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The wind was driving strands of fog in an endless stream. Ivan’s coat grew damp, and shivers were going up and down his spine. He was looking back all the time and beginning to doubt that the madman would find the crust. He even felt an urge to return, pick it up and eat it himself. To shake off nagging doubts, he started climbing faster away from that place.
They soon rounded the gigantic layered ledge, which jutted into the sky like a petrified bird’s tail, climbed higher, and then the foggy cloud suddenly split and sagged. They saw a steep wall of bare rocks overhead and a path on a slope just a stone’s throw away. It ran neither up nor down but gently wound its way among stones, cutting across the slope. Although the path was not that easy to notice amid that chaos of rocks, both
