The Plant Hunters Part 10

A peculiarity exists in the males which renders them easy to be distinguished from other animals of the deer kind. They have a pair of tusks in the upper jaw projecting downwards, each full three inches in length, and about as thick as a goose's quill. These give to the animal altogether a peculiar appearance. The males only yield the musk, which is found in grains, or little pellets, inside a sac or pod in the skin, situated near the navel; but what produces this singular substance, or what purpose it serves in the economy of the animal, it is not easy to say. It has proved its worst foe. But for the musk this harmless little deer would be comparatively a worthless object of the chase; but as it is, the valuable commodity has created for it a host of enemies, who follow no other occupation but that of hunting it to the death.

The plant-hunters had several times seen musk-deer as they journeyed up the mountain; but as the animal is exceedingly shy, and one of the swiftest of the deer kind, they had not succeeded in getting a shot.

They were all the more anxious to procure one, from the very difficulty which they had met with in doing so.

One day as they were proceeding up a very wild ravine, among some stunted juniper and rhododendron bushes, they started from his lair one of the largest musk-deer they had yet seen. As he kept directly on, and did not seem to run very fast, they determined to pursue him. Fritz, therefore, was put upon his trail, and the others followed as fast as they were able to get over the rough ground.

They had not gone far, when the baying of the dog told them that the chase had forsaken the ravine in which they had first started it, and had taken into a lateral valley.

On arriving at the mouth of this last, they perceived that it was filled by a glacier. This did not surprise them, as they had already seen several glaciers in the mountain valleys, and they were every hour getting farther within the region of these icy phenomena.

A sloping path enabled them to reach the top of the glacier, and they now perceived the tracks of the deer. Some snow had fallen and still lay unmelted upon the icy surface, and in this the foot-prints of the animal were quite distinct, Fritz had stopped at the end of the glacier, as if to await further instructions; but without hesitation the hunters climbed up on the ice, and followed the trail.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE GLACIER.

For more than a mile they toiled up the sloping glacier which all the way lay between two vertical cliffs.

That the musk-deer was still in advance of them, they had evidence from the imprint of its tracks. Even without this evidence they could not doubt that the game was still before them. It would have been impossible for it to have scaled the cliffs on either side, so far as they had yet seen them; and as far before them as they could see, both sides appeared equally steep and impracticable.

As the hunters advanced, the cliffs gradually converged; and at the distance of a few hundred yards before them, appeared to close in--as if the ravine ended there, and there was no outlet in that direction. In fact they appeared to be approaching the apex of a very acute angle, the sides of which were formed by the black granite cliffs.

This singular formation was just what the hunters desired. If the valley ended in a _cul-de-sac_, then the game would be hemmed in by their approach, and they might have a chance of obtaining a shot.

In order the more surely to accomplish this, they separated, and deployed themselves into a line which extended completely across the valley. In this formation they continued to advance upward.

When they first adopted this plan, the ravine was about four hundred yards in width--so that less than one hundred lay between each two of them. These equal distances they preserved as well as they could, but now and then the cracks in the icy ma.s.s, and the immense boulders that lay over its surface, obliged one or other, of them to make considerable detours. As they advanced, however, the distance between each two grew less, in consequence of the narrowing of the valley, until at length a s.p.a.ce of only fifty yards separated one from the other. The game could not now pa.s.s them without affording a fine opportunity for all to have a shot; and with the expectation of soon obtaining one, they kept on in high spirits.

All at once their hopes appeared to be frustrated. The whole line came to a halt, and the hunters stood regarding each other with blank looks.

Directly in front of them yawned an immense creva.s.se in the ice, full five yards in width at the top, and stretching across the glacier from cliff to cliff.

A single glance into this great fissure convinced them that it was impa.s.sable. Their hunt was at an end. They could go no farther. Such was the conviction of all.

The glacier filled the whole ravine from cliff to cliff. There was no s.p.a.ce or path between the ice and the rocky wall. The latter rose vertically upward for five hundred feet at least, and no doubt extended downward to as great a depth. Indeed, by looking into the fissure, they could trace the wall of rock to an immense distance downward, ending in the green cleft of the ice below. To look down into that terrible abyss made their heads reel with giddiness; and they could only do so with safety by crawling up to the edge of the lye, and peeping over.

A glance convinced one and all of them that the creva.s.se was impa.s.sable.

But how had the deer got over it? Surely it had not leaped that fearful chasm?

But surely it had. Close by the edge its tracks were traced in the snow, and there, upon the lower side of the cleft, was the spot from which it had sprung. On the opposite brink the disarrangement of the snow told where it had alighted, having cleared a s.p.a.ce of sixteen or eighteen feet! This, however, was nothing to a musk-deer, that upon a deal level often bounds to more than twice that length; for these animals have been known to spring down a slope to the enormous distance of sixty feet!

The leap over the creva.s.se, therefore, fearful as it appeared in the eyes of our hunters, was nothing to the musk-deer, who is as nimble and sure-footed as the chamois itself.

"Enough!" said Karl, after they had stood for some minutes gazing into the lye. "There's no help for it; we must go back as we came--what says Ossaroo?"

"You speakee true, Sahib--no help for we--we no get cross--too wide leapee--no bridge--no bamboo for makee bridge--no tree here."

Ossaroo shook his head despondingly as he spoke. He was vexed at losing the game--particularly as the buck was one of the largest, and might have yielded an ounce or two of musk, which, as Ossaroo well knew, was worth a guinea an ounce in the bazaars of Calcutta.

The Hindoo glanced once more across the lye, and then turning round, uttered an exclamation, which told that he was beaten.

"Well, then, let us go back!" said Karl.

"Stay, brother!" interrupted Caspar, "a thought strikes me. Had we not better remain here for a while? The deer cannot be far off. It is, no doubt, up near the end of the ravine; but it won't stay there long.

There appears to be nothing for it to eat but rocks or snow, and it won't be contented with that. If there's no outlet above, it must come back this way. Now I propose we lie in wait for it a while, and take it as it comes down again. What say you to my plan?"

"I see no harm in trying it, Caspar," replied Karl. "We had better separate, however, and each hide behind a boulder, else it may see us, and stay back. We shall give it an hour."

"Oh!" said Caspar, "I think it'll tire of being cooped up in less time than that; but we shall see."

The party now spread themselves right and left along the lower edge of the creva.s.se--each choosing a large rock or ma.s.s of snowy ice as a cover. Caspar went to the extreme left, and even to the edge of the glacier, where a number of large rocks rested on its surface. Having entered among these, he was hidden from the others, but presently they heard him calling out--

"Hurrah! come here!--a bridge! a bridge!"

Karl and Ossaroo left their hiding-places, and hastened to the spot.

On arriving among the boulders, they saw, to their delight, that one of the largest of these--an enormous block of gneiss--lay right across the creva.s.se, spanning it like a bridge, and looking as though it had been placed there by human hands! This, however, would have been impossible, as the block was full ten yards in length, and nearly as broad as it was long. Even giants could not have built such a bridge!

A little examination showed where it had fallen from the overhanging precipice--and it had rested on the glacier, perhaps, before the great cleft had yawned open beneath it. Its upper end overlapped the ice for a breadth of scarce two feet, and it seemed a wonder that so huge a weight could be sustained by such an apparently fragile prop. But there it rested; and had done so for years--perhaps for ages--suspended over the beetling chasm, as if the touch of a feather would precipitate it into the gulf below!

If Karl had been near, he might have warned his brother from crossing by such a dangerous bridge; but before he had reached the spot, Caspar had already mounted on the rock, and was hurrying over.

In a few moments he stood upon the opposite side of the creva.s.se; and, waving his cap in the air, shouted to the rest to follow.

The others crossed as he had done, and then the party once more deployed, and kept up the ravine, which grew narrower as they advanced, and appeared to be regularly closed in at the lop, by a perpendicular wall. Surely the deer could not escape them much longer?

"What a pity," said Caspar, "we could not throw down that great stone and widen the crack in the ice, so that the deer could not leap over it!

We should then have it nicely shut up here."

"Ay, Caspar," rejoined Karl, "and where should _we_ be then? Shut up too, I fear."

"True, brother, I did not think of that. What a terrible thing it would be to be imprisoned between these black cliffs! It would, I declare."

The words had scarce issued from Caspar's lip, when a crash was heard like the first bursting of a thunderclap, and then a deafening roar echoed up the ravine, mingled with louder peals, as though the eternal mountains were being rent asunder!

The noise reverberated from the black cliffs; eagles, that had been perched upon the rocks, rose screaming into the air; beasts of prey howled from their lurking-places; and the hitherto silent valley was all at once filled with hideous noises, as though it were the doom of the world!

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

THE GLACIER SLIDE.

"An avalanche!" cried Karl Linden, as the first crash fell upon his ear; but on turning, he saw his mistake.

"No," he continued, with a look of terror, "it is not an avalanche! My G.o.d! my G.o.d! _the glacier is in motion_!"