Part 4 (1/2)
Thus at length we came to the bend, which was , so far as I could judge, about two hundred and fifty feet from its lip, and say one hundred and fifty froulf Here were no stones, but only soh ice, on which we sat to rest
”We must look,” said Leo presently
But the question was, how to do this Indeed, there was only one way, to hang over the bend and discover what lay below We read each other's thought without the need of words, and I h I would start
”No,” said Leo, ”I aan to fasten the end of his rope to a strong, projecting point of ice ”Now,” he said, ”holdelse to be done, so, fixing rasped them and slowly he slid forward till his body vanished to the middle What he saw does not matter, for I saw it all afterwards, but what happened was that suddenly all his great weight came upon rip
Or, who knows! perhaps inthe natural impulse which proiven, but had I held on, I must have been jerked into the abyss Then the rope ran out and remained taut
”Leo!” I screaht, ”Come” What it really said was-”Don't coo to my credit-I did not pause to think, but face outwards, just as I was sitting, began to slide and scramble down the ice
In two seconds I had reached the curve, in three I was over it Beneath hat I can only describe as a great icicle broken off short, and separated from the cliff by about four yards of space This icicle was not th and sloped outwards, so that my descent was not sheer Moreover, at the end of it the trickling of water, or soe as broad, perhaps, as a hnesses on the surface below the curve, upon which ripped theers Thus it ca upon the little ledge, reht, with outstretched arms-like a person crucified to a cross of ice
Then I saw everything, and the sight curdled the blood withinto the rope, four or five feet below the broken point, was Leo, out of reach of it, and out of reach of the cliff; as he hung turning slowly round and round, much as-for in a dreadful, inconsequent fashi+on the absurd similarity struck me even then-a joint turns before the fire Beloned the black gulf, and at the bottom of it, far, far beneath, appeared a faint, white sheet of snow That is what I saw
Think of it! Think of it! I crucified upon the ice,excrescences on which a bird could scarcely have found a foothold; round and below me dizzy space To climb back whence I came was impossible, to stir even was ione
And belowslowly round and round!
I could see that rope of green hide stretch beneath his weight and the double knots in it slip and tighten, and I reive first, the hide or the knots, or whether it would hold till he dropped from the noose limb by limb
Oh! I have been inStone to the point of the Tre Spur, and ony took hold of me; a cold sweat burst fro down my face like tears; my hair bristled upon my head And below, in utter silence, Leo turned round and round, and each time he turned his up-cast eyes met mine with a look that was horrible to see
The silence was the worst of it, the silence and the helplessness If he had cried out, if he had struggled, it would have been better But to know that he was alive there, with every nerve and perception at its utan to ache, and yet I dared not stir a ht, and beneath this torture, s: remembered how, as a child, I had climbed a tree and reached a place whence I could move neither up nor down, and what I suffered then Reypt a foolhardy friend of mine had ascended the Second Pyra cap, where he remained for a whole half hour with four hundred feet of space beneath hied foot doards in a vain atteain; could see his tortured face, a white blot upon the red granite
Then that face vanished and blackness gathered round , resistless avalanche, of the snow-grave into which I had sunk-oh! years and years ago; of Ayesha deh which I could only hear the cracking of my muscles
Suddenly in the blackness a flash, and in the silence a sound The flash was the flash of a knife which Leo had drawn He was hacking at the cord with it fiercely, fiercely, to hastly noise, half shout of defiance and half yell of terror, as at the third stroke it parted
I saw it part The tough hide was half cut through, and its severed portion curled upwards and doards like the upper and lower lips of an angry dog, whilst that which was unsevered stretched out slowly, slowly, till it grew quite thin Then it snapped, so that the rope fleards and struck me across the face like the lash of a whip
Another instant and I heard a crackling, thudding sound Leo had struck the ground below Leo was dead, a led mass of flesh and bone as I had pictured hinity cath exhausted, I slid from my perch as a wounded bird falls from a tree No, I would follow hiainst my sides, and rejoiced in the relief froave ht, took my last look at the sky, muttered my last prayer For an instant I re, ”I come,” I raised my hands above ulf beneath
CHAPTER VI
IN THE GATE
Oh! that rush through space! Folk falling thus are supposed to lose consciousness, but I can assert that this is not true Never were my wits and perceptions lacier to the ground, and never did a short journey seeer ti up through empty air to meet me, then-finis!
Crash!+ Why, as this? I still lived I was in water, for I could feel its chill, and going down, down, till I thought I should never rise again But rise I did, thoughfirst As I floated up towards the top I reh ice Therefore I should ain Oh! to think that after surviving so much I must be drowned like a kitten and beneath a sheet of ice My hands touched it There it was above lass Heaven be praised! My head broke through; in this low and sheltered gorge it was but a filht frost of the previous night So I rose fro water with ht that ever ht, not ten yards away, the water running from his hair and beard, was Leo Leo alive, for he broke the thin ice with his arled towards the shore frorey eyes seemed to start out of his head
[] Usually, as we learned afterwards, the river at this spot was quite shallow; only a foot or two in depth It was the avalanche that by da it with fallen heaps of snow had raised its level very many feet Therefore, to this avalanche, which had threatened to destroy us, we in reality owed our lives, for had the streaht we must have been dashed to pieces upon the stones
-L H H
”Still living, both of us, and the precipice passed!” he shouted in a ringing, exultant voice ”I told you ere led”
”Aye, but whither?” I answered as I too fought h the film of ice
Then it was I becaer alone, for on the bank of the river, so upon a long staff and a woman He was a very old man, for his eyes were horny, his snohite hair and beard hung upon the bent breast and shoulders, and his sardonic, wrinkled features were yelloax They ht have been those of a death mask cut inupon the staff, he stood still as a statue and watched us I noted it all, every detail, although at the ti so, as we broke our way through the ice towards them and afterwards the picture came back to me Also I saw that the woman, as very tall, pointed to us
Nearer the bank, or rather to the rock edge of the river, its surface was free of ice, for here the streaether and swam on side by side to help each other if need were There was th that had servedseemed to desertcoldness of the water Indeed, had not Leo grasped my clothes I think that I should have been swept away by the current to perish Thus aided I fought on a while, till he said-”I aripped the strip of yak's hide that was still fast about him, and, his hand thus freed, Leo made a last splendid effort to keep us both, cued us down like lead, fro sucked beneath the surface Moreover, he succeeded where any other swith must have failed Still, I believe that we should have drowned, since here the water ran like a ht and urged thereto by the woed, to a point of rock that jutted so swept, and seating hi stick towards us
With a desperate endeavour, Leo grasped it as ent by, rolling over and over each other, and held on Round ung into the eddy, found our feet, were knocked down again, rubbed and pounded on the rocks But still gripping that staff of salvation, to his end of which the oldto him, we recovered ourselves, and, sheltered so on his face-for ere still in great danger-the man extended his arm We could not reach it; and worse, suddenly the staff was torn fro swept away
Then it was that the wo into the water-yes, up to her ar fast to the old ht she seized Leo's hair and dragged him shorewards Now he found his feet for aone arm about her slender form, steadied himself thus, while with the other he supported le, but the end of it was that three of us, the old asping
Presently I looked up The wo like one in a drea from a deep cut in his head Even then I noticed how stately and beautiful she was Now she see to her splendid shape, said so to her companion, then turned and ran towards the cliff
As we lay before him, utterly exhausted, the old man, who had risen, contemplated us solemnly with his diain he tried another language and without success A third tiue he used was Greek; yes, there in Central Asia he addressed us in Greek, not very pure, it is true, but still Greek
”Are you wizards,” he said, ”that you have lived to reach this land?”
”Nay,” I answered in the saht little for many a year-”for then we should have come otherwise,” and I pointed to our hurts and the precipice behind us
”They know the ancient speech; it is as ere told froers, what seek you?”
Now I grew cunning and did not answer, fearing lest, should he learn the truth, he would thrust us back into the river But Leo had no such caution, or rather all reason had left hiht-headed
”We seek,” he stuttered out-his Greek, which had always been feeble, noas simply barbarous and mixed with various Thibetan dialects-”we seek the land of the Fire Mountain that is croith the Sign of Life”