He picked up two or three fragments and handled them, but Dale threw them aside after a glance.
“Only very fine, hard granite, with scarcely a grain of felspar,” he said. “What about this?”
As he spoke he stooped down over a narrow crevice running up a portion of the summit.
“Yes. There may be something here, but it would require blasting tools and power to open it out. Look here, Saxe!”
He pointed to the narrow split, in which it was just possible to get the end of his ice-axe handle; and as Saxe bent down he saw that the sides were lined with tiny quartz crystals, which grew bigger lower down.
“I want to find a rift in the mountains leading into a cavern where we may find crystals worth saving. Yes, Melchior, I will not waste time. These are of no value. Lead on.”
The guide had been giving an anxious look round, for there was a faint sighing of the wind, and clouds were floating around them now and then, shutting off the sun.
“I should like to get well down, herr, before the weather changes. The young herr would find it terribly cold.”
“Hadn’t we better wait till it gets clearer,” said Saxe, “and go down then?”
“If we did we might not be able to get down at all,” said Dale quietly.