Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/195

 day of June, two men, good strong walkers, too, died of exposure between here and the summit. You stay with us."

The girl went whiter still, and the man, also, grew pale.

"But can't we go back the way we've come?" he said.

Mr. Rogers pointed back over the ridge. A cloud was rolling up and over it from the pit of Oakes Gulf.

"You'd lose that path, too," he said. "You stick with us, and if we can't make the summit before the storm breaks, we'll ride her out in the Shelter Hut. Come, I'm captain, now. Forward, march!"

As the party emerged from the slight shelter of Monroe, upon the great, bare stretch of rising plateau which forms the col between Monroe and the summit cone, they could with difficulty stand up at first against the gale which hit them. The clouds were apparently doing a kind of devil's dance around Washington. Behind them other clouds had sucked up the Notch, and then up Oakes Gulf, and were pouring over the southern peaks behind like a gigantic wave, beaten back into breakers by the wind. Here on this plateau they were for the time being in a kind of vortex between two cloud masses. They hurried as fast as they could, Mr. Rogers and Art leading.