“Oh!” said Caspar, “I think it’ll tire of being cooped up in less time than that; but we shall see.”
The party now spread themselves right and left along the lower edge of the crevasse—each choosing a large rock or mass of snowy ice as a cover. Caspar went to the extreme left, and even to the edge of the glacier, where a number of large rocks rested on its surface. Having entered among these, he was hidden from the others, but presently they heard him calling out—
“Hurrah! come here!—a bridge! a bridge!”
Karl and Ossaroo left their hiding-places, and hastened to the spot.
On arriving among the boulders, they saw, to their delight, that one of the largest of these—an enormous block of gneiss—lay right across the crevasse, spanning it like a bridge, and looking as though it had been placed there by human hands! This, however, would have been impossible, as the block was full ten yards in length, and nearly as broad as it was long. Even giants could not have built such a bridge!
A little examination showed where it had fallen from the overhanging precipice—and it had rested on the glacier, perhaps, before the great cleft had yawned open beneath it. Its upper end overlapped the ice for a breadth of scarce two feet, and it seemed a wonder that so huge a weight could be sustained by such an apparently fragile prop. But there it rested; and had done so for years—perhaps for ages—suspended over the beetling chasm, as if the touch of a feather would precipitate it into the gulf below!
If Karl had been near, he might have warned his brother from crossing by such a dangerous bridge; but before he had reached the spot, Caspar had already mounted on the rock, and was hurrying over.
In a few moments he stood upon the opposite side of the crevasse; and, waving his cap in the air, shouted to the rest to follow.
The others crossed as he had done, and then the party once more deployed, and kept up the ravine, which grew narrower as they advanced, and appeared to be regularly closed in at the lop, by a perpendicular wall. Surely the deer could not escape them much longer?
“What a pity,” said Caspar, “we could not throw down that great stone and widen the crack in the ice, so that the deer could not leap over it! We should then have it nicely shut up here.”