“We have the rope tightly,” said Dale, “so you need not hesitate.”
But the boy did hesitate, and, after peering over, he shrank back appalled.
Melchior smiled.
“Well, herr,” he said, “what do you think of the glissade, if you had taken one?”
“It’s horrible,” said Saxe, in a subdued tone; and he turned and looked down again where the guide had broken away the cornice, which curved out over a tremendous precipice, and saw that had he followed his inclination and slid down the snow slope, he would have gone over the cornice, and then plunged headlong, to fall nearly sheer down what seemed to be three or four thousand feet, to where a glacier wound along past the foot of the precipice.
Just then Dale joined him.
“Ah!” he said; “this is grand. Look at the course of that river till it disappears in the haze. You can count several villages, too, on the mountain slope and plain.”
But Saxe had no eye for river or villages. The object that took his attention was the river of ice below, upon which whoever dropped from where he stood must fall; and as Dale spoke to him again, he turned away with quite a start and a shudder.
“Hallo!” cried Dale; “that will not do. Too imaginative, Saxe. There’s plenty all round to encounter, without your calling up the imaginary. Well, Melchior, which way next?”
“Up above that snow slope, herr, and round the shoulder of the mountain that you can see yonder.”