“Oh, I can keep still now,” said Gedge coolly. “It’s like being another man to know that’s he’s all alive. Oh! can’t be very much hurt, or he wouldn’t call like he does. Poor chap! But what’s he going to do? Climb up the side somehow? Well, I s’pose I must obey orders; but I should like to be doing something to help him out.”
Gedge was of that type which cannot remain quiet; and, feeling irritated now by his enforced state of helplessness, he spent the time in looking down and around him for signs of danger.
The sun was now above the horizon, lighting up the diversified scene at the foot of the mountain, and away along the valleys spreading to right and left; but for some time he could make out nothing save a few specks in the far distance, which might have been men, or a flock of some creatures pasturing on the green valley-side, miles beyond the termination of the snow-slope up which they had climbed. He made out, too, the continuation of the stony track leading to the head of the valley, and along which the party of tribes-men had been seen to pass; but there was apparently nothing there, and Gedge drew a breath full of relief as he felt how safe they were, and beyond the reach of the enemy.
Then, turning to the gulf again, he went as near as he dared to the edge, and stood listening to a dull sound, which was frequently repeated, and was followed by a low rushing noise, which kept gathering in force till it was like a heavy rush, and then dying away.
“What’s he doing?” muttered Gedge. “Sounds like digging. That’s it; he’s been buried alive; and he’s hard at work trying to dig himself out of the snow with his bayonet stuck at the end of his rifle. Well, good luck to him. Wonder where he’ll come up first.”
Gedge watched the cornice-like edge of the snowfield as the sounds as of some one feebly digging went on; but he could gain no further hint of what was going on, and at last his excitement proved too much for him, and he once more began to creep towards the edge of the snow, getting so far without accident this time that he could form an idea of what must be the depth from seeing far down the grey face of the wall of rock, certainly four or five hundred feet, but no bottom.
“He couldn’t have fallen all that way,” he said to himself. “It must go down with a slope on this side.”
A sharp crack warned him that he was in danger, and he forced himself back on to firm snow, receiving another warning of the peril to which he had exposed himself, for a portion many feet square went down with a hissing rush, to which he stood listening till all was still once more.
Suddenly he jumped back farther, for from somewhere higher up there was a heavy report as of a cannon, followed by a loud echoing roar, and, gazing upward over a shoulder of the mountain, he had a good view of what seemed to be a waterfall plunging over a rock, to disappear afterwards behind a buttress-like mass of rock and ice. This was followed by another roar, and another, before all was still again.
“Must be ice and snow,” he said to himself; “can’t be water.”