They four had walked up the mountain after breakfast from Kandersteg, bringing their bags for a couple of nights, the boys being anxious to go up the Altels the next day, as their time was nearly over and they were to be in school in ten days' time again. After luncheon and a good rest on the wooden bench outside the door, they began to stroll towards the Daubensee, along a path between desolate boulders, without vegetation, except a small kind of monkshood.

"I call this dreary," said the mother. "We don't seem to get a bit nearer the lake. I shall go home and write to Babie."

"I'll come back with you," said Johnny. "My mother will be looking for a letter."

"Not giving in already, Johnny," said Armine. "I can tell you I mean to get to the lake."

"The Friar is the slave of his note-book," said Jock. "When are we to have it--'Crags and Cousins,' or 'From Measles to Mountains'?"

"I don't want to forget everything," said Johnny, with true Kencroft doggedness.

"Do you expect ever to look at that precious diurnal again?"

"He will leave it as an heirloom to his grandchildren!"

"And they will say how slow people were in the nineteenth century."

"There will have been a reaction by that time, and they will only wonder how anybody cared to go up into such dreary places."

"Or perhaps they will have stripped them all, and eaten the glaciers up as ices and ice-creams!"

"I think I'll set up that as my pet anxiety," said their mother, laughing; "just as some people suffer from perplexity as to what is to become of the world when all the coal is used up! You are not turning on my account, are you, Johnny? I am quite happy to go back alone."

"No, indeed. I want to write my letter, and I have had enough," said John.

"Tired!" said Armine. "Poor old monk! Swiss air always makes me feel like a balloon full of gas. I could go on, up and up, for ever!"

"Well, keep to the path, and don't do anything imprudent," she said, turning back, the boys saying, "We'll only have a look down the pa.s.s!

Here, Chico! Chico! Chick! Chick!"

Chico, the little dog so disdainfully rejected by Elvira, had attached himself from the first to Jock. He had been in the London house when they spent a day there, and in rapture at the meeting had smuggled himself, not without his master's connivance, among the rugs and wrappers, and had already been the cause of numerous sc.r.a.pes with officials and travellers, whence sometimes money, sometimes politeness, sometimes audacity, bought off his friends as best they could.

There was a sort of grave fascination in the exceeding sternness of the scene--the grey heaps of stone, the mountains raising their shining white summits against the blue, the dark, fathomless, lifeless lake, and the utter absence of all forms of life. Armine's spirit fell under the spell, and he moved dreamily on, hardly attending to Jock, who was running on with Chico, and alarming him by feints of catching him and throwing him into the water.

They came to the gap where they expected to look over the pa.s.s, but it was blotted out by a mist, not in itself visible though hiding everything, and they were turning to go home when, in the ravine near at hand, the white ruggedness of the Wildstrube glacier gleamed on their eyes.

"I didn't know it was so near," said Jock. "Come and have a look at it."

"Not on it," said Armine, who had somewhat more Swiss experience than his brother. "There's no going there without a guide."

"There's no reason we should not get on the moraine," said Jock; and they presently began to scramble about among the rocks and boulders, trying to mount some larger one whence they might get a more general view of the form of the glacier. Chico ran on before them, stimulated by some reminiscence of the rabbit-holes of Belforest, and they were looking after him and whistling him back; Armine heard a sudden cry and fall--Jock had disappeared. "Never mind!" he called up the next instant.

"I'm all right. Only, come down here! I've twisted my foot somehow."

Armine scrambled round the rock over which he had fallen, a loose stone having turned with him. He had pulled himself up, but even with an arm round Armine's neck, he could not have walked a step on even ground, far less on these rough debris, which were painful walking even for the lightest, most springy tread.

"You must get to the inn and bring help," he said, sinking down with a sigh.

"I suppose there's nothing else to be done," said Armine, unwillingly.

"You'll have a terrible time to wait, unless I meet some one first. I'll be as quick as I can."

"Not too quick till you get off this place," said Jock, "or you'll be down too, and here, help me off with this boot first."

This was not done quickly or easily. Jock was almost sick with the pain of the effort, and the bruise looked serious. Armine tried to make him comfortable, and set out, as he thought, in the right direction, but he had hardly gone twenty steps before he came to a sudden standstill with an emphatic "I say!" then came back repeating "I say, Jock, we are close upon the glacier; I was as near as possible going down into an awful blue crack!"

"That's why it's getting so cold," said Jock. "Here, Chick, come and warm me. Well, Armie, why ain't you off?"

"Yes," said Armine, with a quiver in his voice, "if I keep down by the side of the glacier, I suppose I must come to the Daubensee in time."

"What! Have we lost the way?" said Jock, beginning to look alarmed.

"There's no doubt of that," said Armine, "and what's worse, that fog is coming up; but I've got my little compa.s.s here, and if I keep to the south-west, and down, I must strike the lake somewhere. Goodbye, Jock."

He looked white and braced up for the effort. Jock caught hold of him.

"Don't leave me, Armie," he said; "you can't--you'll fall into one of those creva.s.ses."

"You'd better let me go before the fog gets worse," said Armine.

"I say you can't; it's not fit for a little chap like you. If you fell it would be ever so much worse for us both."

"I know! But it is the less risk," said Armine, gravely.

"I tell you, Armie, I can't have you go. Mother will send out for us, and we can make no end of a row together. There's a much better chance that way than alone. Don't go, I say--"

"I was only looking out beyond the rock. I don't think it would be possible to get on now. I can't see even the ridge of stones we climbed over."

"I wish it was I," said Jock, "I'll be bound I could manage it!" Then impatiently--"Something must be done, you know, Armie. We can't stay here all night."

Yet when Armine went a step or two to see whether there was any practicability of moving, he instantly called out against his attempting to go away. He was in a good deal of pain, and high-spirited boy as he was, was thoroughly unnerved and appalled, and much less able to consider than the usually quieter and more timid Armine. Suddenly there was a frightful thunderous roar and crash, and with a cry of "An avalanche," the brothers clasped one another fast and shut their eyes, but ere the words "Have mercy" were uttered all was still again, and they found themselves alive!

"I don't think it was an avalanche," said Armine, recovering first. "It was most likely to be a great ma.s.s of ice tumbling off the arch at the bottom of the glacier. They do make a most awful row. I've heard one before, only not so near. Anyway we can't be far from the bottom of the glacier, if I only could crawl there."

"No, no;" cried Jock, holding him tight; "I tell you, you can't do it."

Jock could not have defined whether he was most actuated by fears for his brother's safety or by actual terror at being left alone and helpless. At any rate Armine much preferred remaining, in all the certain misery and danger, to losing sight of his brother, with the great probability of only being further lost himself.

"I wonder whether Chico would find mother," he said.

Jock brightened; Armine found an envelope in his pocket, and scribbled--

"On the moraine. Jock's ankle sprained--Come."

Then Jock produced a bit of string, wherewith it was fastened to the dog's collar, and then authoritatively bade Chico go to mother.

Alas! cleverness had never been Chico's strong point, and the present extremity did not inspire him with sagacity. He knew the way as little as his masters did, and would only dance about in an unmeaning way, and when ordered home crouch in abject entreaty. Jock grew impatient and threatened him, but this only made him creep behind Armine, put his tail between his legs, hold up his little paw, and look piteously imploring.

"There's no use in the little brute," sighed Jock at last, but the attempt had done him good and recalled his nerve and good sense.

"We are in for a night of it," he said, "unless they find us; and how are they ever to do that in this beastly fog?"