“Yes,” said the boy; and he stepped back also for a few yards, sprang and cleared the gap with a yard or so to spare. “What a place it would be to fall down, though!” said Saxe, as he began to tramp on over the snow by Dale’s side. “I couldn’t help thinking so as I flew over it.”
“And very stupid of you too! There’s no danger in leaping over a dry ditch four feet wide, so why should you make a fuss about the same distance because it is deep?”
Boom!
“Hallo!” said Dale. “That sounded like snow somewhere up in the mountains; and by the way, we’re on snow now: Melchior ought to rope us. How do we know there are not crevasses close at hand?” He turned to speak to the guide, and found Saxe standing there staring back. “Hallo!” he cried, “where’s Melchior?”
“I don’t know,” faltered Saxe.
“Didn’t you see him jump over the crack?”
“No. Didn’t you?”
“It was such a trifle, I did not think of it. Good heavens! he has not met with an accident? Ah, that noise!”
They turned back together for about a hundred yards over the smooth snow, following their own steps clearly marked in the white surface; and then stopped short aghast, for the deeply indented place in the snow where they had landed in their jump was gone, and in its stead they saw a great triangular-shaped opening widening the crevasse to more than double its original dimensions, while just at its edge close to their feet there was a peculiar mark, such as would have been made by an ice-axe suddenly struck down through the snow to plough its way till it disappeared over the edge.