To Win or to Die Part 11

The sun was growing hotter minute by minute, and the reflections from the pure white ice almost painful. Already, too, its effects were becoming visible.

Just where the warm rays played on the edge of a gap whose lower portions were of an exquisite turquoise blue, tiny crystal-like drops were forming, and as Abel Wray gazed at them with straining eyes he saw two run together into one, which kept gradually increasing in size till it grew too heavy for its adhesion to last, and it fell out of sight.

Only a drop of water, but it was the end of May; the snows would be melting, and before long millions of such drops would have formed and run together to make trickling rivulets coursing along the snow; these would soon grow into rushing torrents, and the snow would fall away, and he would be free.

"What madness!" he groaned. "It will thaw rapidly till the sun is off, and then freeze once more, and perhaps another avalanche will come.

Yes, I shall be thawed out some day, and some one may come along in the future and find my bones."

He shuddered, for it was getting black within once more, and a delirious feeling of horror began to master him, bringing with it thoughts of what might come.

Bears would be torpid in their snow-covered lairs; but wolves!

He felt as if he could shriek aloud, and he had to set his teeth hard as his eyes rolled round and up and down the gorge in search of some wandering pack that would scent him out at once, and in imagination he went through the brain-paralysing horror of seeing them approach, with their red, hungry, glaring eyes, their foam-slavered lips and glistening teeth.

There they were, five, seven, nine of them, gliding over the snow a hundred yards away, their shadows cast by the sun upon the dazzling white surface, and he uttered a hoa.r.s.e cry and his head sank sideways as he closed his eyes in the reaction.

No wolves, only the few magnified shapes of a covey of snow grouse, the ryper of the Scandinavian land, which, after running for a while, rose and pa.s.sed over him with whirring wings, seeking the lower part of the valley, where the snow was swept away.

Abel drew a long, deep breath, and then set his teeth once more as he upbraided himself for his cowardice.

For was he not on the highway--the main track to the golden land; and was it not a certainty that before long other adventurers would pa.s.s that way?

What was that?

The prisoner listened, with every nerve on the strain, and it was repeated.

So great was the tension, that as soon as the sound came for the second time the listener uttered a wild shriek of joy. It was hardly a cry.

He had struggled to free himself from his icy bonds to go to his cousin's help, and awakened to the fact that he was helpless, and he had dared to despair, when all the time Dallas was alive and toiling hard to come and free him. The sensation of joy and delight was almost maddening, and he listened again.

There it was--a dull, low, indescribable sound which appealed to him all through, for he felt it more with his chest than with his ears. It was a kind of a jar which came through the snow, communicated from particle to particle, telegraphed to him by the worker below, and it told that Dallas was strong and well, and striving hard to get free.

How long would it take him to dig his way through? Not long, for he could not be so deep down now.

He waited, counting every stroke of the shovel, and a fresh joy thrilled the listener, for those light jars sent fresh hope in waves, telling him as they did that though he was so benumbed, his body must be full of sensation. It could not be deadened by the cold.

"Bah! I must naturally be a coward at heart," the poor fellow said to himself. "Dal's worth a dozen of me. _I_ think of helping him? Pooh!

it is always he who takes that _role_."

But his mind went back again to the one thought--How long would it take Dallas to dig his way out in spite of his wound? Not so very long--the strokes of the shovel came so regularly. But what an escape for both!

"Not free yet, though," muttered the prisoner. "That's right, work away, Dal. Your muscles were always stronger than mine. Get out and we'll reach the gold yet, and win the prize we came for.--I wonder whether he could hear me if I shouted!"

He bowed his head as far as he could, nearly touching the snow with his lips.

"Dal, ahoy! ahoy!" he shouted; and a few moments after came the answer, "Ahoy--ahoy-oy-oy!" from the icy rocks up the valley.

"Only the echoes," muttered Abel, as the sounds died away.

Then he started, for the hail came again, loud and clear, "Ahoy! Ahoy-- ahoy-oy-oy!" and then once more the echoes.

But the hail was from down the narrow valley, and these echoes were from above.

"Hurrah! Help coming!" cried Abel wildly. "Ahoy, there! Help!"

He wrenched his head round to utter the cry, and was conscious of a heavy pang in his injured throat. But what of that at such a time, when the cry was answered by another? "Ahoy! ahoy!" No deceiving echo, for in addition came, "Where are yer?" and that was echoed too.

Abel's lips parted to reply, but a chill of despair shot through every nerve once more, and he uttered a bitter groan.

There they were--there could be no doubt of it. The three cowardly, treacherous ruffians had escaped, and he was calling them to his help.

Not four hundred yards down the valley, plainly to be seen in the broad sunshine, all three of them, two dragging a heavily laden sledge, the other, the big-bearded ruffian, a short distance in front, in the act of putting his hands to his mouth to shout again:

"Where away, O?"

"Will they see me with just my head out like this? Yes, they are certain to, for they must come by here. Oh, Dal, Dal, old man, don't dig now. For heaven's sake, keep still: they're coming to finish their horrid work."

CHAPTER TEN.

A HUMAN FOSSIL.

"You be blowed!" cried a bluff cheery voice. "Eckers be jiggered!

Think I don't know the difference between a hecker an' a nail?"

"No."

"Don't I? I heered some one holloa, and as I don't believe in ghosts, I say some one must be here. Ahoy! where are you, mate?"

The speaker turned from his two companions, who were dragging the sledge up the slope of the snow-fall, and then smote one thigh heavily with the palm of his great hand.

"I'm blest!" he shouted, as he ran a few steps and dropped on one knee by Abel's head. "No, no; don't give in now, my lad. Hold up, and we'll soon have you out o' this pickle. Here, out with shovels and pecks, lads. Here's a director of the frozen meat company caught in his own trap. Specimen o' Horsestralian mutton froze hard and all alive O.

Here, mate, take a sup o' this."

The speaker unscrewed the top of a large flask, and held it to Abel's lips, trickling a few drops between them as the head fell back and the poor fellow nearly swooned away.

"That's your sort. Never mind its being strong. I'd put some snow in it, but you've had enough of that. Coming round, you are. What's it been--a heavy 'lanche?"

"Yes, yes," gasped Abel; "but never mind me."

"What! Want to be cut out carefully as a curiosity--fly-in-amber sort of a fellow?"

"No, no--my cousin! Buried alive, man. Hark! you can hear him digging underground." The great st.u.r.dy fellow, who bore some resemblance to ruddy-haired Beardy, sufficient in the distance and under the circ.u.mstances of his excitement to warrant Abel's misapprehension, stared at the snow prisoner for a few moments as if he believed him to be insane.

"He's off his 'ead, mates, with fright," he said in a low voice to his companions, who were freeing the shovels; but Abel heard him.

"No, no," he cried wildly. "I know what I am saying. Listen."

The great, frank-looking fellow laid his ear to the snow, and leaped up again.