The four black stones had moved, were nearer to him--they were four men ascending.

Garratt Skinner turned swiftly toward Walter Hine, reached for his ice-ax, grasped it and raised it, Walter Hine looked at him with staring, stupid eyes, but raised no hand, made no movement.

He, too, was conscious of an hallucination.

It seemed to him that his friend stood over him with a convulsed and murderous face, in which rage strove with bitter disappointment, but that he held his ax by the end with the adz-head swung back above his head to give greater force to the blow, and that while he poised it there came a cry from the confines of the world, and that upon that cry his friend dropped the ax, and stooping down to him murmured: "There's help quite close, Wallie!" Certainly those words were spoken--that at all events was no hallucination.

Walter Hine understood it clearly.