It's not good to wait here," he said with a shiver.
This time with infinite difficulty they made fifty yards, and Alton's face showed what his silence had cost him when they set him down again.
Seaforth stooped and drew the blanket about him with a great gentleness.
"We did our best.

I'd change places with you, Harry, if I could," he said.
Alton smiled a little, but said nothing, and in five minutes they went on again, Seaforth gasping from exhaustion, with a horrible pain in his side and his feet slipping from under him as they struggled up a sloping face of rock, but they had won forty yards when Tom went down and Alton, who fell heavily upon him, rolled over.

Seaforth held his breath a moment until he heard the voice of the injured man.
"I wouldn't worry about my head.

It would take an axe to hurt me there," he said.

"Look at the lashings." The lashings, however, had not slackened, the cedar-bark was intact, and once more they took up their burden, while Seaforth could not remember how often they had rested when at last they came out upon a smooth strip of sloping rock close to the last of the portage.