"Now what the deuce does he mean by that?" Urquhart thought to himself. Had Lucy told him anything? He didn't believe it. Impossible.

Women don't tell.

They had seven miles of snow, pretty soft by now, and steadily up hill. They bent themselves seriously to it, and found no occasion for talk. There were creva.s.ses--green depths of death--to be avoided.

Their guide, light-eyed for scares, seemed to know them all, and reserved his alarm for signs in the sky invisible to the party. He mended the pace, which became rather severe. Francis Lingen was distressed; Macartney kept back to give him company. Urquhart forged on ahead with the guide.

By four in the afternoon one at least of them was gruelled. That was Lingen. "If we don't get down after all, it'll go hard with Poplolly," Urquhart said to James. James replied, "Oh, we must get down. That's all nonsense." Urquhart said nothing, and they went on.

They reached a point where their guide, stopping for a moment, looked back at them and pointed forward with his staff. "Odde is over there,"

he said, and Urquhart added that he knew whereabouts they were. "If it were clear enough," he told them, "you might see it all lying below you like a map; but I doubt if you'll see anything." They pushed on.

Before the last slope, which was now close at hand, the ground became very bad. The creva.s.ses showed in every direction, raying out like cracks on an old bench. The guide was evidently anxious. He gave up all appearance of conducting his party and went off rapidly by himself. They waited for him in silence; but presently Urquhart said, "I bet you any money he won't want to go down."

"Don't he want to dine as much as we do?" said James.

"He doesn't want to break his neck," said Urquhart; "that's his little weakness."

"I sympathise with him," James said; "but I should like to know more before I turn back."

"You'll only know what he chooses to tell you," Urquhart answered.

Lingen was sitting on the snow.

The guide came back with firm steps. His eyes sought Urquhart's naturally.

"Well?" he was asked; and lifted his stock up.

"Impossible," he said.

"Why impossible?" James asked Urquhart, having none of the language, but guessing at the word.

Urquhart and the man talked; the latter was eloquent.

"He says," Urquhart told them, "that there's a great cornice, and a drop of forty feet or so. Then he thinks there's another; but he's not sure of that. He intends to go back. I knew he did before he went out to look. It's a beastly nuisance."

James looked at Lingen, who was now on his feet. "Well," he said, "what do you feel about it?"

Lingen, red in the face, said, "You'll excuse me, but I shall do what the guide proposes, though I admit to great fatigue. I don't think it would be right, under the circ.u.mstances, to do otherwise. I feel a great responsibility; but I gather that, in any case, he himself would decline to go down. You will think me timid, I dare say."

"No, no," James said. "That's all right, of course. Personally, I should be inclined to try the first cornice anyhow. There's always a chance, you know."

Urquhart looked at him keenly. "Do you mean that?" he asked him.

"Yes," James said. "Why do you ask?" Urquhart turned away. When he faced James again he was strangely altered. His eyes were narrower; lines showed beside his mouth. Temptation was hot in the mouth. "We'd better talk about it," he said, and jerked his head sideways.

James walked with him a little way. "What's all this mystery?" he asked.

"I wonder if you know what you are doing," Urquhart said; "I wonder if you know what this means. Do you know, for instance, that I don't care a d.a.m.n whether I break my neck or not, and on the whole would rather that you did than didn't? You ought to know it. But I'm asking you."

James kept his eyegla.s.s to his eye. "I think you are talking nonsense," he said, "but I don't suppose you intend it for nonsense.

You inspire me to say, taking you on your face value, that I shall try the first cornice. If it's a forty-foot drop, we ought to have rope enough."

Urquhart peered at him. "You mean what you say?"

"Certainly I do." Urquhart turned on his heel.

"All right," he said, and went over to the other two.

"Macartney and I are going down," he said to Lingen. "I don't at all blame you for going back, but I'll trouble you to see that this man does the needful to-morrow. The needful is to come out here as early as he can get over the ground, to see if we want him. He had better fire a gun, or shout. If we are alive we shall answer him. If we don't answer, he had better see about it. I don't want to scare you, but this is not a joke, and I can't afford to be misunderstood. Now I'm going to tell him all that in his own lingo."

Lingen took it very badly; but said nothing. Urquhart spoke vehemently to the guide, who raised his staff and appeared to be testifying to Heaven. He handed over the rope, the shovel, and the kit with an air of Pilate washing his hands.

"Now," Urquhart said to James, "we'll rope, and see if we can cut some steps through this thing. I've seen that done." James, dropping his eyegla.s.s, said that he was in his hands. Everybody was quiet, but they were all in a hurry.

Lingen came up to say good-bye. He was very much distressed, nearly crying. The guide, on the other hand, was chafing to be off. "If that chap calls himself a guide," said Urquhart, "he ought to be shot." The guide thereupon threw up his hands with a gesture of despair. Lingen said that he couldn't possibly go until he had seen them down. The guide, who was sullen and nervous, remained to help them. Even that seemed to be against his convictions.

They fixed one of the stocks in a creva.s.se; Urquhart roped. Then he went forward to the edge, or what seemed to be the edge, and having crawled on his belly so far as to be almost invisible, presently was seen to be standing up, then to fall to it with the shovel. He seemed to be cutting steps, and descending as he worked. Gradually he disappeared, and the pull on the rope began. They paid out cautiously and regularly--all seemed well. He might have had twenty feet of it; and then there was a sudden violent wrench at it, and it came back limp in Macartney's hands.

"He's gone," he said. Then he shouted with all his might. No answer came. They all shouted; the echoes rang round the waste, driven back on them from the hidden mountain tops. In the deathlike hush which followed one of them thought to hear an answering cry. Lingen heard it, or thought that he did, and began to haul up the rope. When they had the end of it in their hands it was found to be cut clean. "He did that himself," James said, then added, "I'm going down. Give me out this rope--for what it's worth." To Lingen he said, "Get back as quick as you can, and bring up some men to-morrow." Then, having secured himself, he went down the flawless snow slope, and they paid out the cord as he wanted it. He had no particular sensation of fear; he knew too little about it to have any. It is imaginative men who fear the unknown. True, the rope had been cut once, and might have to be cut again. If Urquhart had had to cut, it was because it had been too short. And now it would be shorter. But there was no time to think of anything.

The snow seemed to be holding him. He had got far beyond Urquhart's ledges, was upon the place where Urquhart must have slid rapidly down.

All was well as yet, but he didn't want to overshoot the mark. He kept his nerve steady, and tried to work it all out in his mind. If this were really a cornice it must now be very thin, he thought. He drove at it with his staff, and found that it was so. It was little more than a frozen crust. He kicked into it with his feet, got a foothold, and worked the hole bigger. Then he could peer down into the deep, where the shadows were intensely blue. It looked a fearful drop; but he saw Urquhart lying there, and went on. He descended some ten, or perhaps fifteen feet more, and found himself dangling in the air. He was at the end of the rope then. "I'll risk it," he said, and got his knife out.

He dropped within a few yards of Urquhart.

CHAPTER XXIII

JAMES AND JIMMY

Macartney found him lying very still; nothing, in fact, seemed to be alive but his eyes, which were wide open and missed nothing.

"You're hurt, I'm afraid. Can you tell me anything?"

Urquhart spoke in a curiously level tone. It seemed to give impartiality to what he said, as if he had been discussing the troubles of a man he hardly knew.

"Back broken, I believe. Anyhow, I can't feel anything. I'm sorry you came down after me."

"My dear fellow," said James, "what do you take me for?"

Those bright, all-seeing, steady eyes were fixed upon him. They had the air of knowing everything.

"Well, you knew what I _did_ take you for, anyhow, and so it would have been reasonable--"

"We won't talk about all that," James said. "Let me cover you up with something--and then I'll see what can be done about moving you."

Urquhart spoke indifferently about that. "I doubt if you can get down--and it's a good step to Odde. Four hours, I dare say."