How to get at him?
Abel’s first thought was to free one arm. If he could do that he might possibly be able to get at his knife, dragging it from the sheath at his waist. Then the work would be comparatively easy, for he could dig away the partly consolidated snow in which he was cased, and throw it from him.
He set to, struggling hard, but without effect, for it seemed to him that he was only working with his will, his muscles refusing to help; and by degrees the full truth dawned upon him, that the absence of pain was due to the fact that his body was quite benumbed, and a horrible sensation of fear came over him, with the belief that all beneath the snow must be frozen, and that he could do absolutely nothing to save his life.
Even as he thought this the benumbed sensation seemed to be rising slowly towards his brain.
“In a short time all will be over,” he groaned aloud, “and poor Dal will be left there, buried, thinking I have escaped and have left him to his fate. Is there no way to escape from this icy prison?”
He wrenched his head round as far as he could, first on one side, and then on the other; but it was always the same—the narrow valley with its stupendous walls, no longer black and horrible with its unseen horrors in the darkness of the night, but a wondrous way to a city of towers and palaces gorgeous to behold. His eyes ached with the flashing beauties of the scene. It was not the golden Klondike of his dreams, but a land of silver, whose turrets and spires and minarets were jewelled with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds; whose shadows were of sapphire blue or darker amethyst; and whose rays flashed and mingled till he was fain to close his eyes and ask himself whether what he saw was part of some dazzling dream.
He looked again, to see that it was no vision, but a scene of beauty growing more and more intense as the sun rose higher. The darkness had fled to display these wonders; there was not a chasm or gully that was not enlightened—everywhere save within the sufferer’s darkened soul. There all was the blackness of despair.
But black despair cannot stay for long in the breast of youth. Hope began to chase it away, and inanimate though the body was, the brain grew more active, offering suggestion after suggestion as to how he might escape.
The sun was growing hotter minute by minute, and the reflections from the pure white ice almost painful. Already, too, its effects were becoming visible.
Just where the warm rays played on the edge of a gap whose lower portions were of an exquisite turquoise blue, tiny crystal-like drops were forming, and as Abel Wray gazed at them with straining eyes he saw two run together into one, which kept gradually increasing in size till it grew too heavy for its adhesion to last, and it fell out of sight.