Far down below he could hear the great bells of the burg chiming and clanging, and he knew that they were giving the alarm for him; he saw men small as mice grouping together here, and running apart there; he knew they were coming out to search for him. He resolved to be very wary. He had got so long a start that he was high on the hills ere he heard the alarm-bells ring. He knew that he must avoid being seen by anyone he met, or, known as he was to the whole country-side, his liberty would soon be at an end. But the huts of the cattle-keepers were empty, and the chances of meeting a mountaineer were few. Hundreds of men might come upward in search of him, and yet miss him amidst those endless walls of stone, those innumerable peaks and paths and precipices, each one the fellow of the other.
He climbed the grassy slopes, the steep stone ways, as he had learned to do with Otto, and though he was still for from the sides of Glöckner he was yet soon on very high ground. A great mountain, green at the base, snow-covered half the way down, frowned above him; it was but one of the spurs of the Glöcknerwand, but he believed it to be the king of the Austrian Alps itself. He met no one; the mountains were solitary; the first breath of autumn had scared the cattle-keepers downward with their flocks and herds. Sometimes, very far off, he saw a lonely figure, a pedlar, or a hunter, or a shepherd, or some alm still tenanted by its flock, but they were mere specks on the immensity of the glacier slopes and the domes of snow. The solitude enchanted him at first; he had never been alone before. He drank from a stream, ate more bread, and held on firmly and fearlessly. The thought that his father was there beyond him, amidst those dazzling peaks, those lowering clouds, seemed to shoe his little feet with fire. He felt weaker, for his bread had nourished him but little, and he had not found a hut of any kind as he had expected to do. But he toiled on, the slope of the same mountain always facing him, always seeming to recede and to grow higher and higher the further and further he went.
The wall of granite which he was on, nine miles or more above and beyond his home, was known as the Adler Spitze. He had been near it in other days, but he did not recognise it now; all these stern slopes and steeps, all these domes and roof-like ridges of snow and ice, so resemble each other that a longer apprenticeship to the hills than his had been is needed to distinguish them one from another. The Adler Spitze was a dangerous and seldom traversed peak; its sides were bristling with jagged rocks, and its chasms were many and deep. More than one death had been caused by it in late years, and near its summit his mother, had caused to be erected a refuge, one of the highest of the district, where a keeper was forever on the watch for belated travellers. These were, however, very few, for the mountain had gained a bad name amongst the hunters and pedlars and muleteers who alone traversed these hills, and was left almost entirely to the birds of prey, which were numerous there and had given it its name.
When the pine-woods ceased, and there was only around him mere naked rock, with a little moss growing on it here and there, Bela knew that he had come very high indeed. And he had his wish: he was quite alone. There was nothing to be seen here except the dusky forest, shelving downward, and vast slopes of naked grey stone, with large loose rocks scattered over them, as if giants had been playing there at pitch-and-toss. There was too much mist in the north and west, which faced him, for the opposite mountains to be seen, for it was still early in the day. He did not now feel the joy and excitement he had expected. He had climbed to the glacier region indeed, but the scene around was dreary, and the vast expanse of vapour surrounding him looked chill and melancholy.
In the excitement and exultation of his thoughts he had forgotten many things which he knew very well, trained to the hills as he was; he had forgotten that it might rain or snow before he reached any halting-place, that fogs came on at that season with fatal suddenness, that if the sun were obscured the cold would soon become great, that if a mist came down he would be unable to find any road, and that men had been often killed on those heights who had known every inch of the hills.
Something of his buoyancy and certainty of success began to pale and grow dull as the isolation lost its sense of novelty, and that intense silence of the glacier world, which is at all times so solemn, began to strike awe into his intrepid soul. He had often been as high, but there had been always on his ear his brother's voice, and his guide's laugh, and the merry sounds of the men chattering together as they climbed. Now there was no sound anywhere, save now and then a splitting cracking noise, which he knew was ice giving way under the noon-day heat of the sun. 'It must be just as still as this in the grave,' he thought, with a chill in his warm eager leaping young blood. A little tuft of edelweiss growing in a crevice, and an alpenlerche winging its way through the blue air, seemed to him like friends.
He wished now that Gela were with him.
'But it would have been of no use to ask him,' he thought sadly. 'He never will disobey, even to make good come of it.'
A white mist had settled over all the lower world, one of the autumn fogs which come from the lower clouds enwrapped all the lakes and pastures and forests of Hohenszalras. Nothing could better baffle and distract his pursuers; perplexed and blinded, they would be wholly at a loss to trace his steps. It did not occur to him that the fog on the lower lands might mean also storm and snow, and the darkness and dampness of ice-cold vapours, in the upper air where he was.
It had become rough, hard, toilsome work; he was bruised, and almost lame, and very tired. But the spirit in him was not crushed; he kept always thinking: 'If it did not hurt, it would be nothing to do it.'