The rollers were soon readjusted—the cables again freed from the pin, and the bridge moved on.
Slowly and gradually—slowly but smoothly and surely, it moved, until its farther end rested upon the opposite cheek of the crevasse, lapping the hard ice by several feet. Then the cables were held taut, and securely fastened to the belaying-pin. The nearer end of the pole was tied with other ropes—so that it could not possibly shift from its place—and the yawning abyss was now spanned by a bridge!
Not till then did the builders rest to look upon their work; and, as they stood gazing upon the singular structure that was to restore them to liberty and home, they could not restrain themselves, but gave vent to their triumphant feelings in a loud huzzah!
Chapter Forty Three.
The Passage of the Crevasse.
I know you are smiling at this very poor substitute for a bridge, and wondering how they who built it were going to cross upon it. Climbing a Maypole would be nothing to such a feat. It may seem easy enough to cling to a pole six inches in diameter, and even to “swarm” along it for some yards, but when you come to talk of a hundred feet of such progression, and that over a yawning chasm, the very sight of which is enough to make the head giddy and the heart faint, then the thing becomes a feat indeed. Had there been no other mode of getting over, like enough our heroes would have endeavoured to cross in that way.
Ossaroo, who had “swarmed” up the stem of many a bamboo and tall palm-tree, would have thought nothing of it; but for Karl and Caspar, who were not such climbers, it would have been rather perilous. They had, therefore, designed a safer plan.
Each was provided with a sort of yoke, formed out of a tough sapling that had been sweated in the fire and then bent into a triangular shape. It was a rude isosceles triangle, tied tightly at the apex with rawhide thongs; and thereto was attached a piece of well-twisted