The cloudbanks had dropped behind the mountains on every side and bending low about the children, the arch of heaven was an even blue, so dark it was almost black, spangled with stars blazing in countless array, and through their midst a broad luminous band was woven, pale as milk, which the children had indeed seen from the valley, but never before so distinctly. The night was progressing. The children did not know that the stars move westward and on, otherwise it might have been possible for them to tell the hour of night, as new stars appeared and others vanished; they, however, supposed them to be the same ones. The ground all about lay bright in the starlight but they saw no valley, nothing familiar; nothing was to be seen anywhere but whiteness—all was pure white. Only a sombre horn, a sombre head, a sombre arm, was discernible, looming up at this point or that from the shimmering waste. The moon was nowhere to be seen; perhaps it had gone down early with the sun or not risen at all.
After a great while Conrad said: “Sanna, you mustn’t go to sleep; you know what Father said, ‘if you fall asleep in the mountains you’re sure to freeze,’ the way the old ash-woodsman went to sleep and was dead on a stone four long months and not a soul knew where he was.”
“No, I’ll not go to sleep,” the little thing answered wearily.
Conrad had shaken her by the hem of her frock to rouse her and make her listen.
Then silence again.
Presently the lad was conscious of a gentle pressure on his arm, that grew heavier and heavier. Sanna had fallen asleep and settled down on him.
“Sanna, don’t go to sleep, please don’t,” he said.
“No,” she murmured drowsily. “I’m not asleep.”
He moved a little away from her to rouse her, but she just dropped over and would have gone on sleeping on the ground. He grasped her shoulder and shook her. Although his motions were somewhat brisker he found he was cold and that his arm was numb. He was alarmed and jumped up. He clutched his sister, shook her harder and said: “Sanna, let’s stand up a while, so we’ll feel better.”
“I’m not cold, Conrad,” she answered.
“Yes you are, Sanna; get up,” he exclaimed.
“This fur jacket is nice and warm,” she said.
“I’ll help you up,” he said.
“No,” she said and was silent again.
Then suddenly it came back to him. Grandmother had said, “Just a tiny sip warms the stomach, so that even on the coldest winter day you can’t feel the cold.”
He picked up the calfskin bag, opened it and groped about till he had found the little flask in which his grandmother was sending his mother the black coffee extract, took the wrappings off, and with considerable effort pulled out the cork. Then he leaned down over Sanna and said: “Here is the coffee Grandmother is sending Mother, taste just a little, it will make you warm. Mother would give it to us if only she knew what we need it for.”
The child—who only wanted to rest—said: “I am not cold.”
“Just a little, then you may go to sleep.”
This prospect tempted Sanna; she so nerved herself for the effort that she almost choked on the liquid. After her, Conrad too drank a little. The double distilled strength of the decoction had an immediate effect, all the more powerful because the children had not tasted coffee before. Instead of going to sleep, Sanna became more animated, and herself admitted that she was cold, but said she felt quite warm inside now, and that her hands and feet were getting warm too. The children even chatted together a while.
As soon as the effect began to wear off, they took more and more of the extract in spite of the bitter taste, and their young nerves, unaccustomed to the stimulant, were strung to a pitch of excitement sufficient to overcome the dangerous drowsiness.
It was midnight by this time. Young as they were, they had always fallen asleep each Christmas Eve when it grew late, under the positive strain of joy and overcome by bodily weariness, had never heard the peal of the bells nor the organ at midnight Mass although they lived close by the church. At this very moment all the bells were ringing, the bells in Millsdorf, the bells in Gschaid, and on the farther side of the mountain there was still another little church whose three clear-chiming bells were ringing out. In remote places beyond the valley there were innumerable churches with bells all ringing at this very hour; from village to village, the waves of sound were floating, and in one village you could at times hear through the leafless branches the chiming of the bells in another. Away up by the ice, however, not a sound reached the children; nothing, for here nothing was being heralded. Along the winding paths of the mountain slopes lantern lights were moving, and on many a farmstead the great bell was rousing the farmhands,—unseen here, and unheard. Only the stars twinkled and shone.
Even though Conrad kept before his mind’s eye the fate of the frozen woodsman—even though the children had drunk all the black coffee in the little vial to keep their blood stirring, the reaction of fatigue would have been too much for them and they would never have been able to fight off sleep, whose seductiveness invariably gets the better of reason, had not Nature in all her grandeur befriended them and aroused in them a power strong enough to withstand it.
In the vast stillness which prevailed, a stillness in which not a snow-crystal seemed to stir, three times they heard the roar of the ice. What appears the most inert and is yet the most active and living of things, the glacier, had made the sounds. Three times they heard behind them the thundering as awesome as if the earth had broken asunder, a boom that reverberated through the ice in all directions and, as it seemed, through every smallest vein of it. The children sat, open-eyed, gazing up at the stars. Something now began to happen, as they watched. While they sat thus, a faint light bloomed amid the stars, describing upon the heavens a delicate arc. The faint green luminescence traveled slowly downward. But the arc grew brighter and brighter until the stars paled away a shudder of light, invading other parts of the firmament—taking on an emerald tinge—vibrated and flooded the stellar spaces. Then from the highest point of the arc sheaves radiated like points of a crown, all aglow. Adjacent horizons caught the brightening flush; it flickered and spread in faint quivers through the vastness round about. Whether or not the electricity in the atmosphere had become so charged by the tremendous snowfall that it flashed forth in these silent magnificent shafts of light, or whether unfathomable Nature was to be explained in some other way: after a while the brightness paled, grew fainter and fainter, the sheaves dying down first, until imperceptible finally, and again there was nothing to be seen in the sky but thousands and thousands of familiar stars.
The children said not a word, the one to the other. They remained, on and on, never stirring from where they sat, gazing intently at the sky.
Nothing particular happened after that. The stars sparkled and fluctuated, crossed now and again by a shooting star.
At last, after the stars had been shining a great while and not even a glint of the moon had appeared, everything changed. The sky grew paler, then slowly but unmistakably it began to color, the fainter stars waned, and there were fewer of the bright ones. Finally the most brilliant had set, and the snow toward the heights could be seen more distinctly. Then one horizon took on a yellow tinge, and along its edge a ribbon of cloud kindled to a glowing thread. Everything grew clear, and the distant snow-mounds stood out sharp in the frosty air.
“Sanna, it’s almost day,” said the lad.
“Yes, Conrad,” answered the little one.
“When it’s just a bit brighter, we shall leave the cave and run down off the mountain.”
It grew brighter and there was not a star to be seen in the sky, and every object stood out clear in the daylight.
“Well, let’s be going,” said the lad.
“Yes, let’s go,” answered Sanna.
They stood up and tried their legs which only now felt very tired. Although they had not been asleep all night long, they felt refreshed by the morning. The lad slung the calfskin pouch over his sho
ulder and drew Sanna’s little fur jacket closer about her. Then he led her out of their stony retreat.
Since they thought they would only have to run down off the mountain they gave no thought to food and did not explore the pouch for bits of bread or anything else that might be left.
The sky being clear, Conrad thought he would look down into the valley, recognize Gschaid and climb down to it. But he saw no valley. They did not seem to be standing on a mountain from which one looks down, but rather on strange foreign ground full of unfamiliar sights. Today they saw towering up out of the snow great fearsome rocks in the distance, where they had not seen them the day before; they saw the glacier, snowy hills and slopes standing out boldly, and beyond them, sky or the blue peak of some distant mountain above the snow-line. At this moment the sun came up.
A gigantic blood-red disc climbed the heavens above the sky-line and at the same instant the snow all around flushed as though bestrewn with thousands of roses. Summits and horns cast long faint greenish shadows across the snowfields.
“Sanna, let’s keep on till we get to the side of the mountain and can look down,” said the lad.
They now started off through the snow. During the clear night it had become even drier and was easier to walk on. They ploughed along briskly, their limbs becoming supple and strong as they went. But they came to no mountain-side, and could not look down. Snowfield followed snowfield, and always, on the horizon of each, the sky.
Nevertheless they went on.
Then they found themselves on ice again. They did not know how the ice could have got there but they felt the hard glaze underfoot and, although there was no such intimidating wreckage of mighty fragments as on the edge of the moraine where they had spent the night, yet they saw they were treading on solid ice. Now and again they saw blocks of it, more and more of them, still nearer, and these forced them to do more clambering.
Still they kept on, in the same direction.
Now they surmounted monstrous debris; now found themselves again on the icefield. Today in the bright sun, they were able for the first time to see what it was like. In size it was stupendous, and beyond towered yet more sombre rocks; wave after wave heaved up, as it were, and the snow-covered ice, compressed and buckling, seemed to be pushing down upon the children and threatening to flow over their very bodies. In the whiteness they saw countless meandering bluish lines. Between where ice-blocks stood up as if hurled together, there were straight lines like paths, but they were white, with solid ice beneath, where the ice-blocks had not been forced up by intense pressure. The children kept on these paths since they wished to cross at least part of the glacier so as to reach the side of the mountain and be able to look down at last. They spoke not a word. The little one followed her brother. But again today, there was ice, nothing but ice. Where they had meant to cross it stretched on endlessly, farther and farther. Then they gave up and turned back. Where they could not set foot they crept forward on hands and knees along snow-banks that fell in before their very eyes and showed the dark blue of a crevasse—where just before all had been white; but paying no heed they struggled on till they had again come out of the ice.
“Sanna,” said the lad, “we’re not going out there on the ice again because we get nowhere on it. And since we can’t see down into our valley anyhow, let’s go down the mountain in a straight line. We are bound to come into some valley, and shall tell the people we are from Gschaid: they will send a guide with us to show us our way home.”
“Yes, Conrad,” said the little one.
They started down through the snow in the direction that seemed most promising. The young lad took his sister by the hand. However when they had worked down for a time the slopes changed level and began to rise. The children therefore altered their course and crept along a sort of gulley. But it only led them to the ice again. So they clambered up the side of the gulley to find a descent in some other direction. This brought them to a level stretch that by and by however became so steep they could hardly find a foothold and were afraid of sliding down. After climbing through snow a great while and walking along an even ridge, it was again as before, either the slope was so steep they would have lost their footing, or it went on up so far they feared it would bring them to the mountain-top.
They now hoped to find the path by which they had first come up, and make their way back to the red memorial post. Since it was not snowing and the sky was so bright, Conrad thought, they would easily recognize the place where the post ought to be, and then be able to find the way down to Gschaid.
He explained the plan to his sister and she followed him.
But the way to the col was not to be found either.
Shone the sun ever so bright, towered the heights ever so fair above the snowfields, there was no telling the place by which they had made their way up on the previous day. Then all had been so veiled by the terrifying snowfall they had scarcely been able to see a step ahead and everything was an intermingling of white and gray. Only the rocks beside and between which they passed had been visible. Today, too, they had seen many rocks but all of them had looked just like the others. Today they left fresh footprints in the snow but yesterday’s had been all covered by the snow as it fell; they could not just by the look of things tell which way led to the col, for all places looked alike. Snow, nothing but snow. But still hoping, they pressed on. They avoided precipitous descents and did not climb any more steep gradients.
Today too they often stood and listened. But now, as yesterday, could hear nothing, not the faintest sound. Again, nothing to be seen but snow; the white white snow, with sombre horns and blackened ribs standing out in bold relief.
At length the lad thought he saw a fire. It seemed to him at last that on a far distant precipitous snowfield a flame was leaping up. It disappeared, went up and died down. Now they saw it, now lost it. They stood and watched fixedly in that direction. The flame kept on leaping and seemed to be coming closer, for they saw it grow larger and saw its flaming more distinctly. It did not disappear so often now or for so long a time. Afterwhile they heard faintly, very faintly, across the still blue distance, something like the long-sustained note of an alpenhorn. Instinctively both shouted with all their might. Afterwhile they heard the sound again and shouted again, staying where they were. The flame too was coming nearer. They caught the sound a third time, and this time more clearly. They answered again, with a loud shout. After considerable time they recognized the flame. It was not a flame. It was a red flag being waved. Meanwhile the horn sounded nearer, and again they answered.
“Sanna,” exclaimed the lad, “people from Gschaid are coming. I know the flag. It is the red flag the foreign gentleman who climbed Gars with the young ash-woodsman planted on top as a signal so the Reverend Father might see it with his spyglass and know they had reached the summit, the flag the foreign gentleman gave the Reverend Father afterward as a present. You were still very little then.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
Afterwhile they saw people, too, around the flag, little black dots that seemed to be moving about. The call of the horn was repeated from time to time, steadily nearer. Each time the children would answer. Finally they saw several men coasting down the snowy slope on their alpenstocks, the flag in their midst. As they came nearer, the children recognized them. It was herdsman Philip with his horn, his two sons, the young ash-woodsman, and several men from Gschaid.
“Praised be God!” cried Philip, “there you are. We are scattered all over the mountain. Someone run down to the upland meadow and ring the bell so they will know we have found them; and someone get out on top of Crab Rock and set the flag up so they can see it from the valley and fire the mortars, to let the people searching Millsdorf forest know; and have them build smudge-fires that will smoke away up high to direct everyone on the mountain to the Sideralp. What a Christmas!”
“I’ll run down to the meadow,” said one.
“I’ll go up on Crab Rock with the flag,” said another.
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“And we shall bring the children down to the Sideralp as best we may; pray God,” said Philip.
One of his sons struck off downhill and the other set out through the snow with the flag.
The young ash-woodsman took Sanna by the hand and herdsman Philip, the lad; the others helping as best they could. Thus they started on their way. It had many a turning, now in this direction, now that. Now up, now down. Always through snow, always through snow they went, the look of the mountain-side never changing. For the steepest inclines they fastened spikes to their shoes, and carried the children. At last, after a great while, the tones of a little bell traveled up to them faint and clear,—the first message to reach them from below. They had by this time, in fact, come down a long way, for as they looked, a snow-capped peak soared above them, lofty and blue. The little bell they had heard was the one being rung on the upland meadow, which had been agreed upon as meeting place. When they had come farther down, they also heard, faintly through the still air, the booming of the mortars fired after the flag was hoisted, and later they saw columns of smoke rising tall and thin.
After a time, descending a gentle slope they caught sight of the alpine hut. They walked toward it. Inside, a fire was burning, their mother was there, and when she saw them coming, and the young ash-woodsman, with a heart-rending cry she sank, faint, on the snow. Then she rushed to them, devoured them with her eyes, wanted to give them something to eat, wanted to make them warm, wanted them to lie down and rest on the hay, but soon satisfied herself that happiness had given them more strength than she had supposed. They needed only the warm food awaiting them, and rest was also afforded.
After a time they ran out with the others to see who was coming, as a second group neared the hut, down through the snow while the little bell kept on ringing. It was the shoemaker, the former mountaineer with his alpenstock and spiked shoes, accompanied by friends and fellow craftsmen.
Rock Crystal Page 5