“Yes,” said Dale, preparing to descend the precipitous piece.
“Better keep your face to the rock here, herr. Go on. Take hold here, young friend. That’s it. The rope just touching, and the hands ready to tighten at the slightest slip. Confidence, herr. But I need not speak. You can climb.”
Dale reached the ledge below without a slip, unfastened the end of the rope, and Melchior began to attach it to Saxe.
“But, I say,” cried the latter, “how can you get down?”
“There?” said the guide, with a little laugh. “Oh, that is not hard climbing: I can easily get down there.”
“I wish I could without thinking it was terrible,” said Saxe to himself, as he prepared in turn to descend, for in spite of the confidence given by the rope about his chest, he found himself fancying that if the knot came undone by the jerk he should give it if he slipped from one of those awkward pieces of stone, he would go on falling and bounding from rock to rock till he lay bruised and cut, perhaps killed, at the bottom of the mountain.
“It’s no good to stop thinking about it,” he muttered; and lowering himself down, he began to descend steadily, with the feeling of dread passing off directly he had started; for the excitement of the work, and the energy that he had to bring to bear in lowering himself from ledge to ledge, kept him too busy to think of anything but the task in hand; so that, in what seemed to be an incredibly short space of time, he was standing beside Dale.
Then came a warning cry from Melchior, who threw down his end of the rope, and directly after began to descend with an ease that robbed his task of all aspect of danger. Every movement was so quietly and easily made, there was such an elasticity of muscle and absence of strain, that before the man was half down, both Dale and Saxe were wondering how they could have thought so much of the task, and on Melchior joining them, and after descending a little farther, roping them for other steep bits, they went on easily and well.
And now for about a couple of hours Melchior took them on rapidly down and down and in and out among bluffs and mountain spurs which he seemed to know by heart, though to those with him the place grew more perplexing at every turn. There was a gloomy look, too, now, in the depths of the various gorges, which told of the coming of evening, though the various peaks were blazing with orange and gold, and a refulgent hue overspread the western sky.
“Is it much farther?” said Saxe at last. “I am getting so hungry, I can hardly get one leg before the other.”