the touch of his wet fingers before the lamp burned
bright and clear.

Meanwhile Dale had been securing the lanthorn to the end of the string.

"Melchior," he shouted, "I'm sending you down the light."

His words were short and sharp, and now he lay down and began to lower
the lanthorn rapidly, its clear flame reflected from the ice wall, and
revealing bit by bit the horrors of the terrible gulf, with its
perpendicular walls.

Down, down, down went the lamp, till Saxe's heart sank with it, and with
a look of despair he watched it and that which it revealed,--for he
could see that it would be impossible for anyone to climb the ice wall,
and the lamp had gone down so far that it was beyond the reach of their
rope.

"Terribly deep down," said Dale, half aloud, as he watched the
descending lanthorn.

"Ah! I see him!" cried Saxe. "He is just below the light, on that
ledge. Yes, and the ice slopes down from there."

"Can you get it?" cried Dale loudly. "Not yet, herr," came up feebly.
"Lower."

"There is not much more string, Saxe," whispered Dale: "get the rope
ready."

But before this could be done the feeble voice from below cried, "Hold!"
and they could see, at a terrible depth, the lanthorn swinging, and then
there was the clink of metal against metal, and a horrible cry and a
jarring blow.

"He has fallen!" cried Saxe. "No: he has got hold, and is climbing
back."

Faintly as it was seen, it was plain enough to those who watched with
throbbing pulses. The lanthorn had been beyond Melchior's reach, and as
he lay there on a kind of shelf or fault in the ice, he had tried to
hook the string toward him with his ice-axe, slipped, and would have
gone headlong down lower, but for the mountaineer's instinctive effort
to save himself by striking his axe-pick into the ice.

No one spoke, but every pulse was throbbing painfully as the man's
actions were watched, down far beneath them, he seeming to be in the
centre of a little halo of light, while everything around was pitchy
black.

"He has got it," muttered Saxe, after a painful pause; and then they
heard the clink of the ice against the lanthorn, and saw the latter
move, while directly after, from out of the silence below, there came
the sound of a deeply drawn breath. "Can you hold on there?" said Dale
then, sharply. "A little while, herr. I am cold, but hope will put
life in me." Dale waited a few minutes, and Saxe touched him
imploringly. "What s