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The Crystal Hunters: A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 20. A Fearful Watch |
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_ CHAPTER TWENTY. A FEARFUL WATCH It was all plain enough now. The weight of the two who had first leaped must have cracked a portion of the edge of the crevasse--a part rotten from long exposure to the sun, rain and frost. Then Melchior must have sprung over, the great triangular piece had given way, he had made a desperate attempt to save himself with his axe, but that had not struck home, and he had gone down with the mass of ice and snow, the echoing crash and boom having drowned any cry he might have uttered, even if he had time to call for help. Saxe gave one horrified look at his companion, and then, stepping aside to the unbroken part of the crevasse, he went down on his hands and knees in the snow, then upon his breast, and drew himself close to the edge till his head and chest were over and he could peer down. "Take care! take care!" cried Dale hoarsely, though he was doing precisely the same. "Can you see anything?" Saxe's negative sounded like a groan, for he could see nothing but the pale blue sides of the ice going down perpendicularly to where, growing from pale to dark blue, they became black as the darkness out of which came the deep, loud, hissing, rushing sound of waters which he had heard before. "He must be lying down there stunned by his fall!" cried Dale; and then to himself, in a whisper full of despair--"if he is not killed." "Melk! Melk!" yelled Saxe just then. But there was nothing but the strange echo of his own voice, mingled with the curious hissing rush of water, which sounded to the listeners like the hurried whisperings and talk 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 a tongue 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 lay there upon his chest, and he tried to send his voice down into the dark depths below. There was a curious echo, that was all; and he lay listening to the rushing water and trying to pierce the darkness which looked like a mist. 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 the tomb of the faithful companion and friend of many days. Dale shouted again with all his might, but there were only the awe-inspiring, whispering echoes, as his voice reverberated from the smoothly fractured ice, and he rose to his feet, but stood gazing down into the crevasse. "Yes, he is lying there, stunned and helpless--perhaps dead," he added to himself. "Saxe, one of us must go down and help him." "Of course," cried Saxe, speaking out firmly, though a curious sensation of shrinking came over him as he spoke. "I'll go." "I would go myself, boy," said Dale huskily; "but it is impossible. You could 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 for me 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 can send you back the rope. There must be no shrinking, no losing your head from 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 face looked sallow and drawn till he had taken a long, deep breath, and then he said quickly. "No, I haven't enough courage to do it properly; but I'm going down to do it as well as I can." "God bless you, my boy!" cried Dale earnestly, as he grasped Saxe's hand. "There, lay down your axe while I fasten on the rope, and then I'll drive mine down into this crack and let the rope pass round it. I can lower you down more easily then. Ah!" He ejaculated this last in a tone full of disappointment, for as he suddenly raised his hands to his breast, he realised the absence of that which he had before taken for granted--the new rope hanging in a ring over his shoulder. "The ropes!" cried Saxe excitedly. "Melk has one; the other is hanging in the tent. Here, I'll run back." "No," said Dale; "I am stronger and more used to the work: I'll go. You shout 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 and exhaustion. Keep up your courage; I will not be a minute longer than I can 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 back and leap over from the snow on to the ice at the other side, and begin to descend the glacier as rapidly as the rugged nature of the place would allow. Saxe stood watching Dale for some time, and saw him turn twice to wave his hand, while he became more than ever impressed by the tiny size of the descending figure, showing as it did how vast were the precipices and 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 a further glimpse of his companion as he passed out from among some pyramids of ice, but only to disappear again. Then Saxe saw his head and shoulders lower down, and after an interval the top of his cap, and he was gone. To keep from dwelling upon the horror of his position, alone there in that icy solitude, Saxe lay down again, with his face over the chasm, and hailed and shouted with all his might. But still there was no reply, and he rose up from the deep snow once more, and tried to catch sight of Dale; but he had gone. And now, in spite of his efforts to be strong and keep his head cool, the horror began to close him in like a mist. Melchior had fallen down that crevasse, and was killed. Dale had gone down to their camp to fetch the rope, but he was alone. He had no guide, and he might lose his way, or meet with an accident too, and fall as Melchior had fallen. Even if he only had a slip, it would be terrible, 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 seemed impossible to find his way farther than their camp; for below the glacier Melchior had led them through a perfect labyrinth of narrow chasms, which he had felt at the time it would be impossible to thread alone. 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 hoarse, 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 crevasse 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 sunshine, 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 crevasse, 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 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 that it must be some distance away. He crept back to the crevasse, 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 cluster 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 crevasse, 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 crevasse. "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, whishing 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 passed 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. _ |
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