Part 40 (1/2)

It required a powerful mental drag to tear his thoughts away from these wild wanderings to the present; and, determining to forget self, he tried hard to concentrate his mind, not upon his own position, but upon that of the poor fellow who lay somewhere below.

He lay down once more in the snow, shrinkingly, for in spite of his efforts, the thought would come, ”Suppose a great piece of the side should give way beneath me, and carry me down to a similar fate to Melchior's.” These fancies made him move carefully in his efforts to peer down farther than before, so as to force his eyes to pierce the gloom and make out where Melchior lay.

But it was all in vain. He could see a long way, and sometimes it almost seemed as if he saw farther than at others; but lower down there was always that purply transparent blackness into which his eyesight plunged, but could not quite plumb.

”I wonder how deep it is?” said Saxe aloud, after shouting till he grew hoa.r.s.e, and speaking out now for the sake of hearing a voice in that awful silence. ”I wonder how deep it is?” he said again, feeling startled at the peculiar whisper which had followed his words. ”It must go right down to the rocks which form the bottom of the valley, and of course this ice fills it up. It may be fifty, a hundred, or five hundred feet. Who can say?”

The thought was very terrible as he gazed down there, and once more imagination was busy, and he mentally saw poor Melchior falling with lightning speed down, down through that purply-blackness, to lie at last at a tremendous depth, jammed in a cleft where the creva.s.se grew narrower, ending wedge-shape in a mere crack.

He rose from the snow, beginning to feel chilled now; and he shook off the glittering crystals and tramped heavily up and down in the warm suns.h.i.+ne, glad of the reflection from the white surface as well, though it was painful to his eyes.

But after forming a narrow beat a short distance away from the creva.s.se, he ceased as suddenly as he had begun, feeling that he might even there be doing something which would cause the ice to crack; and he had hardly come to the conclusion that he would go gently in future, when a peculiar rending, splitting sound fell upon his ears, and he knew that it was the ice giving way and beginning to form a new creva.s.se.

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 that it must be some distance away.

He crept back to the creva.s.se, and listened and shouted again, to begin wondering once more how deep the chasm would be; and at last, with the horror of being alone there in that awful solitude creeping over him, he felt that he must do something, and, catching up his ice-axe from where it lay, he tramped away fifty yards to where a cl.u.s.ter of ragged pinnacles of ice hung together, and with a few blows from the pick-end of the axe he broke off a couple of fragments as big as his head, and then bounded back.

None too soon, for the towering piece which he had hacked at suddenly turned over towards him, and fell forward with a crash that raised the echoes around, as it broke up into fragments of worn and honeycombed ice.

As soon as he had satisfied himself that no other crag would fall, he stepped back, and, as he picked up two more pieces about the same size as 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 a pyramidal base, but the solid ice of its lower parts had in the course of time been eaten away till it was as fragile as the waxen comb it in some places resembled, and had crumbled down as soon as it received a shock.

Carrying his two pieces back, Saxe set them down at the edge of the creva.s.se, about a dozen yards from where Melchior had fallen; and, then going 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 would not come, he crept back to where he had laid the two pieces of ice, and stood looking down at them, hesitating as to whether he should carry out his plan.

”I must be doing something,” he cried piteously. ”If I stand still in the snow, thinking, I shall go mad. It will be hours before Mr Dale gets 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 up dazzling in its beauty, as it seemed to peer over the edge of the valley; but the glory had departed, and the wondrous river of ice, with its frozen waves and tumbling waters and solid foam, all looked cold and terrible and forbidding.

”I must do something,” said Saxe at last, as if answering some one who had told him it would be dangerous to throw pieces of ice into the creva.s.se. ”It is so far away from where he fell that it cannot hurt him. It will not go near him, and I want to know how far down he has fallen.”

He laid down his ice-axe, picked up one of the lumps, balanced it for a moment or two, and then pitched it into the narrow chasm, to go down on his 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 went lower 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 heavy crash, which echoed with a curious metallic rumble far below.

”Not so very deep,” cried Saxe, as he prepared to throw down the other piece; and, moving a few yards farther along towards the centre of the glacier, he had poised the lump of ice in his hands, when there came a peculiar hissing, whis.h.i.+ng sound from far below and he shrank back wondering, till it came to him by degrees that the piece he had thrown down must have struck upon some ledge, shattered to fragments, and that these pieces had gone on falling, till the hissing noise he had heard was caused by their disappearing into water at some awful depth below.

Saxe stood there with the shrinking sensation increasing, and it was some time before he could rouse himself sufficiently to carry out his first intention and throw the second piece of ice into the gulf. As it fell his heart beat heavily, and he once more dropped upon his hands and knees to follow its downward course and watch the comparatively slow and beautiful changes through which it pa.s.sed before it disappeared in the purply-black darkness, while he listened for the crash as it broke upon the ledge preparatory to waiting in silence for the fall of the fragments lower down.

But there was no crash--no hissing, spattering of small fragments dropping into water--nothing but the terrible silence, which seemed as if it would never end; and at last a heavy dull splash, the hissing of water, and a curious lapping sound repeated by the smooth water, till all died away, and there was silence once again. ”Awful!” muttered Saxe, as he wiped his damp brow. ”Poor Melchior!--no wonder he didn't answer to my cries.”

A feeling of weary despondency came over the boy now, and he shrank away from the edge and threw himself down on the snow.

For it was hopeless, he knew. And when Mr Dale returned he should have to tell him of his terrible discovery; when he, too, would own that no human being could fall down that terrible gulf and live.

The snow was cold beneath him, and the sun poured down upon his back with blistering power, but the boy felt nothing save the despairing agony of mind; and as he lay there one desire, one wish came to his mind, and that was full of longing for forgetfulness--the power to put all this terrible trouble behind him--a miserable feeling of cowardice: in short, of desire to evade his share of the cares of life, which come to all: for he had yet to learn what is the whole duty of a man.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.