"Had they heard?
"We waited, White crouching there on the other side. Soon the sounds came again, whereupon White, in spite of my whispered remonstrance, began stealing forward. Long and I being less active, did not care to risk that jump, and so we made our way along the edge of the fissure, seeking a place to cross. This we were not long in finding, but by this time, to my profound uneasiness, White had disappeared in the fog.
"We advanced cautiously, and as swiftly as possible. This, however, was not very swiftly. See! There it was, the ghostly loom of the rocks through the vapor. At that instant the voices ceased. Came a scream, a short, sharp scream from the woman. A cry from White, the crack of his revolver, and then that scream he gave—oh, the horror of that I can never forget. Long and I could not see him, or the others—only the ghostly rocks; and soon, too, they were disappearing, for the fog was growing denser.
"We heard the sound of a body striking the ice and knew that White had fallen. He was still screaming that piercing, blood-curdling scream. We struggled to reach him, but the crevasses, those damnable crevasses, held us up.
"The sound sank. Of a sudden it ceased.
"But there was no silence. The voice of the woman rang out sharp and clear. And I thought that I understood it: she was calling to it, to that thing we had seen, down at the camp, squatting beside her, its eyes burning with that demoniacal fire—calling it off!
"Came a short silence, broken by a cry of horror from the angel. The man's voice was heard, then her own in sudden, fierce, angry pleading; at any rate, so it seemed to me—that she was pleading with him again.
"But what had happened to White?
"All this time—which, indeed, was very brief—Long and I were struggling forward. When we got out of that fissured ice and reached the place of the tragedy, the surroundings were as still as death. There lay our companion stretched out on the blood-soaked ice, a gurgle and wheezing coming from his torn throat with his every gasp for breath.
"I knelt down beside him, while Long, poor fellow, stood staring about into the fog, his revolver in his hand. A single glance showed that there was no hope, that it was only a matter of moments.