“It was raining then—­a dense small mist; and the ice was as if it had been greased.  We were proceeding with infinite care, arm in arm, tucked close together.  A little doubt, I think, was beginning to oppress us.  We could move only with much caution and difficulty; and there were noises—­sounds like the clapping of great hands in those rocky attics above us.  Then there would come a slamming report, as if the window of the unknown had been burst open by demons; and the moans of the lost would issue, surging down upon the world.

“These thunders, as we were afterwards told, are caused by the splitting of the ice when there comes a fall in the barometer.  Then the glacier will yawn like a sliced junket.

“My faith! what a simile!  But again the point of view, my friend.

“All in a moment I heard a little cluck.  I looked down.  Alas! the fine spirit was obscured.  Fidele was weeping.

“‘Chut! chut!’ I exclaimed in consternation.  ‘We will go back at once.’

“She struggled to smile, the poor mignonne.

“‘It is only that my knees are sick,’ she said piteously.

“I took her in my strong arms tenderly.

“We had paused on a ridge of hard snow.

“There came a tearing clang—­an enormous sucking sound, as of wet lips opening.  The snow sank under our feet.

“‘My God!’ shrieked Fidele.

“I held her convulsively.  It happened in an instant, before one could leap aside.  The bed of snow on which we were standing broke down into the crevasse it had bridged, and let us through to the depths.

“Will you believe what follows?  Pinch your nose and open your mouth.  You shall take the whole draught at a breath. The ice at the point where we entered was five hundred feet thick; and we fell to the very bottom of it.

“Ha! ha!  Is it difficult to swallow?  But it is true—­it is quite true.  Here I sit, sound and safe, and eminently sane, and that after a fall of five hundred feet.

“Now, listen.

“We went down, welded together, with a rush and a buzz like a cannon-ball.  Thoughts?  Ah! my friend, I had none.  Who can think even in a high wind?  And here the wind of our going would have brained an ox.  Only one desperate instinct I had, one little forlorn remnant of humanity—­to shield the love of my heart.  So my arms never left her; and we fell together.  I dreaded nothing, feared nothing, foresaw no terror in the inevitable mangling crash of the end.  For time, that is necessary to emotion, was annihilated.  We had outstripped it, and left sense and reason sluggishly following in our wake.

“Sense, yes; but not altogether sensation.  Flashingly I was conscious here of incredibly swift transitions, from cold to deeper wells of frost; thence down through a stratum of death and negation, between mere blind walls of frigid inhumanity, to have been stayed a moment by which would have pointed all our limbs as stiff as icicles, as stiff as those of frogs plunged into boiling water.  But we passed and fell, still crashing upon no obstruction; and thought pursued us, tailing further behind.