“Yes, of course.”
“Then don’t you grasp that what looked like a cascade tumbling down was hundreds of tons of hard ice and snow in large fragments? Hark! there goes another.”
There was a deeper-toned roar now, and they stood looking up once more, with Saxe troubled by a feeling of awe, as the noise came rumbling and echoing to where they stood.
“That must have been a huge mass down,” said Dale at last, after they had looked up in vain, expecting some visible token of the avalanche.
“Yes, herr: away over that ridge. The snow falls at this time of the day. We shall not see any of that one. Shall we go on!”
“No, no!” cried Saxe excitedly, “I want to see another one come down. But did you mean there were hundreds of tons in that first one, that looked like water?”
“Oh yes—perhaps much more,” said Dale. “That fall was a couple of miles away.”
“Here, let’s go on, sir,” said Saxe, who seemed to have changed his mind very suddenly. “It all puzzles me. I dare say I’m very stupid, but I can’t understand it. Perhaps I shall be better after a time.”
“It is more than any one can understand, Saxe,” said Dale quietly; “and yet, while it is grand beyond imagination, all the scheme of these mountains, with their ice and snow, is gloriously simple. Yes,” he added, with a nod to Melchior, “go on,” and an arduous climb followed along the ridge of rocks, while the sun was reflected with a painful glare from the snowfield on their left, a gloriously soft curve of perhaps great depth kept from gliding down into the gorge below by the ridge of rocks along which they climbed.
The way was safe enough, save here and there, when Melchior led them along a ledge from which the slope down was so steep as to be almost a precipice. But here he always paused and drew in the rope till those in his charge were close up to him; and on one of these occasions he patted Saxe on the shoulder, for there had been a narrow piece of about fifty feet in length that looked worse at a glance back than in the passing.