When He Arrived At The Foot
Of The Slope Below Me, I Was Kneeling On The Brink Ready To Assist
Him In Case He Should Be Unable To Reach The Top.
He looked up along
the row of notched steps I had made, as if fixing them in his mind,
Then with a nervous spring he whizzed up and passed me out on to the
level ice, and ran and cried and barked and rolled about fairly
hysterical in the sudden revulsion from the depth of despair to
triumphant joy. I tried to catch him and pet him and tell him how
good and brave he was, but he would not be caught. He ran round and
round, swirling like autumn leaves in an eddy, lay down and rolled
head over heels. I told him we still had far to go and that we must
now stop all nonsense and get off the ice before dark. I knew by the
ice-lines that every step was now taking me nearer the shore and soon
it came in sight. The head-land four or five miles back from the
front, covered with spruce trees, loomed faintly but surely through
the mist and light fall of snow not more than two miles away. The ice
now proved good all the way across, and we reached the lateral
moraine just at dusk, then with trembling limbs, now that the danger
was over, we staggered and stumbled down the bouldery edge of the
glacier and got over the dangerous rocks by the cascades while yet a
faint light lingered.
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