Joe’s voice stuck in his throat, but at length he mustered up his courage and hailed the boy lying beside the crushed and broken sled.
“Hullo! mon ami!”
He paused while his heart beat thickly. And then a yell of joy burst from his lips.
The figure lying below him moved painfully and the boy waved an arm. Then, as if the effort had been too much, he collapsed again.
But Joe was jubilant. He sang and shouted his delight and hailed Tom in stentorian tones.
“He lives! Le garçon, he lives!”
Tom, his face as white as a sheet, came to Joe’s side. Together they gazed downward at the form of the boy on the snow bank below. It was a spot where the drifting snow, forced up the narrow canyon by some wild wind, had been piled within fifty feet of the trail. It was to this fact undoubtedly that Jack owed his life.
Beside him, and not very far away, was a huge hole in the snow like the crater of a volcano. It showed where the great boulder had bored its way into the soft snow with the velocity of a bullet. That hole gave them some idea of the mighty force that had wiped out the lives of the mamelukes.
Till the moment that Joe knew that Jack was alive he had given no thought to his precious dogs. But now he ran toward their mangled bodies and bent over them, the tears running down his old cheeks and his voice uplifted in lamentation.
He called to each dead beast by name and dwelt upon its particular virtues. His grief was so genuine and so heartfelt that Tom, urgent though the occasion was, yet felt some hesitancy in disturbing him until some minutes had passed.