It was some time, though, before the narrative was continued, and then it was with this preface.
“Don’t laugh at me, old chap. The shock of all this has made me as weak and hysterical as a girl. I say, I’m jolly glad it’s so dark.”
“Laugh at you!”
“I say, if you speak in that way I shall break down altogether. That fellow choked a lot of the man out of me, and then the excitement, and on the top of it this horrible burying alive—it has all been too much for me.”
“Go on—go on.”
“Yes, yes, I will. I told you the idea came, but I didn’t say a word to my cousin for fear he should think it mad; and as to hinting at such a thing to the dear old aunt, I felt that it would half kill her. I made up my mind that she should not know till I was gone.
“Well, I went straight to the ‘Hard Nut’—that’s Uncle Morgan. We always called him the nut that couldn’t be cracked—the roughest, gruffest old fellow that ever breathed, and he looked so hard and sour at me that I wished I hadn’t gone, and was silent. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose you two boys mean to think about something besides cricket and football now. You’ve got to work, sir, work!’”
“Hah!” sighed the listener.
“‘Yes, uncle,’ I said, ‘and I want to begin at once.’
“‘Humph!’ he said. ‘Well, that’s right. But what do you want with me?’
“‘I want you to write me a cheque for a hundred pounds.’
“‘Oh,’ he said, in the harsh, sneering way in which he always spoke to us boys; for he didn’t approve of us being educated so long. He began work early, and made quite a fortune. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘do you? Hadn’t I better make it five?’
“‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought it all out. One hundred will do exactly.’
“‘What for?’ he said with a snap.
“‘I’m off to Klondike.’
“‘Off to Jericho!’ he snarled.
“‘No, to Klondike, to make a fortune for the poor old aunt.’
“‘Humph!’ he grunted, ‘and is Dallas going with you to make the second fool in the pair?’
“‘No, uncle,’ I said; ‘one fool’s enough for that job. Dal will stop with his mother, I suppose, and try to keep her. I’m nobody, and I’ll take all risks and go.’
“‘Yes, one fool’s enough, sir,’ he said, ‘for a job like that. But I don’t believe there is any gold there.’
“‘Oh, yes, there is, sir,’ I said.
“‘What does Dallas say?’
“‘Nothing. He doesn’t know, and he will not know till aunt gets my letter, and she tells him.’
“‘As if the poor old woman hadn’t enough to suffer without you going off, sir,’ he said.
“‘But I can’t stop and live upon her now, uncle.’
“‘Of course you can’t, sir. But what about the soldiering, and the scarlet and gold lace?’
“‘Good-bye to it all, sir,’ I said with a gulp, for it was an awful knockdown to a coxcomb of a chap like I was, who had reckoned on the fine feathers and spurs and the rest of it.
“‘Humph!’ he grunted, ‘and you think I am going to give—lend you a hundred pounds to go on such a wild goose chase?’
“‘I hope so, uncle,’ I said.
“‘Hope away, then; and fill yourself with the unsatisfactory stuff, if you like. No, sir; if you want to go gold-digging, shoulder your swag and shovel, pick and cradle, and tramp there.’
“‘How?’ I said, getting riled, for the old nut seemed harder than ever. ‘I can’t tramp across three thousand miles of ocean. I could hardly tramp over three thousand miles of land, and when I did reach the Pacific, if I could, there’s the long sea journey from Vancouver up to Alaska, and another tramp there. No, uncle,’ I said, ‘it isn’t to be done. I’ve gone into it all carefully, and cut it as fine as I might, it will take fifty pounds for outfit and carriage to get to Klondike.’
“‘Fifty! Why, you said a hundred,’ he growled. ‘That’s coming down. Want the other fifty to play billiards and poker?’
“‘No, I don’t,’ I said, speaking as sharply as he did; ‘I want that fifty pounds to leave with poor old aunt. I can’t and won’t go and leave her penniless.’”
“Ah!” sighed the listener—almost groaned.
“Well, wouldn’t you have done the same?”
“Yes, yes. Go on—go on.”
“There isn’t much more to tell. I’m pretty close to the end. What do you think the old boy said?”
“I know—I know,” came back in a whisper.
“That you don’t,” cried the narrator, who, in spite of their horrible position, burst out into a ringing laugh. “He just said ‘Bah!’ and came at me as if he were going to bundle me out of the door, for he clapped his hands on my shoulders and shook me fiercely. Then he banged me down into a chair, and went to one of those old, round-fronted secretary desks, rolled up the top with a rush, took a cheque-book out of a little drawer, dashed off a cheque, signed and blotted it, and thrust it into my hand.
“‘There, it’s open,’ he said. ‘You can get it cashed at the bank, and send your aunt the fifty as soon as you’re gone. Be off at once, and don’t say a word to a soul. Here; give me back that cheque.’
“I gave it back to him.
“‘Now, swear you won’t tell a soul I lent you that money, nor that you are going off!’
“‘I give you my word of honour, uncle.’
“‘That’ll do,’ he said. ‘Catch hold, and be off. It’s a loan, mind. You bring back a couple of sacks full of nuggets, and pay me again.’
“‘I will, uncle,’ I said, ‘if I live.’
“‘If you live!’ he said, staring at me. ‘Of course you’ll live. I’m seventy, and not near done. You’re not a score. Be off.’
“And I came away and never said a word.”
“But you sent the fifty pounds to your poor old aunt?”
“Why, of course I did; but I shall never pay old ‘Hard Nut with the Sweet Kernel’ his money back. God bless him, though, and I hope he’ll know the reason why before he dies.”
“God bless him! yes,” said the listener, in a deep, low voice that sounded very strange, and as if the speaker could hardly trust himself to speak.
Then they lay together in the darkness and silence for a time, till Abel Wray made an effort and said in his harsh, husky voice:
“There, that’s all. Makes a fellow feel soft. Think it’s midnight yet?”
“No, no,” was whispered.
“I’ll strike a match and see.”
“No. We want every mouthful of air to breathe, or I should have struck one long ago.”
“Of course. I never thought of it once. Sleepy?”
“No.”
“Then fair play. Tell me your story now.”
“There is no need. But tell me this; am I awake? Have you told me all this, or have I dreamed it?”
“I’ve told you it all, of course.”
“Am I sane, or wandering in my head? It can’t be true. I must be mad.”
“Then I am, too. Bah! as Uncle Morgan said. Come, play fair; tell me how you came here?”
“The same way as you did, and to get gold.”
“Well, so I supposed. There, just as you like. I will not press you to tell me.”
“I tell you there is no need. For your story is mine. We thought as brothers with one brain; we made the same plan; we travelled with the same means; we supplied the dear old aunt and mother from the same true-hearted source. Bel, old lad, don’t you know me? It is I, Dal, and we meet like this!”
“Great heaven!” gasped Abel, in his low, husky whisper. “It has turned his brain. Impossible! Yes, that is it; the air is turning hot and strange at last, and this has driven me mad. It is all a wandering dream.”
“It is no wandering dream, Bel. I tell you I seem to have been inspired to do exactly the same as you did, and I went to Uncle Morgan, who treated me just as he treated you.”
“Yes, a dream—off my head,” said Abel Wray, in his harsh whisper.
“No, no, old fellow,” cried Dallas; “it is all true. Uncle was never so strange to me before. It was because you had been to him first. It is wonderful. Your voice is so changed I did not know it, and in the darkness I never saw your face.”
“Yes—delirious,” croaked Abel. “They say it is so before death.”
“Nonsense, nonsense, lad! I came back just in time to save you, and now we have been saved, too, from a horrible death. After a bit we shall be stronger, and shall be able to see which way to begin tunnelling our way out to life again. Cheer up; we have got through the worst, and as soon as we are free we’ll join hands and work together, so that we can show them at home that we have not come out in vain. How are you now?”
A low rumbling utterance was the reply, and Dallas leaned towards him, feeling startled.
“Don’t you hear me?” he cried. “Why don’t you answer?”
“Dear old Dal—to begin dreaming of him now,” came in a low muttering.
“No, no; I tell you that it is all true.”
“All right, uncle,” croaked Abel. “Not an hour longer than it takes to scrape together enough. Ha, ha, ha! and I thought you so hard and brutal to me. Eh? But you’re not. It was a dreadful take in. I say!”
“Yes, yes, old fellow. What?”
“Don’t say a word to dear old Dal. Let him stop and take care of aunt, and let them think I’ve shuffled out of the trouble. I’ll show them when I come back.”
“Bel, old fellow,” cried Dallas, seizing his cousin’s hand, “what is it? Don’t talk in that wild way.”
“That’s right, uncle,” croaked Abel. “We two used to laugh about you and call you the Hard Nut. So you are; but there’s the sweet white kernel inside, and I swear I’ll never lie down to sleep again without saying a word first for you. I say, one word,” cried the poor fellow, grasping his cousin’s hand hard: “you’ll do something for old Dal, uncle? I’ll pay you again. I don’t want to see him roughing it as I shall out there for the gold—yes, for the gold—the rich red gold. Ah, that’s cool and nice.”
For in his horror and alarm Dallas had laid a hand upon his cousin’s temples, to find them burning: but the poor fellow yielded to the gentle pressure, and slowly subsided on to the rough couch they had made, and there he lay muttering for a time, but starting at intervals to cough, as if his injured throat troubled him with a choking sensation, till his ravings grew less frequent, and he sank into a deep sleep.
“This is worse than all!” groaned Dallas. “Had I not enough to bear? His head is as if it were on fire. Fever—fever from his injury and the shock of all he has gone through. I thought he was talking wildly towards the last.”
As he spoke he was conscious of a sharp throbbing pang in his shoulder, and he laid a hand upon the place that he had forgotten; while now he woke to the fact that when he tried to think what it would be best to do for his cousin, the effort was painful, and the sensation came back that all this must be a feverish dream.
He clapped his hands to his face. It and his brow were burning hot, and he knew that he was growing confused; so much so that he rose to his knees, then to his feet, and took a step or two, to stand wondering, for his senses left him for a moment or two, and then a strange thing befell him. A black veil seemed to have fallen in front of his eyes, and he was lost, utterly lost, and he had not the least idea where he was or what had been taking place during the past twenty-four hours.
He stretched out his hands and touched the compressed snow, which was dripping with moisture; but that gave him no clue, for his mind seemed to be a perfect blank, and with a horrible feeling of despair he leaned forward to try and escape from the black darkness, when his burning brow came in contact with the icy wall of his prison, and it was like an electric shock.
His position came back in a flash. Self was forgotten, and he sank upon his knees to feel for his cousin, horror-stricken now by the great dread that the poor fellow might die with him by his side quite unable to help.
He forgot that but a short time back he was advocating a brave meeting of their fate. For since he had awakened to the fact that his boyhood’s companion was with him, hope had arisen, and with it the determination to wait patiently till morning and then fight their way back to the light. Now all seemed over. Abel was terribly injured, fever had supervened, and he would die for want of help; while he, who would freely have given his life that Abel might live, was utterly helpless, and there was that terrible sensation of being lost coming on again.
He pressed his head against the snow, but there was no invigorating sense of revival again—nothing but a curious, worrying feeling. Then he was conscious for a few moments that Abel was muttering loudly, but the injury to his shoulder was graver than he had imagined, and the feverish symptoms which follow a wound were increasing, so that before long he too had sunk into a nightmare-like sleep, conscious of nothing but the strange, bewildering images which haunted his distempered brain; and these were divided between his vain efforts to flee from some terrible danger, and to drag the heavily laden hand-sledge between two ice-covered rocks too close together to allow it to pass.
“Yes! Yes! What is it?” Somebody had spoken in the black darkness, but it was some minutes before Dallas Adams could realise the fact that the words came from his own lips.
Then he heard a faint whisper from somewhere close by, and he was this time wide awake, and knew that he was answering that whisper.
“Where am I? What place is this?”
The question had come to him in his sleep, and for a few moments, so familiar were the sounds, he felt that he must have the tubes of a phonograph to his ears, and he listening to the thin, weird, wiry tones of his cousin’s voice.
Then, like a flash, all came back, and he knew not only that he had been asleep, but everything that had happened some time before.
“Bel, old lad,” he said huskily, and he winced with pain as he tried to stretch out his left hand.
“Ah!” came again in the faint whisper, “That you, Dal?”
“Yes, yes. How are you now?”
“Then it isn’t all a delirious dream?”
“No, no; we have been brought together almost miraculously.”
“Thank God—thank God!” came feebly. “I thought I had been off my head. Have I been asleep?”
“Yes, and I fell asleep too. My wound made me feverish, and we must have been lying here ever so long in the dark.”
“Your wound, Dal?”
“Yes; I had almost forgotten it in what we had to go through, but one of the scoundrels shot me. It is only a scratch, but my arm seems set fast.”
“Ah! Do you think they were buried alive too?” came in an eager whisper.
“Who can say, old fellow? But never mind that. How do you feel? Think you can help me?”
“Tie up your wound?”
“No, no. Help me try and dig our way out.”
“I think so. My head feels a bit light, but it’s my throat that is bad—all swollen up so that I can only whisper.”
“Never mind your throat so long as you can use your arms.”
“Think we can dig our way out?”
Dallas uttered a little laugh.
“Why not?” he said. “There is a pick and shovel on my sledge.”
“Ah, yes, and on mine too.”
“We were out of heart last night,” continued Dallas, encouragingly, “and in the scare thought we were done for. But we can breathe; we shall not suffer for want of food; the melted snow will give us drink; and once we can determine which way to dig, what is to prevent our finding our way to daylight again?”
“Our position,” said Abel, in his faint whisper. “Where are we to put the snow we dig out?”
Dallas was silent for a few moments.
“Yes,” he said at last; “that will be a difficulty, for we must not fill up this place. But never mind that for the present. We must eat and drink now, for we shall want all our strength. Pressed snow is almost like ice. Ah, here is the sledge—mine or yours. My head is too thick to tell which. Bel, lad, we are going to dig our way out, if it takes us a month.”
“Yes,” came rather more strongly; and the next minute Dallas Adams was feeling about the sledge for the tin which held the traveller’s food.
It was hard work fumbling there in the dark, for parts of the sledge were pressed and wedged down by snow that was nearly as hard as ice; but others were looser, and by degrees he managed to get part of the tin free, when he started, for something touched his arm.
“Can I help you, Dal?”
“How you made me jump, lad! I don’t know. Feel strong enough?”
“I think so; but I want to work. It’s horrible lying there fancying the top of this hole is going to crumble down every time you move some of the snow.”
“Lay hold here, then, and let’s try and drag this tin out.”
They took hold of it as well as their cramped position would allow, and tugged and tugged, feeling the tin case bend and grow more and more out of shape; but it would not come.
“No good,” said Dallas. “I’ll cut through the tin with my knife.”
“But it’s looser now. Let’s have one more try.”
“Very well.—Got hold?—Now then, both together.”
They gave a sudden jerk, and fell backward with the once square tin case upon them, lying still and horrified, for there was a dull creaking and crushing noise as if the snow was being pressed down to fill up the vacancy they had made, and then crick, crack, sharply; there was the sound of breaking, as portions of the sledge gave way from the weight above.
Abel caught his cousin’s hand to squeeze it hard, fully expecting that their last moments had come; but after a minute’s agony the sounds ceased, and the prisoners breathed more freely.
“It’s all right, Bel,” said Dallas; “but it did sound rather creepy.”
“Hah!” ejaculated Abel. “I thought—”
“Yes, so did I, old fellow; but it’s a mistake to think at a time like this. We only frighten ourselves. Now then, let’s see what we’ve got.”
“See?” said Abel bitterly.
“Yes, with the tips of our fingers. It’s all right, I tell you; rats and mice and rabbits don’t make a fuss about being in burrows.”
“They’re used to it, Dal; we’re not.”
“Then let’s get used to it, lad. I say, suppose we were getting gold here, instead of a biscuit-tin; we shouldn’t make a fuss about being buried. Why, it’s just what we should like.”
“I suppose so,” replied Abel.
“It’s what we shall have to do, perhaps, by-and-by. This is a sort of lesson, and it will make the rest easy.”
“If we get out.”
“Get out? Pish! We shall get out soon. The sun and the rain will thaw us out if we don’t dig a way. Hullo! The lid’s off the tin, and the biscuits are half of them in the snow. Never mind. Set to work and eat, while I pick up all I can find. I’m hungry. Peck away, lad, and think you’re a squirrel eating your winter store. I say, who would think one could be so warm and snug surrounded by snow?”
Abel made no reply, but tried to eat, as he heard the cracking and crunching going on at his side. It was hard work, though, and he went on slowly, for the effort to swallow was accompanied by a good deal of pain, and he ceased long before Dallas gave up.
“How are you getting on?” the latter said in an encouraging tone.
“Badly.”
“Yes, they are dry; but wait till we get our gold. We’ll have a banquet to make up for this. By Jove!”
“What is it?”
“I forgot about your throat. It hurts?”
“Horribly. But I can manage.”
Dallas said no more, but thought a great deal; and after placing the tin aside he turned to the sledge to try whether he could not get at the shovel bound to it somewhere, for the package was pressed all on one side by the snow.
After a long search he found one corner of the blade, and drawing his big sharp knife, he set to work chipping and digging with the point, with the result that in about an hour he dragged out the tool.
“Now,” he said, “we can get to work turn and turn. The thing is, where to begin, for I have not seen the slightest glimmer of light.”
“No; we must be buried very deep.”
“Say pretty deep. Which way shall we try?”
“Up by the rock, and slope upward where the air seems to come.”
“That’s right. Just what I thought. And, look here, Bel, there’s room for a couple of cartloads of snow or more about us here, and my plan is this: one will dig upward, and of course the snow will fall down of its own weight. As it comes down the other must keep filling that biscuit-tin and carrying it to the far end yonder and emptying it.”
“And bury the sledge and the food.”
“No: we can get a great deal disposed of before we come to that. Look here—I mean, feel here. We have plenty of room to stand up where we are. Well, that means that we can raise the floor. So long as we have room to lie down, that is all we want.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“After a while we must get out all the food we want and take it with us in the tunnel we make higher and higher as we go.”
“Yes, that sounds reasonable,” said Abel thoughtfully. “We shall be drawing the snow down and trampling it hard beneath our feet.”
“And, I believe, be making a bigger chamber about us as we work up towards the light.”
“Keeping close to the face of the rock, too,” said Abel, “will ensure our having one side of our sloping tunnel safe. That can never cave in.”
“Well done, engineer!” cried Dallas laughingly. “Here were we thinking last night of dying. Why, the very remembrance of the way in which animals burrow has quite cheered me up.”
“That and the thought that we may have to mine underground for our gold,” replied Abel. “Shall I begin?”
“No; you’re weak yet, and it will be easier to clear away my workings.”
Without another word the young man felt his way to the end of their little hole, tapped the rock with the shovel, and then stood perfectly still.
“What is it?” asked Abel.
“I was trying to make out where the air comes from, and I think I have hit it. I shall try and slope up here.”
Striking out with the shovel and trying to cut a square passage for his ascent, he worked away for the next hour, the snow yielding to his efforts much more freely than he had anticipated; and as he worked Abel tried hard to keep up with him, filling the tin, bearing it to the other end beyond the sledges, and piling up the snow, trampling down the loads as he went on.
Twice over he offered to take his cousin’s place; but Dallas worked on, hour after hour, till both were compelled to give up from utter exhaustion, and they lay down now in their greatly narrowed cave to eat.
This latter had its usual result, and almost simultaneously they fell asleep.
How long they had been plunged in deep slumber, naturally, they could not tell. Night and day were the same to them; and as Dallas said, from the hunger they felt they might have been hibernating in a torpid state for a week, for aught they knew.
They ate heartily of the biscuits, Abel’s throat being far less painful, and once more the dull sound of the shovel began in a hollow, muffled way.
A couple of hours must have passed, at the end of which time so much snow had accumulated at the foot of the sloping shaft that Dallas was compelled to descend and help his fellow-prisoner.
“This will not do,” he said. “We must get out some more provisions before we bury the sledges entirely.”
“There is enough biscuit to keep us alive for a couple of days,” replied Abel. “Let us chance getting out, and not stop to encumber ourselves with more provisions.”
“It is risky, but I fancy that I am getting nearer the air. Go up and try yourself.”
Abel went up the sloping tunnel to the top with ease, Dallas having clipped steps out of the ice, and after breathing hard for a few minutes the younger man came down.
“You must be getting nearer the top. I can breathe quite freely there.”
“Yes, and the snow is not so hard.”
“Chance it, then, and go on digging,” said Abel eagerly. “I will get the snow away. I can manage so much more easily if I may put it down anywhere. It gets trampled with my coming and going.”
Dallas crept up to his task once more and toiled away, till, utterly worn out, both made another meal and again slept.
Twice over this was repeated, and all idea of time was lost; still they worked on, cheered by the feeling that they must be nearing liberty. However, the plan arranged proved impossible in its entirety, the rock bulging out in a way which drove the miner to entirely alter the direction of his sap. But the snow hour after hour grew softer, and the difficulty of cutting less, till all at once, as Dallas struck with his spade, it went through into a cavity, and a rush of cool air came into the sloping tunnel.
“Heavenly!” cried the worker, breathing freely now. “I’ll slip down, Bel. You must come up and have a mouthful of this.”
He descended to the bottom, and Abel took the spade and went to his place.
“The shovel goes through quite easily here,” he said excitedly.
“Yes, and what is beyond?” shouted Dallas. “Can you see daylight?”
“No; all is black as ink. It must be a hole in the snow. We must get into it, for the air comes quite pure and fresh, and that means life and hope.”
In his excitement he struck out with the shovel twice, and had drawn it back to strike again, when there was a dull heavy crack, and he felt himself borne sidewise and carried along, with the snow rising up and covering his face.
The next minute, as he vainly strove to get higher, the movement ceased, and he felt himself locked in the embrace of the snow, while his breathing stopped.
Only for a moment, before the hardening crystal which surrounded his head dropped away, and a rush of pure air swept over him and seemed to bring back life.
Then the sliding movement entirely ceased, and he wildly shouted his cousin’s name.
His voice echoed from somewhere above, telling him that, though a prisoner, he was free down to the shoulders, though his arms were pinned.
But there was no other reply to the call, and he turned sick and faint with the knowledge that Dallas must be once more buried deep, and far below.
Around all was black darkness, and in his agony another desperate effort was made; but the snow had moulded itself around him nearly to the neck, and he could not stir a limb.
The fit of delirium which once more attacked Abel Wray was merciful, inasmuch as it darkened his intellect through the long hours of that terrible night, and he awoke at last with the level rays of the sun showing him his position in a hollow of a tremendous waste of snow, while fifty yards away the sides of the rocky valley towered up many hundred feet above his head.
But it was daylight, and instead of the ravine seeming a place of horror and darkness, the snow-covered mountains flashed gloriously in the bright sunshine, whose warm glow brought with it hope and determination, in spite of the terrible sense of imprisonment, and the inability to move from the icy bonds. The great suffering was not bodily, but mental, and not selfish, for the constantly recurring question was, how was it with Dallas?
But the sunshine was laden with hope. Dallas was shut in again, but he had the tools and provisions with him, and he would be toiling hard to tunnel a way out, if—
Yes, there was that terrible “if.” But Abel kept it back; for it was quite possible that he might still be getting a sufficient supply of air to keep him alive.
How to lend him help?
There was the face of the vast cliff some fifty yards away, and it was close up to it that they had been first buried, the fresh collapse, when the snow had fallen away and borne him with it, having taken him the above distance. It was probable, then, that Dallas would not be now very far below the glittering surface of the snow.
How to get at him?
Abel’s first thought was to free one arm. If he could do that he might possibly be able to get at his knife, dragging it from the sheath at his waist. Then the work would be comparatively easy, for he could dig away the partly consolidated snow in which he was cased, and throw it from him.
He set to, struggling hard, but without effect, for it seemed to him that he was only working with his will, his muscles refusing to help; and by degrees the full truth dawned upon him, that the absence of pain was due to the fact that his body was quite benumbed, and a horrible sensation of fear came over him, with the belief that all beneath the snow must be frozen, and that he could do absolutely nothing to save his life.
Even as he thought this the benumbed sensation seemed to be rising slowly towards his brain.
“In a short time all will be over,” he groaned aloud, “and poor Dal will be left there, buried, thinking I have escaped and have left him to his fate. Is there no way to escape from this icy prison?”
He wrenched his head round as far as he could, first on one side, and then on the other; but it was always the same—the narrow valley with its stupendous walls, no longer black and horrible with its unseen horrors in the darkness of the night, but a wondrous way to a city of towers and palaces gorgeous to behold. His eyes ached with the flashing beauties of the scene. It was not the golden Klondike of his dreams, but a land of silver, whose turrets and spires and minarets were jewelled with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds; whose shadows were of sapphire blue or darker amethyst; and whose rays flashed and mingled till he was fain to close his eyes and ask himself whether what he saw was part of some dazzling dream.
He looked again, to see that it was no vision, but a scene of beauty growing more and more intense as the sun rose higher. The darkness had fled to display these wonders; there was not a chasm or gully that was not enlightened—everywhere save within the sufferer’s darkened soul. There all was the blackness of despair.
But black despair cannot stay for long in the breast of youth. Hope began to chase it away, and inanimate though the body was, the brain grew more active, offering suggestion after suggestion as to how he might escape.
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 hoarse 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 passed 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 pass 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 rôle.”
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.”
“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 sturdy fellow, who bore some resemblance to ruddy-haired Beardy, sufficient in the distance and under the circumstances 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.
“He’s right,” he roared excitedly. “There’s some one below—how many were with you, my lad?”
“Only my cousin—we were buried together—but don’t talk—dig, dig!”
“Yes, both of you, slip into it. Just here,” cried the big man, “while I get the pick and fetch this one out.”
“No, no, not there,” cried Abel frantically. “Dig yonder, there by the rock wall.”
“What, right over yonder? Sound’s here.”
“Go and listen there,” cried Abel.
“Can you hold out?”
“Yes, yes; hours now. Save my cousin; for heaven’s sake, quick!”
One of the men had gone quickly to the rocky wall, knelt down and listened, and shouted back.
“He’s right,” cried this latter. “You can hear some one moleing away quite plain.”
“Dig, dig!” shouted Abel, and two of the new-comers began at once, while the leader of the party went to their sledge and dragged a sharp-pointed miner’s pick from where it was lashed on.
“No, no,” cried Abel imploringly, as the man returned to his side; “save him.”
“You keep quiet, my lad. I’m a-going to save you.”
“But I can breathe,” cried Abel.
“So can he, or he couldn’t go on working. Two heavy chaps is quite enough to be tramping over his head. Don’t want my sixteen stone to tread it hard. Have a drop more o’ this ’fore I begin?”
“No, no! It is burning my mouth still.”
“Good job too: put some life into you, just when you looked as if you was going to bye-bye for good. Now then, don’t you be skeart. I know how to use a pick; been used to it in the Corn’ll tin-mines. I could hit anywhere to half a shadow round you without taking the skin off. I’ll soon have you out.”
He began at once, driving the pick into the compressed snow; but after the first half-dozen strokes, seeing how the fragments flew, he took off his broad-brimmed felt hat and laid it against Abel’s head as a screen. Then commencing again he made the chips fly in showers which glittered in the sunshine, as he walked backward, cutting a narrow trench with the sharp-pointed implement, taking the prisoner’s head as a centre and keeping about thirty inches distant, and so on, round and round till the channel he cut was as deep as the arm of the pick, and quite clear.
“Feel bad?” he said, pausing for a few moments.
“No, no,” cried Abel. “How are they getting on?”
“Better’n me. If we don’t look sharp your mate—what did you say he was—cousin?—’ll be out first.”
“I hope so,” sighed Abel.
“Now then, shut your eyes, my son,” cried the miner. “I’m going to cut from you now. Lean your head away as much as you can. I’ve cut the tire and felloes of the wheel; your head’s the nave; now I’m going to cut the spokes.”
Click, click, click, went the pick.
“Don’t you flinch, my son,” cried the man. “I won’t hit you.”
Abel had winced several times over, for the bright steel tool had whizzed by him dangerously close; but he grew more confident now, and, as much as he could for the sheltering hat, he watched the wonderful progress made by his rescuer, who at the end of a few minutes had deeply cut two more channels after the fashion of the spokes running from the centre to the periphery of the imaginary wheel.
After this, a few well-directed blows brought out the intervening snow in great pieces, and upon these being cleared out another clever blow broke the gathered snow right up to the young man’s left arm, leaving seven or eight inches below the shoulder clear.
“That’s your sort, my son,” cried the miner cheerily, chatting away, but keeping the pick flying the while. “The best way to have got you out would have been with a tamping iron, making a nice hole, dropping in a dynamite cartridge, and popping it off. That would have sent this stuff flying, only it might have blowed you all to bits, which wouldn’t have been pleasant. This is the safest way. How are you gettin’ on, mates?”
“All right. He’s ’live enough, Bob.”
“Work away, then. Look here, my son, I did think of spoking you all round, but I’m beginning to think it’ll be better to keep on at you this side, and then take you out of your mould sidewise like. There won’t be so much cutting to do, and you’ll have one side clear sooner. What do you say?”
“I want you to go and help your companions,” replied Abel faintly.
“Then I’m sorry I can’t oblige you,” cried the man cheerily. “Look at that now! This fresh stuff hasn’t had time to get very hard. After a few thawings and freezings it would be like clear solid ice. It’s pretty firm, but—there’s another. Soon let daylight down by your ribs. I want to get that hand and arm clear first so as you can hold the hat to shade your face.”
And all the time he chatted away, coolly enough, the pick was wielded so dexterously, every blow being given to such purpose, that he cut out large pieces of the compressed snow and hooked them out of the rapidly growing hole.
It was the work of a man who had toiled for years amongst the granite deep down in the bowels of the earth, and experience had taught him the value of striking so as to save labour; but all the same the task was a long one, and it grew more difficult the deeper down he went.
“’Bliged to make the hole bigger, my son,” he said; “but you hold up; I sha’n’t be long now. I say, how deep down do you go? Are you a six-footer?”
“No, I’m only about five feet eight,” said Abel, whose face looked terribly pained and drawn.
“Aren’t you now?” said the man coolly. “I should ha’ thought by the look of your head and chest that you were taller. Been a longer job with me. I’m over six foot three, and good measure. There, now that arm’s clear, aren’t it? Can you lift it out?”
Abel shook his head sadly.
“There is no use in it,” he said faintly.
“Might ha’ knowed it. Bit numb like with the cold. But you keep a good heart, and I’ll have you out. It’s only a bit o’ work, and no fear of caving in on us. Just child’s play like. There’s one arm clear, and a bit of your side, and the rest’ll soon follow.”
The man paused in the act of getting the the top off the spirit-flask, and shouted to his companions, “Hoi! Here, quick, lads, and help me here. My one’s going out.”
For a ghastly look crossed Abel’s face, his eyes grew fixed, as they half-closed, and his head fell over on one side.
The two men who had been fighting hard to reach Dallas, the sound of whose strokes seemed nearer than ever, rushed to their companion, who had begun chafing the buried man’s face and temples, with the result that Abel raised his head again and looked wildly round.
“I thought he was a goner, my sons,” whispered the big fellow. “Go on back to your chap; I’ll manage here.”
The two men, who were excited by their task, rushed back again, and their companion moistened Abel’s lips.
The man began to work his pick again with wonderful rapidity, enlarging the hole, and every now and then giving a furtive glance at the prisoner and another in the direction where his companions were tearing out the icy snow.
The great drops stood on the big Cornishman’s face as he toiled away, enlarging the hole down beside Abel Wray, and all the time he kept up a cheery rattle of talk about how useful a tool a pick was, and how the lad he was helping—and whom he kept on calling “my son”—ought to have brought one of the same kind for the gold working to come; but the look in his big grey eyes looked darker and more sombre as he saw a grey aspect darkening the countenance of the prisoner—the air he had seen before in the faces of men whom he had helped to rescue after a fall of roof in one of the home mines.
“He’ll be a goner before I get him out if I don’t mind,” he said to himself, and the pick rattled, and the icy snow flashed as he struck here and there, only ceasing now and then to stoop and throw out some big lump which he had detached.
“Better fun this, my son,” he said with a laugh, “if all this was rich ore to be powdered up. Fancy, you know—gold a hundredweight to the ton. Rather different to our quartz rock at home, with just a sprinkle of tin that don’t pay the labour.
“Hah!” he cried at last, from where he stood in the well-like shaft he had cut, and threw down his pick on the snow. “Now you ought to come.”
He rose, took hold of Abel as he spoke, and found that his calculations were right, for very little effort was required to draw him forward from out of the snowy mould in which he was belted; and the next minute the poor fellow lay insensible upon the snow, with his rescuer kneeling by him, once more trickling spirit between the blue lips.
“Can’t swallow,” muttered the man, and he screwed up the flask, and set to work rubbing his patient vigorously, regardless of what was going on beneath the rocky wall, till there was a loud cheer, and his two companions came towards him, each holding by and shaking hands heartily with Dallas Adams. For they had mined down to where they could meet him as he toiled upward to escape; and the first words of Dallas, when he was drawn out hot and exhausted, were a question about his cousin.
The pair set at liberty joined in now in the endeavour to resuscitate the poor fellow lying on the snow. Their sledge was unpacked, double blankets laid down, and the sufferer lifted upon them, friction liberally applied to the limbs, and at last they had the satisfaction of seeing him unclose his eyes, to stare blindly for a time. Then consciousness returned, there was a look of joy flashing out, and he uttered the words hoarsely:
“Dal! Saved!”
“Yes, yes, all right, old lad, thanks to these true fellows here. How are you?”
“Arms, hands, and legs burning and throbbing horribly. I can hardly bear the pain.”
The big Cornishman laughed.
“Only the hot-ache, my son,” he said merrily. “That’s a splendid sign. You’re not frost-bitten.”
“God bless you for all you have done,” cried Abel, catching at the big fellow’s hand. “I couldn’t hold out any longer.”
“Of course you couldn’t. Why, your pluck was splendid.”
“Thank him, Dal,” cried Abel. “He has saved my life.”
“Yah! Fudge! Gammon! Stuff! We don’t want no thanking. You two lads would have done the same. We don’t want to be preached at. Tommy Bruff, my son, what do you say to a fire, setting the billy to boil, and a bit o’ brax’uss?”
“Same as you do, laddie. Cup o’ tea’ll be about the right thing for these two.”
There was plenty of scrub pine at hand, swept down by the snow-fall, and sticking out here and there. Axes were got to work, and soon after the two sufferers were seated, covered with fur-lined coats, and revelling in the glow of the fire, over which a big tin was steaming, while their new friends were busy bringing out cake, bread, tea, and bacon from their store in the partly unpacked sledge.
The big, bearded Cornishman had started a black pipe, and while his companions replenished the fire and prepared for the meal, he sat on a doubled-up piece of tarpaulin, and wiped, dried, and polished picks, shovels, and axes ready for repacking. Every now and then he paused to smile a big, happy, innocent-looking smile at the two who had been rescued, just as if he thoroughly enjoyed what had been done, and then, suddenly dropping the axe he was finishing, caught up a little measure of dry tea, and shouting, “There, she boils!” tossed it into the tin over the fire, lifted it off, and set it aside, and then laid the freshly polished tools on the sledge.
Soon after, refreshed by the tins of hot tea, the rescued pair were able to give an account of their adventures, the new-comers listening eagerly and making their comments.
“Ho!” said the big Cornishman, frowning. “I expected we should come across some rough ’uns, but I didn’t think it was going to be so bad as that. Scared, mates?”
“No,” said one of his companions; “not yet.”
“Nor yet me,” said the other.
“Nor me neither,” said the big fellow. “If it’s going to be peace and work, man and man, so much the better; but if it’s war over the gold, we shall have to fight. What’s mine is mine, or ourn; and it’ll go awkward for them as meddles with me. I’m a nasty-tempered dog if any one tries to take my bone away; aren’t I, my sons?”
The two men addressed bent their heads back and burst into a roar of laughter.
“Hark at him,” said the man spoken to as Tommy. “Don’t you believe him, my lads. He’s a great big soft-roed pilchard; that’s what he is. Eh, Dick Humphreys?”
“Yes; like a great big gal,” assented the other.
“Oh, am I?” said the big fellow. “You don’t know, my sons. But I say, though,” he continued, tapping the snow with his knuckles, “then for aught we know them three blacks is buried alive just under where we’re sitting?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“’Fraid? What are you ’fraid on?”
“It is a horrible death,” said Abel, with a shudder.
“Well, yes, I suppose it is,” said the Cornishman thoughtfully. “I say, we ought to get digging to find ’em, oughtn’t we?”
“We are not sure they are there,” said Dallas.
“Of course you are not,” continued the miner, “and I don’t believe they are. You see, your mate here took us for ’em. I believe Natur’ made a mistake and buried you two instead of them. If they are down below I haven’t heard no signs of them, and they must be dead. Why, it would take us a couple of years to clear all this stuff away, and we mightn’t find ’em then. I say, though, what about your tackle?”
“Our sledges? They’re buried deep down here.”
“We shall have to get them out, then. You two won’t be able to get along without your traps.”
Soon after an inspection of the position was made; one of the men descended into the hole they had dug close up to the rock wall, and he returned to give his opinion that by devoting a day to the task the shaft could be so enlarged that they could drive a branch down straight to the spot, and save the stores and tools, even if they could not get the sledges out whole.
It took two days, though, during which no fresh comers appeared, the report of the snow-fall having stopped further progress. At the end of the above time, pretty well everything was saved by the help of the miner and his companions, who gallantly stood by them.
“Oh, we’ve got plenty of time,” said their leader, “and if these sort o’ games are going to be played, it strikes me that you two gents would be stronger if you made a sort o’ co. along of us. Don’t if you don’t care to. What do you say to trying how it worked for a bit?”
This was gladly acceded to, and on the third day a move was made as far as the spot where the grim discovery had been made.
Here the party halted, and the corpse of the unfortunate was reverently covered by a cairn of stones, along with his faithful dog; after which a discussion arose as to what should be done with the poor fellow’s implements and stores.
“Pity to leave ’em here,” said one of the men. “Only spoil. Hadn’t we better share ’em out.”
“Perhaps so,” said Dallas. “You three can.”
“Oh, but there’s five on us, sir.”
“No, only three.”
“What do you say, Bob?” said the first speaker.
“I says bring the poor chap’s sled along with us. If we’re hard pushed we can use what’s there; if we’re not we sha’n’t want it; and—well, I don’t kind o’ feel as if I should like any one to nobble my things like that. Same time, I says it is no use to leave ’em to spoil.”
The next morning, with the young men little the worse for their adventure, they started onward, and for a couple of days made pretty good way, leaving the snow behind in their downward progress, till all further advance was stopped by the change for which they had been prepared before starting. The watershed had been crossed, and they had reached the head waters of one of the tributaries of the vast Yukon River of the three thousand miles flow.
The spot they had reached was a long, narrow lake, surrounded at the upper end by fir-woods. The rest of the route was to be by water, and here a suitable raft had to be made.
“Fine chance for a chap to set up boatbuilding,” said Big Bob. “What do you say? I believe we should make more money over the job than by going to dig it out.”
“Let’s try the gold-digging first,” said Dallas; and with a cheer the men set to work at the trees selected, the axes ringing and the pine-chips flying in the bright sunshine till trunk after trunk fell with a crash, to be lopped and trimmed and dragged down to the water’s edge ready for rough notching out to form the framework of such a raft as would easily bear the adventurers, their sledges and stores, down the lake and through the torrents and rapids of the river in its wild and turbulent course.
The sledges were drawn up together in a triangle to form a shelter to the fire they had lit for cooking, for the wind came down sharply from the mountains. Rifles and pistols lay with the sledges, for the little party of five had stripped to their work, so that, save for the axes they used, they were unarmed.
But no thought of danger occurred to any one present; that was postponed in imagination till they had finished the raft and embarked for a twenty-mile sail down to where the river, which entered as a shallow mountain torrent, rushed out, wonderfully augmented, to tear northward in a series of wild rapids, which would need all the strength and courage of the travellers to navigate them in safety.
A hearty laugh was ringing out, for the big Cornishman had rather boastingly announced that he could carry one of the fallen trees easily to the lake, put it to the proof, slipped, and gone head first into the water after the tree, when a sharp crack rang out from near at hand.
Abel uttered a loud cry, clapped his hands to his head, and fell backward.
For a moment or two the men stood as if paralysed, gazing at the fallen youth. Then Dallas looked sharply round, caught sight of a thin film of smoke curling up from the edge of the forest, and with a cry of rage ran toward the sledges, thrusting the handle of his axe through his belt, caught up his revolver from where it lay, and dashed towards the spot whence the firing must have come.