to be any accidents with that bag.

At Crater Lake, the pack-train went into camp, and Churchill, slinging
the grip on his back, started the steep climb for the summit. For the
first time, on that precipitous wall, he realized how tired he was. He
crept and crawled like a crab, burdened by the weight of his limbs. A
distinct and painful effort of will was required each time he lifted a
foot. An hallucination came to him that he was shod with lead, like a
deep-sea diver, and it was all he could do to resist the desire to reach
down and feel the lead. As for Bondell's gripsack, it was inconceivable
that forty pounds could weigh so much. It pressed him down like a
mountain, and he looked back with unbelief to the year before, when he
had climbed that same pass with a hundred and fifty pounds on his back.
If those loads had weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, then Bondell's
grip weighed five hundred.

The first rise of the divide from Crater Lake was across a small glacier.
Here was a well-defined trail. But above the glacier, which was also
above timber-line, was naught but a chaos of naked rock and enormous
boulders. There was no way of seeing the trail in the darkness, and he
blundered on, paying thrice the ordinary exertion for all that he
accomplished. He won the summit in the thick of howling wind and driving
snow, providentially stumbling upon a small, deserted tent, into which he
crawled. There he found and bolted some ancient fried potatoes and half
a dozen raw eggs.

When the snow ceased and the wind eased down, he began the almost
impossible descent. There was no trail, and he stumbled and blundered,
often finding himself, at the last moment, on the edge of rocky walls and
steep slopes the depth of which he had no way of judging. Part way down,