"It was I," he said; "he saved me. I fell—"
"Well?" I demanded.
"Do you see that shoulder of ice on this side of the crevasse, and the shelf jutting out opposite?"
I peered over the edge once more. The wall hung slightly out at the top and I had a good view of everything beneath. The cleft was not more than five feet wide, but, except for the débris lodged below me, it sank away into darkness. It may have been a thousand feet deep.
Some twenty feet down the side a ledge, perhaps twelve inches broad, started from the wall. Upon the opposite wall, about six feet higher, as far as I could estimate, allowing for the foreshortening, there was another shelf, considerably broader. Upon it sprang up the stumps of two or three heavy icicles that had grown down from an ice-bridge. Doubtless, anciently the débris caught below had been part of this bridge, and in its fall had carried the upper ends of the icicles with it. One end of the shelf slanted up almost to the surface.
I took this in at a glance.
"Yes," I said; "go on."
"I must confess from the beginning," he proceeded, in a curious monotone, as if his body, not his mind, were talking, "I doubted your judgment of the glacier. The access to the summit was evidently so easy that, I thought, some route across would surely open out before us. I desired to surprise you; I knew you could easily overtake us. Therefore, I set forth. The Eskimos hung back, but I promised them knives if they would follow.
"It was easy enough until we came to this crevasse. I attempted to leap across, but I slipped and fell. I do not know how it happened, but I struck several times and whirled over and over, and felt a blow upon the back of my head. It dazed me. When I came to myself I was seated upon that ledge, with my back against the wall. The wall slants in, as you see, and the outer edge of the ledge is raised, so I was secure.
"But I had only half recovered my senses and I began to cry out for help. I was so much disturbed that I didn't know what was going on until I saw someone upon the shelf opposite. Then I think I shouted louder. Suddenly there came another shock and I should have fallen, but someone held me up. It was Daniel. He must have leaped across."