g to these crevasses again; but it is
interesting all the same."

They started upward now, and went nearly exactly over the same ground as
before, till the upper crevasse was reached; and after going through the
same performance of sending down a block of ice, Dale suggested that as
it would be unwise to go farther up the glacier, here covered with snow,
without the help of the guide, they should make for the side of the
gorge, and at the first opening climb up and make their way over the
lower slopes of the mountain, and so back to camp.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

THE BLACK RAVINE.

Perfectly simple to arrange, but very difficult to practise. For
instance, they had to toil on quite a mile before the narrow crack,
which formed the bed of a streamlet, offered itself as a way out of the
glacier valley.

"I'm afraid this will be an awkward climb, Saxe," said Dale. "What do
you say? Will you face the hard work?"

"Oh yes!" he cried. "It's better than going the same way back."

"Up you go, then."

Saxe went on, now on one side of the tiny stream, now on the other, the
sides rising right and left almost perpendicularly at times. But there
was plenty of good foot and hand-hold, so that Saxe made his way onward
and upward at a fair rate for mountaineering, and in a very short time
they had taken a last look of the glacier; the narrow rift, turned
almost at right angles, growing blacker and more forbidding in aspect at
every step.

"I don't believe there is any way out here!" cried Saxe at last. "It
gets deeper and darker, as if it were a cut right into the mountain."

He had paused to rest as he spoke, and the gurgling of the little stream
down a crack far below mingled with his words.

"Well, let's go a little farther first," said Dale. "I am beginning to
think it is going to be a cul de sac."

He looked up to right and left at the walls of black rock growing higher
the farther they went, and now quite made up his mind that there would
be no exit from the gorge; but all the same, it had a peculiar
fascination for both, from its seeming to be a place where the foot of
man had never before trod, and the possibility of their making some
discovery deep in among the black rocks of the weird chasm.

"Tired? Shall we turn back?" said Dale from time to time.

"Oh no! let's go a little farther. This ought to be the sort of place
to find crystals, oughtn't it?"

"I can't give you any information, my lad, abo