e with both hands to try and strike if I should reach a
slope, so as to stop myself; but there was nothing but the black walls
of ice on either side and the roar of waters below. I thought of this
as I prepared myself for being broken on the cruel rocks beneath: a
great deal to think, herrs, in so short a time, but thoughts come
quickly when one is falling. Then I was plunged suddenly into deep,
roaring water, and felt myself swept round and then onward as if I had
been once more in the schlucht; for I had fallen into one of the great
water holes in the river below the gletscher, and then was carried
along."

"How horrible!" ejaculated Saxe. "Was it very dark?"

"So black that a man might do without eyes, herr," said Melchior,
smiling sadly.

"You could not swim in water like that!"

"No, herr; and it was so cold that it deadened a man's strength. But I
knew I must fight for my life, for I said to myself I had my two English
herrs above there on the gletscher, and how could they find their way
back from the wilderness of ice? Then I thought of how the little river
must run, and I could tell--for I knew it must be very much like the
places where I have looked up from the end of gletschers (glaciers you
call them)--that there would be deep holes worn in the rock where great
stones are always whirling round and grinding the hollows deeper. These
would be hard to pass; but I hoped by clinging to the side to get by
them without being drowned. They were not what I feared."

"Then what did you fear!" cried Saxe excitedly; for the guide had
paused.

"The narrow pieces, where the water touched the roof, herr. I knew it
was far down to the foot of the glacier, and that there must be many
long hollows where the water rushed through as in a great pipe; and if
they were too long, I felt that I could never get my breath again, but
that I should be thrown out at the bottom dead."

Dale drew a long, deep breath, and asked himself whether he was
justified in exposing a man to such risks for the sake of making his own
discoveries.

"Well, herrs, I knew that if I stopped I should get benumbed and unable
to struggle on, so I began feeling my way along the narrow shore of the
little river, now touching stone, now ice, till the shore seemed to end.
As I felt about I found the ice arch lower, and that I must begin to
wade."

"But why didn't you try and wade back to the bottom of the crevasse
where you fell?" cried Saxe.