"Yes--ten miles an hour. Come along, Guy, take the helm and keep your eyes skinned."
Gradually gathering way, the _Bird of Freedom_ ploughed along through the newly-fallen snow. Her whole fabric trembled under the hammer-like blows of the wind.
So long as the sleigh was in the defile, there was little chance of getting out of the proper route, although there was always the danger of being crushed by the masses of debris which were continually falling from the cliffs.
On board, hardly a word was spoken. With the exception of the two foremost ones, all the observation scuttles were thickly caked with frozen snow. Unable to see anything without, the rest of the passengers and crew sat on the floor, since standing was attended with grave risks whenever the sleigh jolted over the drifts or tilted under the force of the wind.
Several times Guy was just in time to give the wheel half a turn and thus save the _Bird of Freedom_ from coming into violent contact with a projecting boulder. His coolness did not desert him in spite of the nerve-racking strain, yet he would have given almost anything to have handed the wheel over to some one else. "Hadn't we better slow down, sir?" he asked at length, for the snow was now falling with increasing violence.
"No, carry on," was Ranworth's reply. "It's all plain going now, until we approach the head of the glacier. We can't go wrong."
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a gigantic boulder seemed to leap through the snow towards the sleigh.
Giving the wheel a sudden wrench, Guy strove to avoid the obstruction, but as the _Bird of Freedom_ swerved, a powerful gust of wind struck her fairly on her broadside. The next instant the sleigh, skidding violently, crashed into the mass of rock.
With a hideous rending of metal and woodwork, the _Bird of Freedom_ turned completely over on her side and slid bodily down a steep bank, finally bringing up against another jagged mass of hard granite.
Of what occurred during the next quarter of an hour, neither Leslie nor Guy knew. They were both in a semi-dazed condition, and barely aware that a calamity had happened. It was very dark in the upturned cabin, for the scuttles which were not crushed against the ice were covered in fallen snow.