"DROME!"
"We listened. Not a sound. Suddenly the glacier cracked and boomed,
then silence again. We waited, listening. Still not the faintest
sound. Long, so White and I decided, must have been deceived. But Long
declared that he had not.
"'I heard voices, I tell you! I know that I was not mistaken at all. I
heard voices.'
"Again we listened.
"'There!' Long said suddenly. 'Hear them?'
"Yes, there, coming to us from out of the fog, were voices, plain,
unmistakable, and yet at the same time--how shall I say it?--strangely
muffled. Yes, that is the word, muffled. I wondered if the fog did
that; but it couldn't, I decided, be the fog. One voice was silvery and
strong, that of Sklokoyum's angel doubtless; the other deep and rough,
the voice of a man. The woman (or girl) seemed to be urging something,
pleading with him. Once we thought that there came a third voice, but
we could not be sure of that. But of one thing we were sure: they were
not speaking in English, in Spanish, French, Siwash or Chinook. And we
felt certain, too, that it was not Scandinavian, German or Italian.
"'They are over there,' said Long, pointing. 'I am sure of it.'
"'No, there!' whispered White.
"For my part, I was convinced that these mysterious beings were in
still a different direction!
"'Well,' I suggested, 'let's be moving. We won't get the solution of
this queer business by standing here and wondering.'
"We got in motion, uncertain, though, whether we were really advancing
in the right direction; but we could not, I thought, be greatly in
error. Soon we came to a great crevasse. White leaped across it, and on
that instant the voices ceased.
"Had they heard?
"We waited, White crouching there on the other side. Soon the sounds
came again, whereupon White, in spite of my whispered remonstrance,
began stealing forward. Long and I being less active, did not care to
risk that jump, and so we made our way along the edge of the fissure,
seeking a place to cross. This we were not long in finding, but by this
time, to my profound uneasiness, White had disappeared in the fog.
"We advanced cautiously, and as swiftly as possible. This, however, was
not very swiftly. See! There it was, the ghostly loom of the rocks
through the vapor. At that instant the voices ceased. Came a scream, a
short, sharp scream from the woman. A cry from White, the crack of his
revolver, and then that scream he gave--oh, the horror of that I can
never forget. Long and I could not see him, or the others--only the
ghostly rocks; and soon, too, they were disappearing, for the fog was
growing denser.
"We heard the sound of a body striking the ice and knew that White had
fallen. He was still screaming that piercing, blood-curdling scream. We
struggled to reach him, but the crevasses, those damnable crevasses,
held us up.
"The sound sank. Of a sudden it ceased.
"But there was no silence. The voice of the woman rang out sharp and
clear. And I thought that I understood it: she was calling to it, to
that thing we had seen, down at the camp, squatting beside her, its
eyes burning with that demoniacal fire--_calling it off_!
"Came a short silence, broken by a cry of horror from the angel. The
man's voice was heard, then her own in sudden, fierce, angry pleading;
at any rate, so it seemed to me--that she was pleading with him again.
"But what had happened to White?
"All this time--which, indeed, was very brief--Long and I were
struggling forward. When we got out of that fissured ice and reached
the place of the tragedy, the surroundings were as still as death.
There lay our companion stretched out on the blood-soaked ice, a gurgle
and wheezing coming from his torn throat with his every gasp for breath.
"I knelt down beside him, while Long, poor fellow, stood staring about
into the fog, his revolver in his hand. A single glance showed that
there was no hope, that it was only a matter of moments.
"'Go!' gasped the dying man. 'It was Satan, the Fiend himself. And an
angel. And the angel, she said:
"'"_Drome!_"
"'Yes, I heard her say it. She said:
"'"_Drome!_"'
"There was a shudder, and White was dead. And the fog drifted down
denser than ever, and the stillness there was as the stillness of the
grave."