He had been plodding on, he remembered, with Mr Dale behind him; but he had not seen a sign of his companion since, though he had seen Melchior, who had caught him by the wrist, and then—
“Yes: what then?”
He could remember no more, only that horrible confusion as they were carried down, till he was fighting for breath, buried at the bottom of the drift.
Saxe listened again, straining his ears for the faintest sound, but hearing nothing.
“They must have been carried farther,” he tried to think; “and as soon as they can climb up they will begin to seek for me;” and he repeated this cheering thought to fight back another, which was vague, strange and terrible—a thought which suggested the impossibility of two people discovering the tiny hole made by the head of an ice-axe in the midst of the snow of that tremendous avalanche.
“I don’t care; I will not give up hoping,” he said to himself, as he moved the ice-axe gently, and saw a ray or two more light. Then he began to wonder whether the heat of his body would melt enough of the snow-ice about him to enable him to work his way out; and in this hope he waited and rested for a few minutes, for the exertion even of moving the axe seemed to set his heart beating fast.
Then once more the feeling of horror grew more terrible than he could bear; and he was fast succumbing to it and losing his senses, when he fancied that he heard a cry.
It ceased directly; and then, as he listened with every nerve on the strain, there it was again—faint, apparently very distant, but plainly enough—the jodel of some Swiss, if it were not that of the guide.
Throwing his head back as far as he could, and keeping the axe handle tight against the side of the narrow hole, Saxe sent up a despairing cry for help.
As he ceased he made a desperate struggle to free himself, but it was useless; and he listened again and to his great joy the jodel came again, and he answered it.