But that way, too, was barred. Nature seemed to have made a dead set at us. A freak of the wind had piled a great drift upon the top of the wall just above the ladder, where it hung like a combing wave, ready to fall at a touch to all appearance. Indeed, a large mass had already fallen, breaking the ladder in two.
Our case seemed to me to be pretty desperate, and from the concerned expression upon Percy’s face I guessed that he was of the same mind. But upon Jack this accumulation of difficulties, instead of casting him down, seemed to have the opposite effect; it aroused his fighting-spirit.
“Give in!” he cried, just as though someone had suggested it, and shaking his fist at the world in general. “Not if I know it! We’ll find, or force, a way out somewhere! You see,” he went on, addressing us, “some of these drifts are pretty sure to reach to the top of the wall somewhere, and as soon as the snow has settled a bit, and after the sun and frost have hardened the surface, we shall be able to get about, and then we’ll make an exploring expedition. All we can do at present is to go down to the cabin and make ourselves as comfortable as we can for a few days. It is no good trying to get out while the snow is soft, we should bury ourselves in the drifts.”
In spite of Jack’s heroic efforts to put a good face on the situation, I confess that I, at least, felt much inclined to despair of being able ever to climb out of the old crater by means of the unstable drifts, while Percy, I have good reason to believe, felt much as I did about it.
How we should have scoffed at anyone who should have ventured to suggest that anything could possibly happen to make us forget, even for a moment, the pressing question of finding a way out of the valley! Yet such an event did actually occur; and no later than the next morning.
When I first described the Mushroom Rock I mentioned, it will be remembered, that the cap was split in two, and, that the pieces overhung the stalk in such a manner as to make it appear that a strong wind might blow them down. Appearances were deceitful, however, or the late storm would certainly have upset them. But where the blustering wind had failed, the sun and the frost, working in turns, succeeded. The crack dividing the cap was drifted full of snow, and this snow the sun next day reduced to a state of slush, the frost at night converting it in turn into ice. The lateral pressure thus brought to bear upon them by the ice was sufficient to move the pieces the quarter-inch or so necessary to destroy their balance, and when we looked out of the cabin door next morning, there were the two great rocks lying on their backs—one of them bridging the creek.
Percy and I walked over to look at them, and as we stood beside the fallen fragment which lay athwart the stream, our conversation—I forget why—turned upon the subject of the pot-holes and the gold button that Percy had found in one of them.
“That’s the hole,” said he, pitching a snowball into the water, “and I should like to know why that one should have had a nugget in it while the others had nothing but scales and grains.”
“What I should like to know,” said I, “is why we should find gold in the pot-holes and nowhere else. Is there a goose around here that goes about laying golden eggs and using these holes for nests? Perhaps she has been along again by this time and laid another in your pot-hole.”
“Highly probable,” replied Percy, ironically. “I’ll look.”