Ernst saw directly before him the summit he had so longed to attain, and no warning, no entreaty, availed to alter his determination to proceed. He insisted upon the completion of his daring attempt with all the obstinacy of a nature that held cheaply his own life, as well as the lives of others. The threatening skies did not move him, and the refusal of the guides to accompany him only roused his antagonism. With a sneer at their caution when the goal was all but attained he left them.
Gronau had kept his word; he had gone with him to the extent of what was possible, but when that was reached, when the risk was madness,--a provoking of fate,--he had remained behind, and yet he was regretting that he had done so. The climber had been visible for a while as he toiled upward, until near the summit all trace of him through the field-glass had been lost, because of the mists which gathered quickly and heavily.
"We must go down," the elder guide said, resolutely. "If the gentleman comes back he will find us beside the snow-barrow. We shall do him no good by staying here, and we risk our lives by losing time."
Gronau saw the justice of the man's words, and shut up his glass with a sigh.
The wavering masses of mist grew thicker and darker; they floated upward from all the valleys, sailed forth from every cleft, and veiled forests and peaks in their damp mantle. The precipices of the Wolkenstein, the sheer gigantic stretch of its rocky walls, vanished in the rolling fog,--the ice-pyramid of its peak alone stood forth clear and distinct.
And aloft upon this summit stood the man who had persisted and had accomplished what had been deemed impossible. His dress bore traces of his fearful toil, his hands were bleeding from the jagged points of ice by which he had held to swing himself up, but he stood where no human foot save his own had ever trod. He had dared to ascend the cloudy throne of the Alpine Fay, to lift her veil and to look the sovereign of this icy realm in the face.
And her face was beautiful! But its beauty was wild and phantom-like: there was in it no trace of earth, and it dazzled with a painful splendour the eyes of the undaunted adventurer. Around him and below him was naught save ice and snow,--rigid white glaciers riven and billowy but gleaming with fairylike brilliancy. The crevasses gave back here the greenish hue of spring and there the deep blue of ocean, and the dazzling white of the jagged, snow-covered crests reflected a thousand prismatic dyes, while above it all arched a sky of such clear azure that it was as if it would fain pour forth all its fulness of light upon the old legendary throne of the mountains, the crystal palace of the Alpine Fay.
Ernst drew deep, long breaths: for the first time in many days the weight that had so burdened his spirit vanished; the world, with its loves and hates, its struggles and conflicts, lay far below him; it disappeared in the misty sea that filled the valleys and buried beneath it meadows and forest and the habitations of men. The mountain-peaks alone emerged, like islands in a measureless ocean. Here appeared a couple of dark crests of rock, there a peak of dazzling snow, and there a distant range. But they all looked unreal, bodiless, floating and sailing upon the flood which heaved and undulated as it slowly rose higher and higher. Over it brooded the silence of death: life was extinct in this realm of eternal ice.
And yet a warm, passionate human heart was throbbing in this waste, fain to flee from the world and its woe, seeking forgetfulness here, but bringing its woe with it. So long as danger strained every nerve, so long as there was a goal to be attained, the haunting misery of his soul had been stilled. The old magic draught which Ernst had so often quaffed had not lost its charm; danger and enjoyment indissolubly linked, the spell of magnificent nature, and the unfettered freedom again his own, were all-powerful to stir him. Again he felt the intoxicating force of the draught, and in the midst of this icy waste he was seized with a burning longing for those lands of sunshine and light where only he had been truly at home. There he could forget and recover,--there he could again live and be happy.