“All right, dear,” he answered, “you have done it. We are over.”
“Oh!” she said, “I am thankful. But where is Soa? I thought that I heard her throw herself down behind us.”
“Soa is dead,” he answered. “She fell down the gulf and nearly pulled us with her. I will tell you all about it afterwards; you are not fit to hear it now. Come, dear, let us be going out of this accursed place.”
Juanna staggered to her feet.
“I am so stiff and sore that I can hardly stand,” she said, “but, Leonard, what is the matter with you? You are covered with blood.”
“I will tell you afterwards,” he replied again.
Then Otter collected their baggage, which consisted chiefly of the hide line and the spear, and they crawled forward up the snow-slope. Some twenty or thirty yards ahead of them, and almost side by side, lay the two glacier stones on which they had passed the bridge, and near them those which Otter had despatched as pioneers on the previous morning. They looked at them wondering. Who could have believed that these inert things, not an hour before, had been speeding down the icy way quicker than any express train that ever travelled, and they with them?
One thing was certain: did they remain unbroken for another two or three million years, and that is a short life for a stone, they would never again make so strange a journey.
Then the three toiled on to the top of the snow-slope, which was about four hundred yards away.
“Look, Baas,” said Otter, who had turned to gaze a fond farewell at the gulf behind; “there are people yonder on the further side.”