s to be almost invisible, presently was
seen to be standing up, then to fall to it with the shovel. He seemed
to be cutting steps, and descending as he worked. Gradually he
disappeared, and the pull on the rope began. They paid out cautiously
and regularly--all seemed well. He might have had twenty feet of it;
and then there was a sudden violent wrench at it, and it came back
limp in Macartney's hands.

"He's gone," he said. Then he shouted with all his might. No answer
came. They all shouted; the echoes rang round the waste, driven back
on them from the hidden mountain tops. In the deathlike hush which
followed one of them thought to hear an answering cry. Lingen heard
it, or thought that he did, and began to haul up the rope. When they
had the end of it in their hands it was found to be cut clean. "He did
that himself," James said, then added, "I'm going down. Give me out
this rope--for what it's worth." To Lingen he said, "Get back as quick
as you can, and bring up some men to-morrow." Then, having secured
himself, he went down the flawless snow slope, and they paid out the
cord as he wanted it. He had no particular sensation of fear; he knew
too little about it to have any. It is imaginative men who fear the
unknown. True, the rope had been cut once, and might have to be cut
again. If Urquhart had had to cut, it was because it had been too
short. And now it would be shorter. But there was no time to think of
anything.

The snow seemed to be holding him. He had got far beyond Urquhart's
ledges, was upon the place where Urquhart must have slid rapidly down.
All was well as yet, but he didn't want to overshoot the mark. He kept
his nerve steady, and tried to work it all out in his mind. If this
were really a cornice it must now be very thin, he thought. He drove
at it with his staff, and found that it was so. It was little more
than a frozen crust. He kicked into it with his feet, got a foothold,
and worked the hole bigger. Then he could peer down into the deep,
where the shadows were intensely blue. It looked a fearful drop; but
he saw Urquhart lying there, and went on. He descended some ten, or
perhaps fifteen feet more, and found himself dangling in the air. He
was at the end of the rope then. "I'll risk it," he said, and got his
knife out.

He dropped within a few yards of Urquhart.

CHAPTER XXIII

JAMES AND JIMMY

Macartney found him lying very still; nothing, in fact, seemed to be
alive but his e