Two Ropes Were Made Fast To His Leather Belt And He Bore
The End Of A Third One In His Hand To Tie To The Victim
In Case He Found Him.
He was lowered into the crevice,
he descended deeper and deeper between the clear blue
walls of solid ice, he approached a bend in the crack
and disappeared under it.
Down, and still down, he went,
into this profound grave; when he had reached a depth
of eighty feet he passed under another bend in the crack,
and thence descended eighty feet lower, as between
perpendicular precipices. Arrived at this stage of one
hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the glacier,
he peered through the twilight dimness and perceived
that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at
a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost
in darkness. What a place that was to be in - especially
if that leather belt should break! The compression
of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow;
he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make
them hear. They still lowered him, deeper and deeper.
Then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could;
his friends understood, and dragged him out of those icy jaws
of death.
Then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down
two hundred feet, but it found no bottom. It came up
covered with congelations - evidence enough that even if
the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones,
a swift death from cold was sure, anyway.
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