While the struggle lasted thinking had not been possible.

After we abandoned the mules I had eyes only for Gondocori, and never once looked behind me.
"Where are the others ?" I asked the _cacique_.
"Smothered in the snow; two minutes more and we also should have been smothered." "Let us go back and see.

They may still live." "Impossible! We could not get back if we had ten times the strength and were ten instead of two.

Listen!" The roar of the storm in the gully is louder than ever; the drift, now higher than the tallest man, grows even as we look.
Fifteen men buried alive within a few yards of us, yet beyond the possibility of help! Poor Gahra! If he had loved me less and himself more, he would still be enjoying the _dolce far niente_ of Happy Valley, instead of lying there, stark and stiff in his frozen winding-sheet.

A word of encouragement, a helping hand at the last moment, and he might have got through.