As I
floated up towards the top I remembered the crash, which told me that
I had passed through ice. Therefore I should meet ice at the surface
again. Oh! to think that after surviving so much I must be drowned like
a kitten and beneath a sheet of ice. My hands touched it. There it was
above me shining white like glass. Heaven be praised! My head broke
through; in this low and sheltered gorge it was but a film no thicker
than a penny formed by the light frost of the previous night. So I rose
from the deep and stared about me, treading water with my feet.
Then I saw the gladdest sight that ever my eyes beheld, for on the
right, not ten yards away, the water running from his hair and beard,
was Leo. Leo alive, for he broke the thin ice with his arms as he
struggled towards the shore from the deep river.[*] He saw me also, and
his grey eyes seemed to start out of his head.
[*] Usually, as we learned afterwards, the river at this
spot was quite shallow; only a foot or two in depth. It was
the avalanche that by damming it with fallen heaps of snow
had raised its level very many feet. Therefore, to this
avalanche, which had threatened to destroy us, we in reality
owed our lives, for had the stream stood only at its normal
height we must have been dashed to pieces upon the stones.
--L. H.
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