Helen was just taking another confident step forward and down, balancing herself with graceful assurance. Spencer had a few seconds in which to steal a backward glance, and a flash of lightning happened to glimmer on Bower’s features. The American was not given to fanciful imaginings; but during many a wild hour in the Far West he had seen the baleful frown of murder on a man’s face too often not to recognize it now in this snow scourged cleft of a mighty Alpine glacier. Yet he was helpless. He could neither speak nor act on a mere opinion. He could only watch, and be on his guard. From that moment he tried to observe every movement not only of Helen but of Bower.
The members of the party were roped at intervals of twenty feet. Allowing for the depth of the crevasse, the amount of rope taken up in their hands ready to be served out as occasion required, and the inclination of Barth’s line of descent, the latter ought to be notching the opposing wall before Stampa quitted the surface of the glacier. Though Spencer could not see Stampa now, he knew that the rear guide was bracing himself strongly against any tell-tale jerk, with the additional security of an anchor obtained by driving the pick of his ax deeply into the surface ice. It was Bower’s business to keep the rope quite taut both above and below; but the American was sure that he was gathering the slack behind him with his right hand while he carried the ax in his left, and did not use it to steady himself.
Spencer assumed, from various comments by Helen and others, that Bower was an adept climber. Therefore, the passage of a schrund, or large, shallow crevasse was child’s play to him. This departure from all the canons of the craft as imparted by Stampa during their first week on the hills together, struck Spencer as exceedingly dangerous. He reflected that were it not for the words he had overheard, he would never have known of this curious proceeding. Indeed, but for those words, with their sinister significance augmented by Bower’s devilish expression, had he even looked back by chance, the maneuver might not have attracted his attention. What, then, did it imply? Why should a skilled mountaineer break an imperative rule that permits of no exceptions? He continued to watch Bower even more closely. He devoted to the task every instant that consideration for Helen’s safety and his own would allow.
There was not much light in the crevasse. Heavy clouds and the smothering snow wraiths hid the travelers under a dense pall that suggested the approach of night, although the actual time was about half past one o’clock in the afternoon. The wind seemed to delight in torturing them with minute particles of ice that stung with a peculiar sensation of burning. These were bad enough. To add to their miseries, fine, powdery snowflakes settled on eyes and eyelids with blinding effect.
During a particularly baffling gust Helen uttered a slight exclamation. Instantly Spencer stiffened himself, and Barth and Karl halted.
“It is nothing,” she cried. “For a second I could not see.”
Barth’s ax rang out again. The vibrations of each lusty blow could be felt distinctly along the solid ice wall. After a last downward step he would begin to notch his way up the other side, where the angle was much more favorable to rapid progress. Spencer stole another glance over his shoulder. Bower had fully ten feet of the rearmost section of rope in hand. His head was thrown well back. Standing with his face to the ice, he was striving to look over the lip of the schrund. Stampa, feeling a steady tension, must be expecting the announcement momentarily that Barth was crossing the narrow crevice at the bottom. Helen and Karl, intent on the operations of the leader, paid heed to nothing else; but Spencer was fascinated by Bower’s peculiar actions.
At last, Barth’s deep bass reverberated triumphantly upward. “Vorwärtz!”
“Vorwärtz, Stampa!” repeated Bower, suddenly changing the ice ax to his right hand and stretching the left as far along the rope and as high up as possible. Simultaneously he raised the ax. Then, and not till then, did Spencer understand. Stampa must be on the point of relaxing his grip and preparing to descend. If Bower cut the rope with a single stroke of the adz, a violent tug at the sundered end would precipitate Stampa headlong into the crevasse, while there would be ample evidence to show that he had himself severed the rope by a miscalculated blow. The fall would surely kill him. When his corpse was recovered, it would be found that the cut had been made much closer to his own body than to that of his nearest neighbor.