Chapter 5
"Drome!"
"We listened. Not a sound. Suddenly the glacier cracked and boomed, then silence again. We waited, listening. Not the faintest sound. Long, we decided, must have been deceived. But he declared that he had not.
"'I heard voices, I tell you!' "We listened again.
"'There!' he said. 'Hear them?'
"Yes, there, coming to us from out the fog, were voices, plain, unmistakable, and yet at the same time—how shall I say it?—strangely muffled. I wondered if the fog did that; but it couldn't be the fog. One voice was silvery and strong—that of Sklokoyum's angel doubtless; the other deep and rough, the voice of a man. The woman (or girl) seemed to be urging something, pleading with him. Once we thought there came a third voice, but we could not be. sure of that. But of one thing we were sure: they were not speaking in English, in Spanish, French, Siwash or Chinook. And we felt certain, too, that it was not Scandinavian, German or Italian.
"'They are over there,' said Long, pointing.
"'No, there!' whispered White.
"For my part, I was convinced that these mysterious beings were in still a different direction!
"We got in motion, uncertain, though, whether we were really going in the right direction; but we could not be greatly in error. Soon came to a great crevasse. White leaped across, and on the instant the voices ceased.
"Had they heard? We waited, White crouching there on the other side. Soon the sounds came again, whereupon White, in spite of my whispered remonstrance, began stealing forward. Long and I, being less active, did not care to risk that jump, and so we made our way along the edge of the fissure, seeking a place to cross. This we were not long in finding, but by this time, to my profound uneasiness, White had disappeared in the fog.
"We advanced cautiously, and as swiftly as possible. This, however, was not very swiftly. See! There it was—the ghostly loom of the rocks through the vapor. At that instant the voices ceased. Came a scream—a short, sharp scream from the woman. A cry from White, the crack of his revolver, and then that scream he gave—oh, the horror of that I can never forget! Long and I could not see him, or the others—only the ghostly rocks; and soon, too, they were disappearing, for the fog was growing denser.
"We heard the sound of a body striking the ice and knew that White had fallen. He was still screaming that piercing, blood-curdling scream. We struggled to reach him, but the crevasses—those damnable crevasses—held us up.
"The sound sank—of a sudden ceased. But there was no silence. The voice of the woman rang out sharp and clear. And I thought that I understood it: she was calling to it, to that thing we had seen, down at the camp, squatting beside her, its eyes burning with that demoniacal fire—calling it off.
"Came a short silence, broken by a cry of horror from the angel. The man's voice was heard, then her own in sudden, fierce, angry pleading; at any rate, so it seemed to me—she was pleading with him again.
"All this time—which, indeed, was very brief—Long and I were struggling forward. When we got out of that fissured ice and reached the place of the tragedy, the surroundings were as still as death. There lay our companion stretched out on the blood-soaked ice, a gurgle and wheezing coming from his torn throat with his every gasp for breath.
"I knelt down beside him, while Long, poor fellow, stood staring about into the fog, his revolver in his hand. A single glance showed that there was no hope, that it was only a matter of moments.
"'Go!' gasped the dying man. 'It was Satan, the Fiend himself—and an angel. And the angel, she said: "Drome!" I heal'd her say it. She said: "Drome."'
"There was a shudder, and White was dead. And the fog drifted down denser than ever, and the stillness there was as the stillness of the grave.