The Crystal Hunters Part 76

"Eh? No," said the boy.

"Perhaps I am wrong, then," said the guide. "I thought the tent had been interfered with, as if some one had touched it."

No more was said; but these words set Saxe thinking till it was bedtime, when Melchior startled him by saying quietly--

"Don't laugh at me, herr. I do try to be firm, and to set aside all the old stories of demons, dragons and goblins in the mountains. I wish the herr would have a watch kept again, for I am afraid that this gletscher valley is bewitched."

Saxe looked at him for a moment wonderingly, and then laughed.

"Don't let Mr Dale hear you talk like that," he said. "It will make him cross. He says there is no need to keep watch; and that it is so tiring."

Saxe had forgotten the incident in the conversation which ensued; and after the discussion of the plans for the ensuing day, he went to his sleeping-place to think about the blue-ice grotto at the bottom of the glacier where the milky stream issued, and lie wondering how far up they would be able to explore it, and whether it would be possible to get up as far as the creva.s.se out of which they had rescued the guide.

"Wouldn't be worth the trouble," he said to himself, in the middle of a yawn. "Plenty of crystals, but the wrong sort--ice crystals--won't keep."

It only seemed to be the next minute that he was sitting up in the darkness listening and realising that he had been asleep. He had been dreaming, he was sure, but had not the least idea what about; and all he knew now was that he was hot and thirsty.

He rose and quietly unfastened the little canvas fold which served as a door, and went out to find the kettle and have a good draught of water; but it was so mawkishly warm, that he turned from it in disgust, and began to ascend higher to where the little fall came, down, with its pure, icily cold stream.

The night was glorious, and as he looked up he felt that he had never seen so many or such large stars before. So grandly was the arch of heaven bespangled, that he stopped to gaze upward for a few minutes, till, the sensation of thirst growing more acute, he went on, with the towering wall of rock to right and left, and the moist odour of the falling water saluting his nostrils, as he went close up to where one tiny thread of water fell bubbling into a rocky basin, edged with moss-- the spot where water was obtained for regular use, its crystal purity tempting the thirsty to drink.

Saxe placed a hand on the rock on either side, bent down till his lips touched the surface, and then drank with avidity, every draught being delicious.

"Make any fellow sleep," he said to himself, as he raised his head; and he was in the act of pa.s.sing his hand across his wet lips, when he became suddenly petrified, and stood there motionless, gazing straight before him at a hideous object, apparently not a yard away. It looked misty and dim in the semi-darkness, but plain enough for the boy to see apparently a huge head resting in a pair of hands, which held the chin and pressed up the long loose cheeks on either side, curving up the monstrous mouth into a ghastly grin. The forehead was low, and the eyebrows were s.h.a.ggy, while from beneath them glared into his a great pair of glowing eyes, that flashed at times and sparkled in the starlight, which rained down on and through a bush of dark, tangled hair, a portion of which hung below the head on either side, and stood out wildly around.

There was no movement but in the eyes, and these literally held the boy, so that for a time he could do nothing but stare at the horrible-looking object, which seemed to come nearer to him--so near that it almost touched him; then receded, till it was almost invisible, and once more stood quite still.

But it was not moving, and Saxe still had sufficient command over self to know that this effect was produced by the mist from the fall being wafted between them by the soft night wind.

How long he stood bent forward there gazing at that horrible head Saxe did not know, but by degrees he began to shrink back slowly, getting farther and farther away, till he dared to turn and run with all his might to the tent door, and creep in, fully expecting that the monster was about to spring upon him till he was inside, when he fastened the canvas door with trembling fingers, and crept to his bed again, where he lay down quickly, with his breath sobbing and the perspiration standing in great drops upon his face. The sensation was upon him that the terrible being he had seen would begin breaking in through the canvas directly, and he lay there with one arm stretched out ready to wake up Dale for help at the first sound outside the tent.

As he now lay trembling there, he recalled Melchior's words about the valley being bewitched, the falling stones, the disappearance of the crystals; and he was fast growing into a belief that the old legends must be true, and that there really existed a race of horrible little beings beneath the earth, whose duty it was to protect the treasures of the subterranean lands, and that this was one of them on the watch to take the crystals from their hands. But in the midst of the intense silence of the night better sense began to prevail.

"It's all nonsense--all impossible," he muttered. "There are no such things, and it was all fancy. I must have seen a block of stone through the falling water, and I was half asleep and nearly dreaming at the time. Why, if I were to wake Mr Dale and tell him, he would laugh at me. It was all a dream."

But, all the same, he lay shivering there, the aspect of the face having startled him in a way that at times enforced belief; and it was getting rapidly on toward morning when he once more fell asleep, to dream of that hideous head and see the terrible eyes gazing right into his own.

CHAPTER FORTY.

IN THE ICE-CAVE.

The sun was shining brightly on as lovely a morning as had fallen to their lot since they had been in the Alps; and upon Saxe springing up, his first act was to go up to the spring for his morning wash, and also to look at the stone which had so strongly resembled a head.

There was the clear basin from which he had drunk, and there were the places where he had rested his hands; but there was no stone that could by any possibility have looked like a head even in the darkness, and he returned at last to the tent feeling strangely uncomfortable, and in no good condition for his breakfast.

"Come, Saxe," cried Dale, as he sat eating his bread and fried bacon.

"Didn't you sleep well? Not unwell, are you?"

"I? No--oh no! Why?"

"Because you are making a very poor meal, and it will be many hours before we eat again."

Saxe went on with his breakfast; but somehow he did not enjoy it, and his thoughts were either occupied with the terrible face which stood out clear before him as he had seen it the previous night, or he was asking himself whether he should not take Melchior into his confidence, and ask him his opinion about what he had seen.

"I shall not want to stop here to-night," he said to himself. "It is too horrible to feel that a hideous creature like that is always close at hand."

"Now, then," cried Dale, breaking in upon his meditations; "pack up, and let's start for the bottom of the glacier. How long will it take us?"

"Nearly two hours, herr."

"We'll have some provisions for lunch, and take the big hammer and chisel: I shall want the rock marked, so that I can examine it when I come next year, or the year after."

The orders were obeyed, the tent closed up, water and fuel placed ready for their return, and Melchior led off with the mule to cut across a corner before descending to the edge of the ice.

Before they had gone a dozen yards there was a loud b-a-ah! from overhead, and the goat came bounding down from rock to rock in the most breakneck fashion; but it ended by leaping into their track, and ran up and b.u.t.ted its head against Saxe.

"How friendly that animal has become!" said Saxe, as they walked on, with the goat munching away and trotting beside them; till Dale said suddenly, "Here--we do not want it with us: send it back."

Saxe drove the goat away, but it took his movements as meaning play, and danced and skipped, and dodged him and then dashed by, and on ahead, the same gambols taking place at every attempt to send the animal back.

"There--let it be," cried Dale at last: "you'll tire yourself out before we fairly start. Why, it follows us like a dog! Perhaps it will get tired soon, and go back."

But the goat seemed to have no such intention, and it would have been a difficult task to tire out the active creature, which was now tickling the mule's ribs with one of its horns, now scrambling up some steep piece of rock, now making tremendous leaps, and trotting on again as calmly as if it were thoroughly one of the party.

In due time the foot of the great glacier was reached, after a difficult scramble down the steep, smoothly polished rocks which shut it in on either side.

Here the mule was unloaded by a shabby amount of pasture, ice-axes and hammers seized, and the trio started over the level bed of the glacier streams, the main rivulet dividing into several tiny veins, which spread over the soft clayey earth brought down by the water. But this soon gave place to rock as they neared the piled-up ice, which looked to Saxe like huge ma.s.ses of dull white chalk, veined in every direction with blue.

As they advanced the rock became more and more smooth, looking as if the ice had only lately shrunk from its surface, but, on Melchior being referred to, he shook his head.

"Not in my time, herr. The ice is creeping farther down the valley every year."

"Well," said Dale; "we'll try and find out the rate of its progress by scoring the rock."

This was done in several places as they advanced toward the low arch of ice from which the stream poured forth; and Saxe rather shrank from this task, as it seemed to promise a long wade in chilling water.

But as they came close up, it was to find ample room beneath the glacier to pick their way in over the rock, with the stream on their right, where it had worn itself a channel in the course of ages.

Dale became immediately deeply interested in the structure of the ice and the state of the rock beneath the arch, at whose entrance he paused, while the guide under his instruction chipped marks at the edge of the stream by which he could test the rate of progress of the glacier.

This was very interesting from a scientific point of view; but it soon grew tedious to Saxe, who began to penetrate a little farther into the lovely blue grotto, whose roof was a succession of the most delicate azure tints.

"Don't go in too far alone," said Dale, looking up.

"No: I shall not go too far," replied Saxe; "and, besides, I am not alone."

He nodded laughingly toward the goat, which had followed him in without hesitation, sniffing at the running water, and then throwing up its horned head to gaze onward into the blue haze from which came the gurglings and strange whisperings of the water.