and, if no tourmente begins, may show them a way to safety.”
So saying, the guide again quitted the road. Maurice, whose usually pale face was now flushed and hectic, made some peevish remonstrance. But Fritz assured us that we should save miles by striking off across the rugged table-land, where no horse could pass. A few minutes after this a low sullen roar, faint, but hollow and deep, like the noise of a distant cataract, reached our ears. Fritz paused, with a gesture of discouragement.
“An avalanche, far off, but to windward. I fear the worst!” said he.
We strode on in silence over the rough ground, always knee-deep in the frozen drift. At last Fritz spoke again:
“Father is a just man, but he is too fond of the silver florins. I ought to have thought of Margaret before I made this bargain. Poor Mädchen Margaret, how sorry she will be when the curé gives out Fritz Horst in the prayers for the dead!”
The young peasant spoke in a quiet, sad tone, with no reproach in it, but somehow it touched me.
“Will you leave us, and turn back?” I asked.
“A Uri man sticks to his parola, Meinherr!” answered the chamois hunter, with native pride; “besides, to turn back now is as dangerous as to proceed. Let us trust in Our Lady of Snows, and press on.”
The protracted exertion was something terribly severe. Even the hardy guide showed signs of distress, and Maurice, by far the weakest of the three, was faint and trembling in every limb. Yet his eye was bright with a feverish brilliancy, and he pushed unsparingly forward, nerved by his strong wish to arrive in time. We were all travel-stained and breathless, and every fresh drift seemed deeper than the last.
On a sudden Maurice, who had struggled the first up a ridge of granite, uttered a loud cry:
“There they are! There, yonder!”
And in a moment we stood beside him, and could see the dark dots that represented men and horses, and the larger bulk of the travelling carriage, against the dazzling background of snow. They had apparently halted, or, at any rate, their progress was very slow.
“Holy Himmel!” muttered Fritz, “’tis the caravan; but how came they there? They must have missed the road, blotted out as it is with driven snow, and they have wandered off to the Odinthor, never knowing how dangerous—not one mountaineer among them! This way—quick! quick! If the wind rises, all are lost!”
And with redoubled speed the guide dashed on. We could hardly keep near him, but I heard him utter mingled prayers and imprecations on the folly of the postilions as he ran.
I had fairly to drag Maurice, now dead beat, up the last heap of bare boulders, around which the blue ice of a small glacier had closed. Beneath us—perhaps a hundred and fifty feet lower down—were crowded mules and horses, men and bales, the whole caravan having come to a confused and terrified halt on the edge of a deep and yawning precipice, at the bottom of which a sullen torrent, bursting from out of a tunnelled arch of ice, roared and chafed at an awful depth. It was evident that the bewildered wretches had missed the true road.
Close to the carriage, in the midst of the frightened group, was the beautiful dark-haired English girl, Lucy Trafford. She seemed to be tenderly supporting her invalid younger sister, who had fainted, and whose pale head rested on her shoulder. Maurice sprang forward, calling out her name:
“Lucy! Lucy!”
She looked up, recognised her affianced husband, and gave a cry of delight,—a cry that haunts me still.
“O Maurice!—see, papa, here is help! Saved! saved!”
At that instant it seemed to grow dark; a gust of wind howled by, and the snow began to fall.
“Down, for your lives, down!” shouted Fritz, grasping Maurice and myself, and actually dragging us to the earth. Not a moment too soon. Something white, like the thick foam of a mighty wave, seemed to pass hissing and boiling over us as we lay among the rocks, and flew past like a millrace. The chill of the air increased, and I could hardly find breath to speak.
“What is it?”
“The tourmente! lie still; we are safer here.”
For some instants I could see nothing but the blinding rush of thick flakes driven by the wild wind. In vain I tried to rise. The gale beat me down in a moment. By crouching under a rock I was able to escape being deeply buried in the loose snow, but it was not till the fury of the gust was spent that I could drag myself on hands and knees to the brow of the hill, whence the caravan was visible.
“They are not all there;” whispered Fritz, hoarsely, pointing with his finger; and I shuddered as I saw that many of the animals and some of the men had disappeared, swept over the cliff. Nor was this all. Following the guide’s pointing finger, my eyes rested on a sight that curdled my blood. The glacier below the rocky ridge on which we lay had parted from its hold, and was slipping and gliding, slowly but surely, towards the sloping brink of the cliff, urged by the weight of the fresh heaps of snow which the tourmente had piled upon it in irregular masses. Gradually and steadily down it slid, that long reef of blue ice, loaded with snow and rifted with chasms, forcing, like a moving wall, the unhappy crowd below nearer and nearer to destruction. We saw it press upon the carriage, on the mule-train, on the snorting, struggling horses that reared and pawed, and lashed with their iron-bound feet in the vain effort to fly. We saw the agonised gestures of those below; saw Lucy Trafford, her dark hair loosened, her arms outstretched, yet still supporting the poor frightened younger sister, who clung to her as for protection. And I thought Lucy called on Maurice by name; but cannot be sure, for the yells and groans of those around were deafening. It was like a vision of the Judgment. I groaned and closed my eyes as the carriage, the striving horses, the English group of travellers,