Chapter 4. On The Rope

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_ CHAPTER FOUR. ON THE ROPE

"I say," cried Saxe, after they had gone on crunching through the snow, which was soft and melting fast.

"Yes: what is it?"

"Don't you feel as if we were horses haltered together for market?"

"I might answer, sir--Don't you feel like a donkey being led?"

"No. Why?"

"Because you ask such an absurd, childish question, and that at a serious time."

Saxe was silent.

"Mr Dale needn't be so gruff," he said to himself, as he tramped on, looking up at the rocky sides of the valley, which grew more and more snow-clad as they went on, and giving himself greater trouble by missing the footsteps of his leaders. Once he nearly stumbled and fell, giving a jerk to the rope; but he recovered himself directly, and tramped on in silence, finding the going so arduous that he began to wish for the time when they would leave the glacier and take to the rocks.

But he could not keep silence long.

"Shall we have to go back along the mountain?" he said. "Or will there be some other track?"

"I expect we shall cross the ridge into a similar valley to this, and go down another glacier; but--Ah! Hold tight!"

He threw himself backward, tightening the rope, and as soon as he could get over his surprise at the suddenness of the accident, Saxe followed his companion's example. For all at once Melchior disappeared, passing through the snow, and a hollow, echoing, rushing noise fell upon their ears.

"Haul away, gentlemen!" cried the guide's voice; and as they dragged at the rope, they saw his arms appear with the ice-axe, which was struck down into the snow, and directly after the man climbed out, rose from his hands and knees, and shook the snow off his clothes.

"We wanted the rope, you see," he said quietly. "I ought to have known by the snow that this part was dangerous. No harm done, gentlemen. Let's strike off for the side."

"But you went through," said Saxe excitedly. "Was it a crevasse?"

"Yes, of course," said the guide, smiling.

"Was it deep?"

"Deep? Oh yes! Would you like to look?"

Saxe nodded, and the guide drew back for him to pass, but took hold of the rope and held it tightly.

"Go on," he said encouragingly. "I have you fast."

"But how near can I go?" said Saxe, hesitating.

"Nearly to where I broke through the snow crust. You will see."

Saxe went on cautiously, still seeing nothing till he was close upon the hole, which was a fairly wide opening, a quantity of half-frozen snow having given way as the guide's weight rested upon it, and dropped into the black-looking rift, which was lightly bridged over on either side by the snow.

"Lean over if you like, and hang on by the rope," said Melchior, "if you want to look down."

Saxe could not say he did not want to look down, for there was a strange fascination about the place which seemed to draw him. But he resisted, and after a quick glance at the thick snow which arched over the crevasse, he drew back; and Melchior led on again, striking the shaft of his ice-axe handle down through the crust before him at every step, and divining, by long practice and the colour of the snow, the direction of the crevasse so well, that he only once diverged from the edge sufficiently for the handle to go right down.

"We can cross here," he said at last.

"Are you sure?" said Dale.

The guide smiled, and stamped heavily right across.

"We are beyond the end of the crevasse," he said; and once more they went on upward.

"These cracks make the glacier very dangerous," observed Dale, after a few minutes.

"Not with a rope and care," said Melchior, as he trudged on, shouting his words and not turning his head. "But what will you? See how much easier it is. It would take us hours longer to keep to the rocks. There is a crevasse here: walk lightly--just in my steps."

They followed him carefully, without realising when they were passing over the opening, the difference in the appearance of the snow being only plain to the guide; and then onward again till the place was opposite to them where they were to leave the ice river and climb to the rocks.

"One moment," said Dale: "let's take one look round before we leave this part. Look, Saxe! the view is magnificent."

"Yes; and you can see better from here," cried the boy enthusiastically, as he stepped forward a few yards.

"Ah! not that way!" cried Melchior.

The warning came too late, for Saxe dropped through suddenly, tightening the rope with a jerk which threw Dale forward upon his face, and drew him a little way on toward the crevasse, whose slight covering of snow had given way.

But Melchior threw himself back, and stopped farther progress, as Saxe's voice came up from below in a smothered way--

"Ahoy! Help! help!"

"Get to your feet," cried Melchior to Dale; "I'll keep the rope tight."

"Yes," cried Dale, scrambling up; "now, quick!--both together, to draw him out."

"Draw him out? No," said the guide quietly. "Now plant your feet firmly, and hold him till I come to your side."

Dale obeyed at once, and shouting to Saxe that help was coming, he stood fast, waiting for the guide.

Meanwhile, Saxe, who had felt the snow suddenly drop from beneath him, and had been brought up breathlessly with a sudden jerk, was swinging slowly to and fro, clinging with both hands to the rope, and trying vainly to get a rest for his feet on the smooth wall of ice, over which his toes glided whenever he could catch it; but this was not often, for the ice receded, and in consequence he hung so clear, that the line turned with him, and he was at times with his back to the side from which the rope was strained, gazing at the dimly-seen opposite wall, some six or seven feet away. Above was the over-arching snow, which looked fragile in the extreme.

Far below him as he fell he heard the snow and ice he had broken away go hissing and whispering down for what seemed long after he had dropped; and this gave him some idea of the terrible depth of the ice crack, and a cold chill, that was not caused by the icy coldness of the place, ran through him, as he wondered whether the rope, which now looked thin and worn, would hold. Then he thought that it might possibly cut against the sharp edge, and after a sharp glance upward, to see nothing but the blue sky, he could not keep from looking down into the black depths and listening to the faint musical gurgle of running water.

He shuddered as he slowly turned, and then strained his ears to try and make out what his companion and the guide were doing. But he could hear nothing for some minutes. Then there was a vibration of the rope, and a slight jerking sensation, and to his horror he found that he was being lowered down.

Saxe was as brave as most boys of his years, but this was too much for him. It struck him at first that he was being lowered; but the next moment it seemed to be so much without reason that he jumped to the conclusion that the rope was slowly unravelling and coming to pieces.

An absurd notion, but in the supreme moments of great danger people sometimes think wild things.

He was just in the agony of this imagination, when the small patch of light twenty feet above him was darkened, and he saw the head and shoulders of Melchior, as the man, trusting to the strain upon the rope maintained by Dale, leaned forward.

"Can you help yourself at all?" he said quietly.

"No, no!" cried Saxe hoarsely.

"Be cool, my lad," said Melchior. "I shall drive the head of my axe into the ice, and leave the handle so that you can grasp it when you are drawn up."

Saxe made no reply, but he heard a dull sound, and directly after the rope began to move, and he knew by the jerks that it was being hauled in hand-over-hand by the guide.

A minute later, and the lad's head was level with the snow, and he saw the handle of the ice-axe, which he grasped. But it was almost needless, for Melchior caught him by the portion of the rope which was round his chest, and by a quick exercise of his great strength raised him right out of the crevasse, to stand trembling there, as Dale now ran up and grasped his hand.

"Saxe, my boy! What an escape!"

"Oh no," said the guide quickly. "It was nothing. The rope is good and strong, and all we had to do was to draw him out. It would have been dangerous for one man--he would have died--but we are three, and we help each other; so it is nothing."

The two travellers exchanged glances, wondering at the man's coolness; but they were given no time to think, for Melchior quickly examined the knots of the rope which secured it about Saxe's chest, and strode on again, so that they were obliged to follow.

A few minutes later they had reached the rocky side of the glacier valley, and a stiff ascent was before them. Here they found more than ever the value of their guide, for his climbing powers seemed almost marvellous, while almost by instinct he selected the easiest route.

But the easiest was very hard, and every now and then he threw himself back against the rock in difficult places, planted his feet firmly wide apart, and steadily hauled upon the rope, making the ascent of the others much more facile than it would have been.

This was repeated again and again till they had reached the top of the ridge, which had seemed the summit from below on the ice; but here a fresh slope met their eyes, and Melchior made straight for a rift which ran up into the mountain, and, being full of snow, looked at a distance like a waterfall.

"We will go up this couloir," he said; "it will be the best, and it will give the young herr his first lesson in climbing snow."

"But we have been climbing snow," said Saxe, whose trepidation had now passed off, and who was feeling once more himself.

"Walking upon it," said the guide, smiling; "not climbing."

"Rather a steep bit, isn't it, Melchior?" said Dale, looking upward.

"Yes, it is steep; but we can do it, and if we slip it will only be a glissade down here again. The rocks are harder to climb, and a slip there would be bad; besides, the stones fall here sometimes rather thickly."

"But they'll be worse down that couloir," said Dale.

"As bad--not worse, herr; but I will go which way you like."

"Go the best way," said Dale quietly.

Melchior nodded, and strode on at once for the foot of the narrow rift, which looked like a gully or shoot, down which the snow fell from above.

"Use my steps," he said quietly; and, with the rope still attached, he began to ascend, kicking his feet into the soft snow as he went on, and sending it flying and rushing down, sparkling in the sunshine, while the others followed his zigzag track with care. There were times when the foothold gave way, but there was no element of danger in the ascent, which did not prove to be so steep as it had looked before it was attacked. But the ascent was long, and the couloir curved round as they climbed higher, displaying a fresh length of ascent invisible from below.

As they turned the corner Melchior paused for them to look about them, and upward toward where the gully ended in a large field of snow, above and beyond which was steeply scarped mountain, rising higher and higher toward a distant snowy peak.

"But we are not going right up that mountain, are we?" cried Saxe, panting and breathless.

"Not to-day," replied the guide. "No: up to the snow yonder, and along its edge for a little way, and then we descend on the other side, where it will be all downward to Andregg's chalet. Hah! Down close! Quick!"

He set the example, flinging himself upon his face and extending his hands above his head, as a whizzing sound was heard; then a dull thud or two and directly after there was a crash on the rocky side of the couloir a few feet above their heads, followed by a shower of slaty fragments which fell upon them, while a great fragment, which had become detached far above, glanced off, struck the other side of the gully, and then went downward, ploughing up the snow.

"Take care!" again cried the guide. "No," he said directly after, "it is only a few bits."

The few consisted of what might easily have been a cartload of snow, which passed them with a rush, fortunately on the opposite side of the gully.

"I say, Mr Dale," said Saxe, rather nervously, "if that piece of slate had hit either of us--"

"Hah!" ejaculated Dale, drawing in his breath with a hiss, "if it had hit us--"

They neither of them finished their sentence; and just then Melchior started once more, lessening the difficulty of the ascent by zigzagging the way.

Snow was dislodged, and went gliding down the gully, and for a moment a great patch began to slide, taking Dale with it, but a few rapid leaps carried him beyond it; and tightening the rope as soon as he had reached a firm place, Saxe was able to pick his way after the snow had gone by him with a rush, but only to stop a little lower down.

Another climb of about a quarter of an hour's duration brought them to the edge of the field of snow, which Melchior examined pretty carefully, and ended by rejecting in favour of a rugged ridge of rocks, which they had hardly reached when there was a quick roar like thunder, and the guide cried sharply--

"Look!"

He pointed upward toward the snow peaks, which seemed to be a couple of miles away; and as they followed the direction of his pointing hand, toward quite a chaos of rock and ice to their left, and about half-way to the summit, they looked in vain, till Dale cried--

"There it is!"

"Yes: what?" cried Saxe eagerly. "Oh, I see: that little waterfall!"

For far away there was the semblance of a cascade, pouring over the edge of a black rock, and falling what seemed to be a hundred feet into a hollow, glittering brilliantly the while in the sun.

They watched it for about five minutes; and then, to Saxe's surprise, the fall ceased, but the deep rushing noise, as of water, was still heard, and suddenly the torrent seemed to gush out below, to the left, and go on again fiercer than ever, but once more to disappear and reappear again and again, till it made one bold leap into a hollow, which apparently communicated with the glacier they had left.

"Hah!" ejaculated Saxe, "it was very beautiful, but--Why, that must have been snow! Was that an avalanche?"

"Yes; didn't you understand? That is one of the ice-falls that are always coming down from above."

"I didn't take it," said Saxe. "Well, it was very pretty, but not much of it. I should like to see a big one."

Dale looked at Melchior, and smiled.

"He does not grasp the size of things yet," he said. "Why, Saxe, my lad, you heard the clap like thunder when the fall first took place?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then don't you grasp that what looked like a cascade tumbling down was hundreds of tons of hard ice and snow in large fragments? Hark! there goes another."

There was a deeper-toned roar now, and they stood looking up once more, with Saxe troubled by a feeling of awe, as the noise came rumbling and echoing to where they stood.

"That must have been a huge mass down," said Dale at last, after they had looked up in vain, expecting some visible token of the avalanche.

"Yes, herr: away over that ridge. The snow falls at this time of the day. We shall not see any of that one. Shall we go on!"

"No, no!" cried Saxe excitedly, "I want to see another one come down. But did you mean there were hundreds of tons in that first one, that looked like water?"

"Oh yes--perhaps much more," said Dale. "That fall was a couple of miles away."

"Here, let's go on, sir," said Saxe, who seemed to have changed his mind very suddenly. "It all puzzles me. I dare say I'm very stupid, but I can't understand it. Perhaps I shall be better after a time."

"It is more than any one can understand, Saxe," said Dale quietly; "and yet, while it is grand beyond imagination, all the scheme of these mountains, with their ice and snow, is gloriously simple. Yes," he added, with a nod to Melchior, "go on," and an arduous climb followed along the ridge of rocks, while the sun was reflected with a painful glare from the snowfield on their left, a gloriously soft curve of perhaps great depth kept from gliding down into the gorge below by the ridge of rocks along which they climbed.

The way was safe enough, save here and there, when Melchior led them along a ledge from which the slope down was so steep as to be almost a precipice. But here he always paused and drew in the rope till those in his charge were close up to him; and on one of these occasions he patted Saxe on the shoulder, for there had been a narrow piece of about fifty feet in length that looked worse at a glance back than in the passing.

"That was good," he said. "Some grown men who call themselves climbers would have hung back from coming."

"That?" said Saxe. "Yes, I suppose it is dangerous, but it didn't seem so then. I didn't think about it, as you and Mr Dale walked so quietly across."

"It's the thinking about it is the danger," said Dale quietly. "Imagination makes men cowards. But I'm glad you've got such a steady head, Saxe."

"But I haven't, sir, for I was horribly frightened when I hung at the end of that rope down in the crevasse."

"You will not be again," said Melchior coolly, for they were now on a slope where the walking was comparatively easy, and they could keep together. "The first time I slipped into one I, too, was terribly frightened. Now I never think of anything but the rope cutting into my chest and hurting me, and of how soon I can get hold somewhere to ease the strain."

"What!" cried Saxe, staring at the man's cool, matter-of-fact way of treating such an accident, "do you mean to say I shall ever get to think nothing of such a thing as that?"

"Oh yes," said Melchior quietly.

"Oh, well, I don't think so," said Saxe. "Oh no. I shall get not to mind walking along precipices, I dare say, but those crevasses--ugh!"

"The young herr will make a fine mountaineer, I am sure," said Melchior. "I ought to know. Along here," he added; and, after a few minutes, he stopped at what was quite a jagged rift in the mountain side.

"There is an awkward bit here, herr," he said, "but it will cut off half an hour's hard walking."

"Down there?" said Saxe, after a glance. "Oh, I say!"

"It is an ugly bit, certainly," said Dale, looking at the guide.

"With a little care it is nothing," said Melchior. "The herr will go down first. He has only to mind where he plants his feet. When he reaches that ledge he will stop till we join him."

As Melchior spoke he unfastened the rope from Dale's breast and placed the end from his own breast there instead; after which he set himself in a good position by the edge.

"Hadn't we better get the youngster down first?"

"No, herr, you are heavy, and if you slip he can help me to hold you. We can do it easily. Then you will untie yourself, and I can let him down."

"And what then?" cried Saxe merrily, to conceal a feeling of uneasiness at the awkward descent before him. "Are we to come up again and let you down?"

"The young herr speaks like a gentleman Irlandais who was with me last year. He made John Bulls, his friend said."

"Irish bulls, Melchior," said Dale, smiling.

"Ah, yes, the herr is right, they were Irish bulls; but I do not quite know. Are you ready?"

"Yes," said Dale, preparing to descend the precipitous piece.

"Better keep your face to the rock here, herr. Go on. Take hold here, young friend. That's it. The rope just touching, and the hands ready to tighten at the slightest slip. Confidence, herr. But I need not speak. You can climb."

Dale reached the ledge below without a slip, unfastened the end of the rope, and Melchior began to attach it to Saxe.

"But, I say," cried the latter, "how can you get down?"

"There?" said the guide, with a little laugh. "Oh, that is not hard climbing: I can easily get down there."

"I wish I could without thinking it was terrible," said Saxe to himself, as he prepared in turn to descend, for in spite of the confidence given by the rope about his chest, he found himself fancying that if the knot came undone by the jerk he should give it if he slipped from one of those awkward pieces of stone, he would go on falling and bounding from rock to rock till he lay bruised and cut, perhaps killed, at the bottom of the mountain.

"It's no good to stop thinking about it," he muttered; and lowering himself down, he began to descend steadily, with the feeling of dread passing off directly he had started; for the excitement of the work, and the energy that he had to bring to bear in lowering himself from ledge to ledge, kept him too busy to think of anything but the task in hand; so that, in what seemed to be an incredibly short space of time, he was standing beside Dale.

Then came a warning cry from Melchior, who threw down his end of the rope, and directly after began to descend with an ease that robbed his task of all aspect of danger. Every movement was so quietly and easily made, there was such an elasticity of muscle and absence of strain, that before the man was half down, both Dale and Saxe were wondering how they could have thought so much of the task, and on Melchior joining them, and after descending a little farther, roping them for other steep bits, they went on easily and well.

And now for about a couple of hours Melchior took them on rapidly down and down and in and out among bluffs and mountain spurs which he seemed to know by heart, though to those with him the place grew more perplexing at every turn. There was a gloomy look, too, now, in the depths of the various gorges, which told of the coming of evening, though the various peaks were blazing with orange and gold, and a refulgent hue overspread the western sky.

"Is it much farther?" said Saxe at last. "I am getting so hungry, I can hardly get one leg before the other."

"Farther!" said Melchior, smiling. "Do you not see? Up there to the right is the foot of the glacier; there is the hill from which you saw the top, and yonder is the patch of forest. Andregg's chalet is just below."

"I am glad!" cried Saxe. "I thought I was hungry, but it's tired I am. I shall be too weary to eat."

"Oh no!" said Melchior. "The young herr will eat, and then he will sleep as we sleep here in these mountains, and wake in the morning ready for another day. The herr still wants to hunt for crystals?" he added, glancing at Dale.

"Yes; if you can take me to them," said the latter eagerly.

"I will try, herr; but they have to be sought in the highest solitudes, on the edge of the precipices, where it is too steep for the snow to stay, and they say that there are spirits and evil demons guarding the caverns where they lie."

"And do you believe them?" said Saxe sturdily.

"The young herr shall see," replied the guide. "Ah! there is Andregg. The cows have just been brought home, and here come the goats. I heard the cry in the mountains. We shall have bread and milk and cheese, if we have nothing else. Do I believe that about the demons who guard the crystal caves?" he continued thoughtfully. "Well, the young herr shall see. Hoi! hola, Andregg! I bring you friends!" he shouted to a grey-haired man standing in the evening twilight, which was declining fast, just outside the plain brown pine-wood chalet, with two women and a boy leisurely milking cows and goats.

"The herrs are welcome," said the man gravely. "It has been fine among the mountains to-day. I was fearing we should have a storm." _

Read next: Chapter 5. Strange Quarters

Read previous: Chapter 3. Further Ideas Of Magnitude

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