Heaped around as it had been with snow, it had seemed to have quite a pyramidal base, but the solid ice of its lower parts had in the course of time been eaten away till it was as fragile as the waxen comb it in some places resembled, and had crumbled down as soon as it received a shock.
Carrying his two pieces back, Saxe set them down at the edge of the crevasse, about a dozen yards from where Melchior had fallen; and, then going back along the side to that spot, he shouted again—a dismal, depressing cry, which made his spirits lower than before; and at last, after waiting some time for a reply, knowing all the while that it would not come, he crept back to where he had laid the two pieces of ice, and stood looking down at them, hesitating as to whether he should carry out his plan.
“I must be doing something,” he cried piteously. “If I stand still in the snow, thinking, I shall go mad. It will be hours before Mr Dale gets back, and it is so dreadful to do nothing but think—think—think.”
He gazed about him, to see a peak here and a peak there, standing up dazzling in its beauty, as it seemed to peer over the edge of the valley; but the glory had departed, and the wondrous river of ice, with its frozen waves and tumbling waters and solid foam, all looked cold and terrible and forbidding.
“I must do something,” said Saxe at last, as if answering some one who had told him it would be dangerous to throw pieces of ice into the crevasse. “It is so far away from where he fell that it cannot hurt him. It will not go near him, and I want to know how far down he has fallen.”
He laid down his ice-axe, picked up one of the lumps, balanced it for a moment or two, and then pitched it into the narrow chasm, to go down on his hands and knees the next instant and peer forward and listen.
He was so quick that he saw the white block falling, and as it went lower it turned first of a delicate pale blue, then deeper in colour, and deeper still, and then grew suddenly dark purple and disappeared, while, as Saxe strained eyes and ears, there came directly after a heavy crash, which echoed with a curious metallic rumble far below.
“Not so very deep,” cried Saxe, as he prepared to throw down the other piece; and, moving a few yards farther along towards the centre of the glacier, he had poised the lump of ice in his hands, when there came a peculiar hissing, whishing sound from far below and he shrank back wondering, till it came to him by degrees that the piece he had thrown down must have struck upon some ledge, shattered to fragments, and that these pieces had gone on falling, till the hissing noise he had heard was caused by their disappearing into water at some awful depth below.
Saxe stood there with the shrinking sensation increasing, and it was some time before he could rouse himself sufficiently to carry out his first intention and throw the second piece of ice into the gulf. As it fell his heart beat heavily, and he once more dropped upon his hands and knees to follow its downward course and watch the comparatively slow and beautiful changes through which it passed before it disappeared in the purply-black darkness, while he listened for the crash as it broke upon the ledge preparatory to waiting in silence for the fall of the fragments lower down.
But there was no crash—no hissing, spattering of small fragments dropping into water—nothing but the terrible silence, which seemed as if it would never end; and at last a heavy dull splash, the hissing of water, and a curious lapping sound repeated by the smooth water, till all died away, and there was silence once again. “Awful!” muttered Saxe, as he wiped his damp brow. “Poor Melchior!—no wonder he didn’t answer to my cries.”