"What does it mean?" the one said to the other.
"It means death," his companion replied, "the railing is broken! Some one has fallen."
Slowly and carefully, and each holding to one of the upright posts, they peered over and down on to the glacier, and there they saw what was lying below. A whispered word sufficed, a direction given by one to the other, and these hardy mountaineers were descending the moraine, digging their sticks deeply into the stones, and gradually working their way skilfully to the glacier.
"Is he dead, Carl?" the one asked of his friend, who stooped over the prostrate form and felt his heart.
"No; he lives. Mein Gott! how has he ever fallen here without instant death? But he must die! See, his bones are all broken!" and as he spoke he lifted Smerdon's arm and touched one of his legs.
"What shall we do with him?" the other asked.
"We must remove him. Even though he die on the way, it is better than to leave him here. Let us take him to the house of Father Neümann. It is but to the foot of the glacier."
Very gently these men lifted him in their arms, though not so gently but that they wrung a groan of agony from him as they did so, and bore him down the glacier to where it entered the valley; and then, having handed him to the priest, who lived in what was little better than a hut, they left him.
Late that afternoon the dying man opened his eyes, and looked round the room in which he lay. At his bedside he saw a table with a Cross laid upon it, and at the window of the room an aged priest sat reading a Breviary. "Where am I?" he asked in English.
The priest rose and came to the bed, and then spoke to him in German. "My son," he said, "what want of yours can I supply?"