“There is not much more string, Saxe,” whispered Dale: “get the rope ready.”
But before this could be done the feeble voice from below cried, “Hold!” and they could see, at a terrible depth, the lanthorn swinging, and then there was the clink of metal against metal, and a horrible cry and a jarring blow.
“He has fallen!” cried Saxe. “No: he has got hold, and is climbing back.”
Faintly as it was seen, it was plain enough to those who watched with throbbing pulses. The lanthorn had been beyond Melchior’s reach, and as he lay there on a kind of shelf or fault in the ice, he had tried to hook the string toward him with his ice-axe, slipped, and would have gone headlong down lower, but for the mountaineer’s instinctive effort to save himself by striking his axe-pick into the ice.
No one spoke, but every pulse was throbbing painfully as the man’s actions were watched, down far beneath them, he seeming to be in the centre of a little halo of light, while everything around was pitchy black.
“He has got it,” muttered Saxe, after a painful pause; and then they heard the clink of the ice against the lanthorn, and saw the latter move, while directly after, from out of the silence below, there came the sound of a deeply drawn breath. “Can you hold on there?” said Dale then, sharply. “A little while, herr. I am cold, but hope will put life in me.” Dale waited a few minutes, and Saxe touched him imploringly. “What shall we do?” he whispered. “Shall I go for help?”
“No. Get your axe, and begin cutting some foothold for us: three or four good deep, long notches, about a yard apart. Begin six or eight feet away from the edge. We want purchase to pull him out.”
“But the rope—the rope!” cried Saxe. “Do as I tell you.”
Saxe obeyed without a word, driving the pick-end into the ice, and making the chips fly in the grey light of evening, for the shadows were now falling fast; and as the lad worked and cut the deep groove, Dale bent over the crevasse and spoke.
“Better!” he said.