No, there was a stirring—a fluttering, faint and scarce discernible, but the life-light still burned. I placed my eyeball before his parted lips. The out-draught of his breathing struck against it, though ever so lightly. I moved his arms. They were limp, but with no unnatural droop. Very, very gently, but perceptibly, his chest rose and fell again, and something like a sigh fluttered out from between his lips. There was a faint flicker of an eyelid, and his fingers twitched automatically at the pebbles.
The worst of the overpowering weight of dread slid away from me hesitatingly. Perhaps after all Gerry was no more than knocked out of time—not injured fatally at all. I shouted into his ear; a tiny movement of the eyelid answered me. I raised his head, scraping the loose sand into a pillow beneath it. I took his hand and began to rub it briskly, clapping it against its fellow. A faint shade of color rose into his cheek; he sighed perceptibly. Again his eyelids fluttered, half closed again, and then opened wonderingly to their widest. He stared about him, his gaze wandering with a drowsy air of astonishment from point to point. His hand swept the floor, picking at the little stones, and his breathing grew louder and more regular.
I called aloud his name, smiting him on the shoulder. He jerked a look at me from his drowsy eyes, frowned, made as if he would turn his head, and then a sudden faint consciousness seemed to return to him.
“W’as’r matter?” he whispered indistinctly.
“Good man,” I bawled joyously. “Wake up, wake up, old chap. Are you hurt? Feel yourself,” and I dragged him to a sitting posture.
“W’as’r time?” he gurgled again sleepily.
“Time! Hang the time. You’re not in bed. We’re in the glacier. Get up and feel yourself.”
He scrabbled weakly at the ground, caught at my sleeve, and leaned against me. He stared at his surroundings, regarding the temple portico with desperate astonishment. Then the ice-hill, sinking down to our very feet, caught his eye. He turned to me with wild amazement in every feature.
“It’s a nightmare,” he declared.
“No such luck,” quoth I, sadly. “We’re here right enough. The question is how to get out before we’re frozen stiff. Can you stand?”