“Yes, herr,” said the guide quietly. “I dragged you out.”
“Why!—oh, how it hurts! You’ve left my legs in the hole! No,” he added, as he struggled into a sitting position and looked down,—“only my boots.”
“I’ll bind some cloth round them directly, herr. We can get other boots.”
“But—I feel—just as if I had no legs at all,” said Saxe excitedly. “Not broken, are they?”
“No, herr: only a little numbed with the cold and pressure. There, I am better now. I’ll chafe them before I bind up your feet.”
“You couldn’t get out my boots?”
“No, herr—not for many hours: we must not wait for that;” and he knelt down now, and after rapidly chafing the half-dead limbs to bring back the circulation, he took string from his pocket, cut off both sleeves of his jacket, and then cleverly tied the wrists, and drew them on to the boy’s legs, where he bound them with the string, forming a pair of boots and stockings in one.
“Why, Melk, you’ve made me look like an Italian brigand,” cried Saxe pitifully, as he stood up and looked down at his cross-gartered legs. “Oh! I can hardly stand. But now we are wasting time: let’s find Mr Dale.”
“Yes,” said Melchior, drawing a long deep breath: “let’s try and find Mr Dale.”
“Which way shall we go?” said Saxe, painfully picking up his axe and looking hopelessly around over the white waste where the snow lay, now compressed into waves of ice, and looking like portions of a glacier.