied that the girls' cheerfulness was a trifle forced.