Chico, the little dog so disdainfully rejected by Elvira, had attached himself from the first to Jock. He had been in the London house when they spent a day there, and in rapture at the meeting had smuggled himself, not without his master’s connivance, among the rugs and wrappers, and had already been the cause of numerous scrapes with officials and travellers, whence sometimes money, sometimes politeness, sometimes audacity, bought off his friends as best they could.
There was a sort of grave fascination in the exceeding sternness of the scene—the grey heaps of stone, the mountains raising their shining white summits against the blue, the dark, fathomless, lifeless lake, and the utter absence of all forms of life. Armine’s spirit fell under the spell, and he moved dreamily on, hardly attending to Jock, who was running on with Chico, and alarming him by feints of catching him and throwing him into the water.
They came to the gap where they expected to look over the pass, but it was blotted out by a mist, not in itself visible though hiding everything, and they were turning to go home when, in the ravine near at hand, the white ruggedness of the Wildstrube glacier gleamed on their eyes.
“I didn’t know it was so near,” said Jock. “Come and have a look at it.”
“Not on it,” said Armine, who had somewhat more Swiss experience than his brother. “There’s no going there without a guide.”
“There’s no reason we should not get on the moraine,” said Jock; and they presently began to scramble about among the rocks and boulders, trying to mount some larger one whence they might get a more general view of the form of the glacier. Chico ran on before them, stimulated by some reminiscence of the rabbit-holes of Belforest, and they were looking after him and whistling him back; Armine heard a sudden cry and fall—Jock had disappeared. “Never mind!” he called up the next instant. “I’m all right. Only, come down here! I’ve twisted my foot somehow.”
Armine scrambled round the rock over which he had fallen, a loose stone having turned with him. He had pulled himself up, but even with an arm round Armine’s neck, he could not have walked a step on even ground, far less on these rough debris, which were painful walking even for the lightest, most springy tread.
“You must get to the inn and bring help,” he said, sinking down with a sigh.
“I suppose there’s nothing else to be done,” said Armine, unwillingly. “You’ll have a terrible time to wait, unless I meet some one first. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
“Not too quick till you get off this place,” said Jock, “or you’ll be down too, and here, help me off with this boot first.”