"Tawannears did wrong to say we should descend, brothers," he said. "But we will die of the cold and wet if we stay here. To try to climb back to the top is as dangerous as to climb down. We have no choice save to continue. If Hawenneyu has his eyes upon us we shall live."
Ten steps farther on I bumped into his crouching figure.
"Back!" he cried fiercely. "Here is death!"
I looked down past his feet at a blue-green gulf that showed in an eddy of the mist and was promptly swallowed up again. We had wandered out upon a glacier, of which the snow-bank was the source, and this was one of those fathomless abysses that descended into the icy vestments of the mountain.
Foot by foot, on hands and knees, we traced the course of the crevice to a snow-bridge that spanned it, an arch of icy masonry. This Tawannears beat upon with his staff to test its resistance. It did not quiver, and he ventured but upon it, whilst Corlaer and I dug our heels into the snow and leaned back to catch him up should it bear him down. Presently the fog swallowed him—and his voice hailed us announcing he had crossed. I followed him with celerity, and gave the word to Corlaer. The Dutchman's figure, distorted out of its true proportions by the shifting mists, swam into our view, stepping cautiously across the arch, when, without warning there was a crackle of splitting ice, and Peter bounded into the air and dug his heels into the very margin of the precipice's brink as the snow-arch sank beneath his weight.
Tawannears and I gasped in horror and braced ourselves for the shock of his fall; but he teetered back and forth for two breaths, there on the verge of eternity, then balanced erect and stepped toward us.
"Oof," he remarked with shrill glumness. "Dot time Peter heardt der angels sing. Ja!"
We worked off the top of the glacier onto a second rock-ledge, none too sure of the direction we were taking, but thinking mainly of escaping the treacherous network of crevices. But we could not have avoided the tangle of glaciers on the mountain's sides with the sun shining to light our way, and in the fog it was a certainty we should stumble onto them so soon as we had reached the lower margin of the rock-island—for that was what it really was—we had gained. We were encouraged, however, by an apparent tendency of the mist to dissipate, which enabled us to achieve almost satisfactory progress across the yawning surface of this second stretch of glacier—probably a lower coil of the one which had nearly trapped us above. But just as we were congratulating ourselves upon our success and hoping that we should soon pass out of the cloud-bank, the wind veered and the thick, gray blanket walled us in again.
We kept on doggedly, now immune to fear—or rather, fearing more the suffering of inertia. Tawannears walked like a blind man, tapping the ground in front of him with his staff, and shouting to us from time to time the nature of the ground ahead. The descent was regular, and for a quarter-mile or so the ice had given excellent footing. I suppose it made him over-confident. The mist was thinning once more, too, and I could discern his figure, a shadow gliding in advance of me a dozen feet away.
"The ice is broken, brothers—beware a bowlder on the right—no——"