CHAPTER XVI WHICH SHOWS THAT A MISHAP IS NOT ALWAYS A MISFORTUNE

It was still early in the day when Philip fell over the boulder face of the mountain; and when the chopping which he had heard through the fog ceased at the house, Bromley had indeed gone in, but not for shelter from the rain. He had gone to warn Lieutenant Coleman of the absence of their half-demented comrade and of the peril he ran in wandering about on the mountain in the fog. They felt so sure of finding him near the point of rocks that they went together in that direction; but before they started Philip had wandered from the path, and by the time they reached the rocks he had put the house behind him and was walking in the direction of the Cove. Finding no trace of him there, and seeing the dense mist which covered the valley and made observation impossible, they separated and went off in opposite ways, calling him by name, "Philip! Philip!" and as they got farther and farther from each other, "Philip! Philip!" came back to each faintly through the fog and the rain. They made their way to such points as he might have found shelter under, but their calls brought no response. They knew that in his peculiar state of mind he might hear their voices and make no reply, and in this was at last their only hope of his safety as they continued their search.

At twelve o'clock a wind set in from the east, redoubling the rain, but rapidly dispelling the fog. In an hour every place where he could possibly have concealed himself had been searched, and with one mind they came back to the point of rocks. They lay out on the wet ledge and looked over with fear and trembling, half expecting to see his mangled body below. They could see clearly to the foot of the precipice, and there was nothing there but the smooth, trackless snow; and then when they drew back they looked in each other's faces and knew for the first time how much they loved Philip and how much each was to the other.

They were almost certain now that he had fallen over one face of the mountain or the other. Yesterday they could have followed his track in the thin snow, but now the rain, which was still falling heavily, had obliterated one after melting what remained of the other. They went together down the ladders, and for its whole length along the base of that ledge. When they returned to the plateau, Lieutenant Coleman and Bromley were tired, and soaked with the rain, and crushed with the awful certainty that Philip had fallen over the great rock face into the Cove. They could neither eat nor sleep as long as there was a possibility of discovering any clue to his fate; and so in time they came to the slippery rock in front of the station, where the heel of his boot or the sharp edge of the telescope had made a scratch on the stone that the rain was powerless to wash out.

It was no use to call his name after that dreadful plunge, the very thought of which tied their tongues to that extent that the two men stood in silence over their discovery; and when they could learn no more they came away hand in hand, without uttering a word.

This was indeed the point where Philip had gone over the great rock; but by a strange good fortune his body had plunged into a mass of rotten snow fifty feet from the brink of the precipice. It was the snow of the avalanche making ready to fall; and through this first bank his body broke its way, falling from point to point for another fifty feet, until he lay unconscious over the roots of the great icicles which hung free from the rounded ledge below him, dripping their substance nine hundred feet into the Cove.

When he came to himself, chilled and sore after his great fall, the moon was shining softly on the snow about him and sparkling on the ice below. He had no recollection of his fall, and but the vaguest remembrance of what had gone before. It was rather as if he had dreamed that he had fallen upon the avalanche, and when he had first opened his eyes upon the snow about him and above him, he tried to reason with himself that no dream could be so real. He remembered vaguely the autumn days by the golden mill, and he knew that it was not winter at all; and yet this was real snow in which he lay bruised and helpless. He realized that he was almost frozen, and his clothing, that had been wet, was now stiffening on his limbs. The great shock had restored his shattered mind, leaving a wide blank, it is true, to be filled in for the best part of the year that was past. He was himself, again now, but where it was not at first so clear. There was nothing to be seen above beyond the snow which hung over him; but when he turned his sore body so as to look away from the mountain-side, his eyes rested on the long white roof of the Cove post-office, as he had seen it often before from the top of the plateau. Philip knew now that he was in the very heart of the avalanche. He lay on the very brink of the ice which might fall with the heat of another day's sun. At first he began to cry out for help; but his voice was such a small thing in the mass of snow against the great rock. And then he thought of the people from the hills who would come at noon of the next day to watch by the post-office to see him fall—him, Philip Welton! And then he thought of Coleman and Bromley, who must have given him up for dead; and even of his uncle at the old mill, with more of desire than he had ever felt for him before. He tried to drag himself a little from the icy brink; but his legs and arms were numb and stiffened with the cold. He began to clap his nerveless hands and stimulate the circulation of his blood by such movements as he could make. He had an instinctive feeling that the avalanche had been trembling yesterday where it clung to the great, black, vertical stain on the face of the boulder just below the trees that looked like berry-bushes from the road in the Cove. He knew that it would not fall during the night. He had no recollection of the rain. He knew that more heat of the sun was yet required to loosen it for the great plunge. It was freezing now, and every hour added solidity to the surface of the snow; and yet as he gained the power he feared to move, as the workman distrusts the strong scaffold about the tall steeple because of its great height from the ground.

Above him, ten feet away, he could see the hole in the snow through which he knew he must have fallen; and as he thought of the fearful shoot his body would have made, clearing even the great ledge of icicles, if the surface of that bank had not been rotted by some cause, his limbs were almost paralyzed with terror. The thought helped to stir the sluggish blood in his veins, and he shrank, rather than moved, a little from the awful brink where he lay. Gradually he rose to his feet and looked about him. The Cove post-office, showing its white roof through the naked trees that looked like berry-bushes in their turn, far, far below him, fascinated him until he felt a mad impulse to leap over the icicles to oblivion. Instead of yielding to this impulse, however, he covered his eyes with his hands until he found strength to turn his back on the tiny object that terrified him. If he cried out, his voice, against the rock for a sounding-board, might awaken the sleeping postmaster before his comrades on the plateau. Even in that case no help could reach him from below across the bridgeless gorge; and even if his comrades were above him on the rocks, they could do nothing for him.

"PHILIP COULD SEE THE HOLE IN THE SNOW THROUGH WHICH HE KNEW HE MUST HAVE FALLEN."
"PHILIP COULD SEE THE HOLE IN THE SNOW
THROUGH WHICH HE KNEW HE MUST HAVE FALLEN."

Should he wait there to meet certain death in the avalanche to-morrow or the nest day? He thought of the cool courage of Bromley, and wondered what he would do if he were there in his place. As long as there was a foothold to be gained, he knew Bromley would climb higher, if it were only to fall the farther, and he felt a thrill of pride in the dauntless nerve of his comrade. This thought prompted him to do something for himself, and he began by whipping his arms around his body, keeping his back resolutely on the small post-office, and trying to forget its dizzy distance below him. As he grew warmer and stronger, he felt more courage. It was impossible to reach the hole in the snow through which he had come, for the broken sides separated in the wrong way from the perpendicular. He was not a fly to crawl on a ceiling.

A few yards to his right, as he stood facing the mountain, the bank through which his body had broken its way made a smooth curve to the ledge where the icicles began. As he looked at the great polished surface of the snow, the thought came to him that nothing in all the world but the soft moonlight could cling there. Hopeless as the passage by the bank was, he could reach it; and the feeling that it led away to the region above prompted him to pick his way along the narrow ledge until he could touch with his hand the smooth surface of the bank. He could only touch it with his hand, for the edge curved over his head as he stood alongside it. He felt that the bank was hard; he was unable to break its crust with his hand; and he knew that every moment it was growing harder. His strong knife was in his pocket. He drew out this and opened it with his stiff fingers. Then he began to cut his way under the bank. Beyond the first surface the snow yielded readily to his efforts; and as it fell under his feet he made his way diagonally upward until at the end of half an hour, as it seemed to him, he broke the crust of the great bank and pushed his head through into the fair moonlight. He looked up at the glaring steep above him, and it was beyond his power not to take one look back at the tiny post-office below him. If he had not been safely wedged in the bank, it would have been his last look in life. As it was, he shrank trembling into the snow, and for a whole minute he never moved a muscle.

Fortunately for his shattered nerves, it was not necessary to go out upon the surface of the bank, which was considerably less than perpendicular. He had only to cut away the crust with his knife, and so gradually work his way upward in a soft trench, leaving only his head and shoulders above the crust.

Philip felt a strange exultation in this new power to advance upward, and all his sturdy strength came to his aid in his extremity. He felt no disposition to look back at the trail he knew he was leaving in the snow. He was certain now of gaining the top of the bank, but what lay beyond he knew not. Half the distance he had fallen would still be above him. He was almost up now; but at the very top of the bank there was another curl of the snow, and once more he had to burrow under like a mole.

When Philip's head did appear again on the surface, it was not so light as before, and with his first glance around he saw that the moon was already sinking below the opposite ridge. He was almost within reach of another hole to his left; and by its appearance, and by the distance he had come, he knew it was not the same which he had seen from below, and alongside it the last rays of the moon glinted on the brass barrel of the telescope attached to its broken strap. How it had come there he had no idea, any more than he had how he had come to be lying on the ledge above the icicles where he had found himself a few hours before. It was the old familiar telescope of the station, through which the three soldiers had looked at the prisoners and at old Shifless in the valley, and it made him glad as if he had met an old friend. He stretched out his hand to draw it to him. Instead of securing it, his clumsy fingers rolled it from him on the smooth snow, and as he looked at it the telescope turned on end and disappeared through the hole in the bank. In the awful stillness on the side of the mountain, he heard it strike twice. It was nothing to Philip now whether it fell in advance or waited to go down with the avalanche. And just as this thought had passed through his mind, and as he turned his eyes to the side of the cliff above him, the far-away sound of metal striking on stone broke sharply on his ear, and he knew that the telescope had been smashed to atoms on the rocks in the Cove bottom.

From where he crouched now on the snow he could see the edge of the plateau above him, and as near as he could judge it was rather less than fifty feet away. The smooth rock was cased in thin ice—so thin that he believed he could see the black storm-stain underneath. It was growing dark now, and after all his toil and hope he had only gained a little higher seat on the back of the avalanche. He saw with half a glance that it would be impossible to climb higher. He heard the wind whistle through the branches of the dwarfed old chestnut-trees over his head; and as the cold was so still about him, he knew that it was an east wind. He could go nearer to the ledge, but he could gain no foothold on the rock. In the midst of his cruel disappointment and his awful dread of the sun which would come to melt the snow next day, he felt a greater terror than he had felt when he had first found himself down below. His companions might have gone mad and thrown him over the rock. It was all a dark mystery to poor Philip. He could barely see about him now. Even the sun would be better than this darkness. It might be cold to-morrow. At any rate, it would be afternoon before the sun, however warm, could get in its deadly work on the avalanche. It never occurred to him that he was nearly famished, and he must have slept some where he sat in the snow, for he dreamed that the people were gathered at the post-office to see him fall, and a crash like the roar of battle brought him to his senses with a start. The next time he awoke, the bright sun was indeed shining, and he was stiff with the cold, as he had found himself at first. He was hungry, too, as he had never been hungry before, and the fear of starvation seemed more dreadful to him than the dread of the avalanche.

As he lay there in his weakened state, his ears were alert for the faintest sound. He thought he heard a movement on the ledge above him, and then he heard voices clear and distinct. They were the voices of Coleman and Bromley.

"Poor Philip!" he heard them say.

At first he was unable to speak in his excitement, and then he raised his voice with all the strength of his lungs, and cried, "Help! Help!"

"Is that you, Philip?"

"Yes, George! Yes! Help!"

By questioning him they learned what his situation was, and the distance he lay from the top of the ledge; for they could gain no position where they could see him. They bade him keep up his courage until they came again. It was indeed a long time before he heard their voices again speaking to him, and then down over the icy rock came a knotted rope made of strips of the canvas that remained of the "A" tent. At the end of the life-line, as it dangled nearer and nearer, were two strong loops like a breeches-buoy. Philip felt strong again when he had the line in his hand, and thrusting his legs through the loops, he called out to hoist away. As he went up, up, he clung fast with his hands to the strip of canvas; but he was too weak to keep himself away from the rock with his feet, so he bumped against it until he was drawn over the surface of the same stone he had slipped on the morning before. He saw the kind faces of his two comrades, and then he sank unconscious on the firm earth at their feet.