“Only seemed as if you were pulling me right in two,” groaned the boy. “It’s of no use; you can’t get me out.”
“I can, and I will,” said the guide firmly.
“I would go on cutting you out, only it would take so many hours, and I am afraid—”
“Of what?” said Saxe faintly, and speaking more for the sake of gaining time than anything else, so terrible had the strain been for him.
“I am afraid of loosening the snow and starting it again by my blows,” replied Melchior. “It takes so little sometimes to begin an avalanche, and we know how the snow hangs lightly on this side of the mountain.”
“Yes,” said Saxe, with his eyes half-closed.
“And he would be dead long before I could get him out,” said Melchior to himself. “Poor boy! He could not last for hours frozen in like that.”
Saxe opened his eyes again, and looked up at the guide wildly.
“Never mind me now,” he said: “go and find Mr Dale.”
Melchior shook his head.