"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 compass 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 crevasses."
"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 mass 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?"
"We must halloo," said Armine, attempting it.
"Yes, and we don't know when to begin! We can't go on all night, you know," said Jock; "and if we begin too soon, we may have no voice left just at the right time."
"It is half-past seven now," said Armine, looking at his watch. "The food was to be at seven, so they must have missed us by this time."
"They won't think anything of it till it gets dark."
"No. Give them till half-past eight. Somewhere about nine or half- past it may be worth while to yodel."
"And how awfully cold it will be by that time. And my foot is aching like fun!"
Armine offered to rub it, and there was some occupation in this and in watching the darkening of the evening, which was very gradual in the dense white fog that shut them in with a damp, cold, moist curtain of undeveloped snow.
The poor lads were thinly clad for a summer walk, Jock had left his plaid behind him, and they were beginning to feel only too vividly that it was past supper-time, when they could dimly see that it was past nine, and began to shout, but they soon found this severe and exhausting.
Armine suggested counting ten between each cry, which would husband their powers and give them time to listen for an answer. Yet even thus there was an empty, feeble sound about their cries, so that Jock observed-
"It's very odd that when there's no good in making a row, one can make it fast enough, and now when it would be of some use, one seems to have no more voice than a little sick mouse."
"Not so much, I think," said Armine. "It is hunger partly."
"Hark! That sounded like something."
Invigorated by hope they shouted again, but though several times they did hear a distant yodel, the hope that it was in answer to themselves soon faded, as the sound became more distant, and their own exertions ended soon in an utter breakdown-into a hoarse squeak on Jock's part and a weak, hungry cry on Armine's. Jock's face was covered with tears, as much from the strain as from despair.
"There!" he sighed, "there's our last chance gone! We are in for a night of it."
"It can't be a very long night," Armine said, through chattering teeth. "It's only a week to the longest day."
"Much that will matter to us," said Jock, impatiently. "We shall be frozen long before morning."
"We must keep ourselves awake."
"You little ass," said poor Jock, in the petulant inconsistency of his distress; "it is not come to that yet."
Armine did not answer at once. He was kneeling against the rock, and a strange thrill came over Jock, forbidding him again to say-"It was not come to that," but a shoot of aching pain in his ankle presently drew forth an exclamation.
Armine again offered to rub it for him, and the two arranged themselves for this purpose, the curtain of damp woolliness seeming to thicken on them. There was a moon somewhere, and the darkness was not total, but the dreariness and isolation were the more felt from the absence of all outlines being manifest. They even lost sight of their own hands if they stretched out their arms, and their light summer garments were already saturated with damp and would soon freeze. No part of their bodies was free from that deadly chill save where they could press against one another.
They were brave boys. Jock had collected himself again, and for some time they kept up a show of mirth in the shakings and buffetings they bestowed on one another, but they began to grow too stiff and spent to pursue this discipline. Armine thought that the night must be nearly over, and Jock tried to see his watch, but decided that he could not, because he could not bear to believe how far it was from day.