The walking was easier now, partly because it was down hill and partly because the snow had been softened by the sun's heat and gave them a better foothold.
Hugh advised the boys to tie their handkerchiefs over the bridge of their noses, and to pull their hats well down on their foreheads to shield their eyes as much as possible from the glare of the sun.
As they went on down the glacier, they could see that even since they had passed up in the morning new cracks had opened in the ice and some that they had gone around on the way up had lengthened. Two or three of these were so narrow that they could step across them, but Hugh still kept as far from the rocks as the broken condition of the glacier would permit.
They were walking along, the boys perhaps a little carelessly, though Hugh's vigilance never seemed to relax, when Jack's left foot seemed to meet with no resistance as it struck the snow, and in a moment he was in a crack or hole in the ice far above his waist. Luckily he had turned his staff as he fell, so that it reached across the crack and held him, and but little strain came on the ropes which attached him to his companions. Hugh had heard the fall and had braced himself, and a second later Joe had done the same.
It took but a moment to pull Jack out onto the hard ice, and Joe, making a detour to the left, avoided the opening into which Jack had fallen. When they were all once more together and on the hard ice, Hugh said to Jack, "Son, you're old enough not to have done a trick like that."
"Yes, Hugh," replied Jack, "I know that now, and I'm sorry and ashamed. If I had followed in your tracks, I wouldn't have given you and Joe a scare, and I wouldn't have had one myself. Every now and then I do some stupid thing that makes it seem as if this was my first trip out West, and I didn't know anything at all. I was thinking of something else besides the trail and looking off toward the valley, and I left your tracks and tumbled into that hole."
"Well," replied Hugh, "of course, you're new to traveling around on the ice. You can't be expected to know much about it, but you can be expected to look out for yourself as well as you know how, and to try hard not to make other people uncomfortable. I guess Joe was scared up good when he saw you go down, and I know I wasn't a bit comfortable."