The Rim of the Desert eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 474 pages of information about The Rim of the Desert.

The Rim of the Desert eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 474 pages of information about The Rim of the Desert.

As they ascended, the snow fell less heavily and finally ceased.  It became firm underfoot, and a cross wind, starting in puffs, struck their faces sharply with a promise of frost.  Then strange hummocks began to rise.  They were upheavals of ice, shrouded in snow.  Sometimes a higher one presented a sheer front shading to bluish-green.  They had not passed this point with Banks, but Morganstein shaped a course to a black pinnacle, lifting through the mist beyond, that he believed was the crag at the shoulder.  She stumbled repeatedly on the rough surface.  Her labored breathing in the great stillness, like the beat of a pendulum in an empty house, tried his strained nerves.  He upbraided her for leaving her alpenstock down the slope.  But she paid no attention.  She looked back constantly; she was like a woman being led away from a locked door, moving reluctantly, listening against hope for a word or sign.  So, at last, they came to the rock.  It was not the crag, but a hanging promontory, where the mountain broke in a three-sided precipice.  The cloud surged around it like an unplumbed sea.

They crept back, and Morganstein tried again to determine their position.  They were too high, he concluded; they must work down a little to round the cliffs, so they took a course diagonally into the smother.  Then he, too, began to lose alertness; he walked mechanically, taking the line of least resistance; his head sagged forward; he saw nothing but the hummocks before him.  These grew larger; they changed to narrow ridges with fissures between.  After a while, one of these breaks roused him.  It was exceedingly deep; he could not see either end of it.  The only way was to leap, and he did it clumsily.  Then, with his alpenstock fixed, and his spiked heels set in the crust, he reached a hand to her.  She was barely able to spring to the lower side, but it did not terrify her.  One fear only possessed her.  Her glance, seeking, returned to the hidden canyon.  But soon they were confronted by a wider and still deeper chasm.  It was impossible to cross it, though it seemed to narrow upwards in the direction of the summit.  He took her arm and began to ascend, looking for a way over.  The pitch grew steadily sharper.  They entered the thinning edge of the cloud, and it became transparent like tissue of gold.  Suddenly it parted, and Frederic stopped, blinded by the blaze of a red sunset on snow.  He closed his eyes an instant, while, to avoid the glare, he turned his face.  His first glance shocked him into a sense of great peril.  The two fissures ran parallel, and they were ascending a tongue of ice between.  Not far below, it narrowed to a point where the two crevasses, uniting, yawned in one.  His knees weakened, but he managed to swing himself cautiously around.  The causeway seemed to rock under his weight; then, shading his sight with his hand, he saw they were almost beneath the shoulder he had tried to reach.  They had climbed too high, as he had believed, but also they had descended too far.  And they had come directly down the glacier, to cross the upper end of which Banks had found it necessary to use a lifeline.  “Be careful!” he whispered thickly, and laid his hand on her shoulder, impelling her on.  “Be careful, but, for God’s sake, hurry!”

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The Rim of the Desert from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.