That afternoon he made an exhaustive search of all the expanse of gravel under the glacier, on the chance that the rest of the emeralds might have been already washed out. It took him nearly all the afternoon, and he found a small scrap of rock full of greenish, glasslike veins, which might have been emerald matrix, or might not.
That was the sole fruit of his prospecting. He ended at the other side of the valley, and climbed to the top and came back across the surface of the glacier. It was crumbly and softening. Little streams ran everywhere, some falling down the glacier’s front, others dribbling into cracks and fissures. There were a great many of these crevices of all sizes, some of them a yard wide, and it occurred to Lang that he might learn something of the interior of the glacier by letting down a candle at the end of a cord, or he might be even able to scramble down himself.
Evening came early, foggy and drizzling as usual. He went to look at the sea from the coast, but could not distinguish anything beyond a hundred yards. At any rate, there was no Chita in the bay.
A snowslide came down the glacier that night with a tremendous roar and rumble. Lang started up in a panic, imagining that he had heard engines. It was heavily foggy, and he was not quite sure what had really happened until morning, when he found a vast heap of snow at the foot of the glacier, covering up the tunnel he had hewn out the day before.
It was still darkly foggy, but not raining, and there was no wind as he went up the slope to the glacier, carrying a long, thin cord, a pocketful of candles, and the hatchet. The snowslide had mostly discharged itself over the glacier’s edge, but a good deal had clung to the surface of the ice. It was light, fresh snow, and it had been flung up in great ridges and drifts where the slide had struck any obstruction. The small ice cracks were covered over, but the larger crevices had swallowed up the snow and stood open.
Lang looked down into several of them, deep and dark and precipitous, going farther down than he could see. None of the depths showed any rock or gravel, however, and he turned down toward the tongue of the glacier.
He was fifty yards, perhaps, from its edge, plowing through the snow, when he felt the surface give way under him. He made a wild plunge aside—too late! A vast mass of snow seemed to dislodge itself, vanish, and everything dropped from under his feet.
He snatched at something that went past, a projecting crag of ice amid the whirl of snow, caught it, clung for half a second, and his hand slipped off. He went down—down—losing breath, and landing in a great mass of loose snow in which he went clear under.
CHAPTER XVII
THE GLACIER’S HEART
Probably the loose snow saved him from broken bones, but, in spite of its softness, the breath was knocked almost out of him. Gasping and smothering, he clawed his way wildly out of his burial. His eyes opened on a dim, cold twilight, on whitish-green walls that rose up and up till they inclosed a foggy-dim gap that was the outer air.