ne feebly digging went on; but he could gain no further hint of
what was going on, and at last his excitement proved too much for him,
and he once more began to creep towards the edge of the snow, getting so
far without accident this time that he could form an idea of what must
be the depth from seeing far down the grey face of the wall of rock,
certainly four or five hundred feet, but no bottom.

"He couldn't have fallen all that way," he said to himself. "It must go
down with a slope on this side."

A sharp crack warned him that he was in danger, and he forced himself
back on to firm snow, receiving another warning of the peril to which he
had exposed himself, for a portion many feet square went down with a
hissing rush, to which he stood listening till all was still once more.

Suddenly he jumped back farther, for from somewhere higher up there was
a heavy report as of a cannon, followed by a loud echoing roar, and,
gazing upward over a shoulder of the mountain, he had a good view of
what seemed to be a waterfall plunging over a rock, to disappear
afterwards behind a buttress-like mass of rock and ice. This was
followed by another roar, and another, before all was still again.

"Must be ice and snow," he said to himself; "can't be water."

Gedge was right; for he had been gazing up at an ice-fall, whose drops
were blocks and masses of ice diminished into dust by the great
distance, and probably being formed of thousands of tons.

"Bad to have been climbing up there," he muttered, and he shrank a
little farther away from the edge of the great chasm. "It's precious
horrid being all among this ice and snow. It sets me thinking, as it
always does when I've nothing to do.--If I could only do something to
help him, instead of standing here.--Oh, I say," he cried wildly, "look
at that!"

He had been listening to the regular dull dig, dig, dig, going on below
the cornice, and to the faint rushing sound, as of snow falling,
thinking deeply of his own helplessness the while, wondering too, for
the twentieth time, where Bracy would appear, when, to his intense
astonishment, he saw a bayonet dart through the snow into daylight about
twenty feet back from the edge of the great gulf.

The blade disappeared again directly, and reappeared rapidly two or
three times as he ran towards the spot, and then hesitated, for it was
dangerous to approach the hole growing in the snow, the direction of the
thrusts made being various