CHAPTER TWENTY.
A FEARFUL WATCH.
It was all plain enough now. The weight of the two who had first leapedmust have cracked a portion of the edge of the crevasse--a part rottenfrom long exposure to the sun, rain and frost. Then Melchior must havesprung over, the great triangular piece had given way, he had made adesperate attempt to save himself with his axe, but that had not struckhome, and he had gone down with the mass of ice and snow, the echoingcrash and boom having drowned any cry he might have uttered, even if hehad time to call for help.
Saxe gave one horrified look at his companion, and then, stepping asideto the unbroken part of the crevasse, he went down on his hands andknees in the snow, then upon his breast, and drew himself close to theedge till his head and chest were over and he could peer down.
"Take care! take care!" cried Dale hoarsely, though he was doingprecisely the same. "Can you see anything?"
Saxe's negative sounded like a groan, for he could see nothing but thepale blue sides of the ice going down perpendicularly to where, growingfrom pale to dark blue, they became black as the darkness out of whichcame the deep, loud, hissing, rushing sound of waters which he had heardbefore.
"He must be lying down there stunned by his fall!" cried Dale; and thento himself, in a whisper full of despair--"if he is not killed."
"Melk! Melk!" yelled Saxe just then. But there was nothing but thestrange echo of his own voice, mingled with the curious hissing rush ofwater, which sounded to the listeners like the hurried whisperings andtalk of beings far down below.
"Ahoy, Melchior!" cried Dale, now shouting with all his might.
No answer; and he shouted again.
"Do--do you feel sure he did fall down here?" said Saxe with difficulty,for his voice seemed to come from a throat that was all dry, and over atongue that was parched.
"There can be no doubt about it," said Dale sadly. "Oh, poor fellow!poor fellow! I feel as if I am to blame for his death."
"Melk--Mel-chi-or!" shouted Saxe, with his hands to his mouth, as he laythere upon his chest, and he tried to send his voice down into the darkdepths below.
There was a curious echo, that was all; and he lay listening to therushing water and trying to pierce the darkness which looked like amist.
At another time he would have thought of the solemn beauty of the place,with its wonderful gradations of blue growing deeper as they descended.Now there was nothing but chilly horror, for the chasm was to him thetomb of the faithful companion and friend of many days.
Dale shouted again with all his might, but there were only theawe-inspiring, whispering echoes, as his voice reverberated from thesmoothly fractured ice, and he rose to his feet, but stood gazing downinto the crevasse.
"Yes, he is lying there, stunned and helpless--perhaps dead," he addedto himself. "Saxe, one of us must go down and help him."
"Of course," cried Saxe, speaking out firmly, though a curious sensationof shrinking came over him as he spoke. "I'll go."
"I would go myself, boy," said Dale huskily; "but it is impossible. Youcould not draw me out, and I'm afraid that I could not climb back;whereas I could lower you down and pull you up again."
"Yes, I'll go!" cried Saxe excitedly.
"One moment, my lad. You must recollect what the task means."
"To go down and help Melchior."
"Yes; and taking the rope from round your waist to tie it round his forme to draw him up first. Have you the courage to do that!"
Saxe was silent.
"You see, it means staying down there alone in that place till I cansend you back the rope. There must be no shrinking, no losing your headfrom scare. Do you think you have the courage to do this coolly!"
Saxe did not speak for a few moments, and Dale could see that his facelooked sallow and drawn till he had taken a long, deep breath, and thenhe said quickly.
"No, I haven't enough courage to do it properly; but I'm going down todo it as well as I can."
"God bless you, my boy!" cried Dale earnestly, as he grasped Saxe'shand. "There, lay down your axe while I fasten on the rope, and thenI'll drive mine down into this crack and let the rope pass round it. Ican lower you down more easily then. Ah!"
He ejaculated this last in a tone full of disappointment, for as hesuddenly raised his hands to his breast, he realised the absence of thatwhich he had before taken for granted--the new rope hanging in a ringover his shoulder.
"The ropes!" cried Saxe excitedly. "Melk has one; the other is hangingin the tent. Here, I'll run back."
"No," said Dale; "I am stronger and more used to the work: I'll go. Youshout every now and then. Even if he does not answer you he may hear,and it will encourage him to know that we are near."
"But hadn't we better go back for help?"
"Before we could get it the poor fellow might perish from cold andexhaustion. Keep up your courage; I will not be a minute longer than Ican help."
He was hurrying along the upper side of the crevasse almost as he spoke,and then Saxe felt his blood turn cold as he saw his companion step backand leap over from the snow on to the ice at the other side, and beginto descend the glacier as rapidly as the rugged nature of the placewould allow.
Saxe stood watching Dale for some time, and saw him turn twice to wavehis hand, while he became more than ever impressed by the tiny size ofthe descending figure, showing as it did how vast were the precipicesand blocks of ice, and how enormous the ice river on which he stood,must be.
Then, as he gazed, it seemed that another accident must have happened,for Dale suddenly disappeared as if swallowed up in another crevasse.But, as Saxe strained his eyes downward into the distance, he caught afurther glimpse of his companion as he passed out from among somepyramids of ice, but only to disappear again. Then Saxe saw his headand shoulders lower down, and after an interval the top of his cap, andhe was gone.
To keep from dwelling upon the horror of his position, alone there inthat icy solitude, Saxe lay down again, with his face over the chasm,and hailed and shouted with all his might. But still there was noreply, and he rose up from the deep snow once more, and tried to catchsight of Dale; but he had gone. And now, in spite of his efforts to bestrong and keep his head cool, the horror began to close him in like amist. Melchior had fallen down that crevasse, and was killed. Dale hadgone down to their camp to fetch the rope, but he was alone. He had noguide, and he might lose his way, or meet with an accident too, and fallas Melchior had fallen. Even if he only had a slip, it would beterrible, for he might lie somewhere helpless, and never be found.
In imagination, as he stood here, Saxe saw himself waiting for hours,perhaps for days, and no help coming. And as to returning, it seemedimpossible to find his way farther than their camp; for below theglacier Melchior had led them through a perfect labyrinth of narrowchasms, which he had felt at the time it would be impossible to threadalone.
It required a powerful mental drag to tear his thoughts away from thesewild wanderings to the present; and, determining to forget self, hetried hard to concentrate his mind, not upon his own position, but uponthat of the poor fellow who lay somewhere below.
He lay down once more in the snow, shrinkingly, for in spite of hisefforts, the thought would come, "Suppose a great piece of the sideshould give way beneath me, and carry me down to a similar fate toMelchior's." These fancies made him move carefully in his efforts topeer down farther than before, so as to force his eyes to pierce thegloom and make out where Melchior lay.
But it was all in vain. He could see a long way, and sometimes italmost seemed as if he saw farther than at others; but lower down therewas always that purply transparent blackness into which his eyesightplunged, but could not quite plumb.
"I wonder how deep it is?" said Saxe aloud, after shouting till he grewhoarse, and speaking out now for the sake of hearing a voice in thatawful silence. "I wonder how deep it is?" he said again, feelingstartled at the peculiar whisper which had followed his words. "It mustgo right
down to the rocks which form the bottom of the valley, and ofcourse this ice fills it up. It may be fifty, a hundred, or fivehundred feet. Who can say?"
The thought was very terrible as he gazed down there, and once moreimagination was busy, and he mentally saw poor Melchior falling withlightning speed down, down through that purply-blackness, to lie at lastat a tremendous depth, jammed in a cleft where the crevasse grewnarrower, ending wedge-shape in a mere crack.
He rose from the snow, beginning to feel chilled now; and he shook offthe glittering crystals and tramped heavily up and down in the warmsunshine, glad of the reflection from the white surface as well, thoughit was painful to his eyes.
But after forming a narrow beat a short distance away from the crevasse,he ceased as suddenly as he had begun, feeling that he might even therebe doing something which would cause the ice to crack; and he had hardlycome to the conclusion that he would go gently in future, when apeculiar rending, splitting sound fell upon his ears, and he knew thatit was the ice giving way and beginning to form a new crevasse.
For the first few moments he fancied that it was beneath his feet; but,as it grew louder and developed into a heavy sudden report, he knew thatit must be some distance away.
He crept back to the crevasse, and listened and shouted again, to beginwondering once more how deep the chasm would be; and at last, with thehorror of being alone there in that awful solitude creeping over him, hefelt that he must do something, and, catching up his ice-axe from whereit lay, he tramped away fifty yards to where a cluster of raggedpinnacles of ice hung together, and with a few blows from the pick-endof the axe he broke off a couple of fragments as big as his head, andthen bounded back.
None too soon, for the towering piece which he had hacked at suddenlyturned over towards him, and fell forward with a crash that raised theechoes around, as it broke up into fragments of worn and honeycombedice.
As soon as he had satisfied himself that no other crag would fall, hestepped back, and, as he picked up two more pieces about the same sizeas he had selected before, he saw why the serac had fallen.
Heaped around as it had been with snow, it had seemed to have quite apyramidal base, but the solid ice of its lower parts had in the courseof time been eaten away till it was as fragile as the waxen comb it insome places resembled, and had crumbled down as soon as it received ashock.
Carrying his two pieces back, Saxe set them down at the edge of thecrevasse, about a dozen yards from where Melchior had fallen; and, thengoing back along the side to that spot, he shouted again--a dismal,depressing cry, which made his spirits lower than before; and at last,after waiting some time for a reply, knowing all the while that it wouldnot come, he crept back to where he had laid the two pieces of ice, andstood looking down at them, hesitating as to whether he should carry outhis plan.
"I must be doing something," he cried piteously. "If I stand still inthe snow, thinking, I shall go mad. It will be hours before Mr Dalegets back, and it is so dreadful to do nothing but think--think--think."
He gazed about him, to see a peak here and a peak there, standing updazzling in its beauty, as it seemed to peer over the edge of thevalley; but the glory had departed, and the wondrous river of ice, withits frozen waves and tumbling waters and solid foam, all looked cold andterrible and forbidding.
"I must do something," said Saxe at last, as if answering some one whohad told him it would be dangerous to throw pieces of ice into thecrevasse. "It is so far away from where he fell that it cannot hurthim. It will not go near him, and I want to know how far down he hasfallen."
He laid down his ice-axe, picked up one of the lumps, balanced it for amoment or two, and then pitched it into the narrow chasm, to go down onhis hands and knees the next instant and peer forward and listen.
He was so quick that he saw the white block falling, and as it wentlower it turned first of a delicate pale blue, then deeper in colour,and deeper still, and then grew suddenly dark purple and disappeared,while, as Saxe strained eyes and ears, there came directly after a heavycrash, which echoed with a curious metallic rumble far below.
"Not so very deep," cried Saxe, as he prepared to throw down the otherpiece; and, moving a few yards farther along towards the centre of theglacier, he had poised the lump of ice in his hands, when there came apeculiar hissing, whishing sound from far below and he shrank backwondering, till it came to him by degrees that the piece he had throwndown must have struck upon some ledge, shattered to fragments, and thatthese pieces had gone on falling, till the hissing noise he had heardwas caused by their disappearing into water at some awful depth below.
Saxe stood there with the shrinking sensation increasing, and it wassome time before he could rouse himself sufficiently to carry out hisfirst intention and throw the second piece of ice into the gulf. As itfell his heart beat heavily, and he once more dropped upon his hands andknees to follow its downward course and watch the comparatively slow andbeautiful changes through which it passed before it disappeared in thepurply-black darkness, while he listened for the crash as it broke uponthe ledge preparatory to waiting in silence for the fall of thefragments lower down.
But there was no crash--no hissing, spattering of small fragmentsdropping into water--nothing but the terrible silence, which seemed asif it would never end; and at last a heavy dull splash, the hissing ofwater, and a curious lapping sound repeated by the smooth water, tillall died away, and there was silence once again. "Awful!" mutteredSaxe, as he wiped his damp brow. "Poor Melchior!--no wonder he didn'tanswer to my cries."
A feeling of weary despondency came over the boy now, and he shrank awayfrom the edge and threw himself down on the snow.
For it was hopeless, he knew. And when Mr Dale returned he should haveto tell him of his terrible discovery; when he, too, would own that nohuman being could fall down that terrible gulf and live.
The snow was cold beneath him, and the sun poured down upon his backwith blistering power, but the boy felt nothing save the despairingagony of mind; and as he lay there one desire, one wish came to hismind, and that was full of longing for forgetfulness--the power to putall this terrible trouble behind him--a miserable feeling of cowardice:in short, of desire to evade his share of the cares of life, which cometo all: for he had yet to learn what is the whole duty of a man.
The Crystal Hunters: A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps Page 20