Suddenly the rock upon which we stood began to crumble; huge fragments broke away at our very feet and went whirling down into the yawning gulf.
Hope!
The word was but mockery!
Chaos would have been more befitting, for chaos had surely come!
CHAPTER XXVI.
ON THE ROCK.
“The sun! The sun! God be praised! We see the sun again!”
And Maurice De Veber, as he thus exclaimed, stretched his hands out toward the eastern horizon, above which the first red glow of the sun’s great disk had become visible. We watched it in the moments which followed and saw it rise above that mighty chain of snow-clad peaks.
The night had passed away; the storm had fled with the dawning of the morning. One by one the stars which had appeared only to vanish, faded out of sight, and another day was upon us. Chaos had come and was gone again, and we were still alive to tell the tale.
But where were we?
It will not take long to tell it. Our abiding place is soon described.
We were high in the air, crouching upon a flat surface of rock, twenty-three feet in length, sixteen feet, eight inches at the widest part—the Doctor measured it—while down to the nearest foothold below was a hundred feet, at the very least, and this was but a mass of broken rocks and debris, with the water on every hand, rushing down the slope like mad.
Do not expect me to tell what had happened. We never definitely knew. I feel safe in asserting, however, that it was but a cutting away of the limestone rocks on that mountain slope, caused by the rush of water from the Dshambinor, which had been pent up in the ravines above us by the ice.
