ope and go down?"

They knotted the rope securely about Francois' waist and he took his
ice-ax in his hand, sat down on the edge of the crevasse with his legs
dangling, turned over upon his face and said:

"When I pull the rope, haul in gently."

They lowered him carefully down for sixty feet, and at that depth the
rope slackened. Francois had reached the bottom of the crevasse. For a
few moments they watched the rope move this way and that, and then there
came a definite pull.

"He has found them," said Michel.

Some of the guides lined out with the rope in their hands. Chayne took
his position in the front, at the head of the line and nearest to the
crevasse. The pull upon the rope was repeated, and slowly the men began
to haul it in. It did not occur to Chayne that the weight upon the rope
was heavy. One question filled his mind, to the exclusion of all else.
Had Francois found his friend? What news would he bring of them when he
came again up to the light? Francois' voice was heard now, faintly,
calling from the depths. But what he said could not be heard. The line of
men hauled in the rope more and more quickly and then suddenly stopped
and drew it in very gently. For they could now hear what Francois said.
It was but one word, persistently repeated:

"Gently! Gently!"

And so gently they drew him up toward the mouth of the crevasse. Chayne
was standing too far back to see down beyond the edge, but he could hear
Francois' ax clattering against the ice-walls, and the grating of his
boots. Michel, who was kneeling at the edge of the chasm, held up his
hand, and the men upon the rope ceased to haul. In a minute or two he
lowered it.

"Gently," he said, "gently," gazing downward with a queer absorption.
Chayne began to hear Francois' labored breathing and then suddenly at the
edge of the crevasse he saw appear the hair of a man's head.

"Up with him," cried a guide; there was a quick strong pull upon the rope
and out of the chasm, above the white level of the glacier, there
appeared a face--not Francois' face--but the face of a dead man. Suddenly
it rose into the colorless light, pallid and wax-like, with open,
sightless eyes and a dropped jaw, and one horrid splash of color on the
left forehead, where blood had frozen. It was the face of Chayne's
friend, John Lattery; and in a way most grotesque and horrible it bobbed
and nodded at him, as though the neck was broken and the man yet lived.
When Francois just