we made our last camp in a glade strewn with wild-flowers that was rimmed by one of the dingy glaciers, hanging like out-thrust arms along the mountain's flanks. high overhead, several miles in the still sky, soared the blunted cone of the summit, silver-white at the peak, shading to a deeper tone where black hulks of rock cropped up through the snow-mantle, and steel-gray farther down where the ice-rivers of the glaciers crawled beneath loads of rock-dust and pebble-bowlders, wrenched from earth's fabric by their resistless flow.

below the glaciers came the zone of wild-flowers, miles and miles of them, casting their pollen into the air in the midst of icy desolation, banding the heights with a cincture of fragrant beauty. then, a mile nearer earth's level, stood the timber-line; first, straggling dwarf growths, bent and gnarled and twisted by the winds; behind these the massive bulwark of the primeval forest, stout cedars and cumbrous firs, the least of them fit for main-mast to a king's ship, a green frame for the many-colored miracle of the flower-fields and the white splendor above.

"do you think to climb higher, brother?" i questioned tawannears, standing with arms folded, his eyes fixed upon the summit that seemed so near in that radiant atmosphere.

he nodded.

"'tis no more than a mountain," i continued gently. "do you not see?"

he turned somber eyes upon me.

"it looks like no other mountain tawannears has ever seen, otetiani."

i waved my hand from south to north, where gleamed a dozen peaks scarce inferior to the giant upon whose thighs we couched.

"they are not the same," he flamed with sudden passion. "have not all the people we met told us that this was the great spirit? tamanoas!" he repeated the name with a kind of ecstasy. "did otetiani ever see anything more like what the great spirit must be? is he, then, a man like us—with feet and hands and a belly? no, he is power and strength and beauty and stillness!"

"ja," agreed corlaer shrilly. "andt if we go up high we see all der country aroundt. dot safes trouble. ja!"

i unsheathed my tomahawk.

"very well," i said. "'tis settled. we try for the top. therefore, heed what i say. a mountain is a jealous foe, strong, as you have said, eke treacherous. in france there is a mountain like to this, which is called the white mountain. men climb it for love of danger, but they go in parties roped together, so that if one falls, his mates may save him. we must cut up our buffalo-robes and braid the strips for rope, and besides, we shall need sticks to help us on the ice. also, we must make shift to climb by daylight. in the darkness we should slip to our deaths—if, indeed, we do not die, in any case, which i think is most likely."

concern showed in the seneca's face.

"tawannears is selfish," he said quickly. "he thinks only of himself. there is no need for otetiani and peter to go with me. let them wait here whilst i go up and make prayer to tamanoas."

i laughed, and corlaer's flat visage creased in a ridiculous simper, which was the dutchman's idea of derisive mirth.

"these many thousand leagues we have traveled," i answered, "without one venturing alone. shall we begin now? i say no."

"ja," said corlaer. "but we go in der morning, eh? tonight we eat."

in the morning we cached our muskets and spare equipment in a hollow tree, and started up, with no more encumbrances than our food-pouches, tomahawks, some fifty feet of resilient hide-rope and the staves we had whittled from cedar saplings. our path was obvious enough. we crossed the zone of the wild-flowers, skirted the glacier which terminated in their midst in a spouting, ice-cold stream of brown water, and found firm footing for half a mile upon a tongue of rock. beyond this was a snow-field, solid and frozen almost to the consistency of ice, in which we were obliged to cut our steps foot by foot. the glare was dazzling as the bright sunlight was reflected from the smooth, sloping surface, but we won to our objective, another rock-mass, only to discover it too precipitous for climbing, and were forced to entrust ourselves to the glacier, which encircled it.

here was work to try our souls. the dull, dirt-hued ice-river was riven by cracks and crevices, some a few inches wide, others impassable, from whose dark-green depths came faint tinklings, and blasts of that utter cold that numbs life instantly. but it was not cold on the glacier's top. the warm sun made us sweat as we toiled upward, testing the ice in front of us with our sticks at every step, studying ways to evade the widest crevices, aiding each other to leap those where there was substantial footing on either side.

but the hour came when a great, spreading crack that struck diagonally across it compelled us to abandon the glacier as a highway. we clambered laboriously over the side walls of bowlders it had built in the ages of its descent, and assailed another snow-field, aiming for a series of rock-ledges which lifted, one above the other, toward the summit. the air was like wine, heady, yet strangely thin, and we began to pant out of all proportion to our efforts. tawannears and peter, both of them stronger than i, seemed to feel it more; and i was startled to see the big dutchman sink to his knees.

"i bleed," he gasped. "who strikes us, eh!"

tawannears, too, dashed a flux of blood from his nose and collapsed on the snow.

"tamanoas is displeased," he muttered as i stooped beside him. "otetiani was right! we die."

his bronze face was ghastly pale, and for a moment i feared he would faint; but he rallied when i shook him by the arm. i was worried more for him than for peter, in which respect i erred.

"'tis not tamanoas," i urged. "at least, brother, 'tis no more than ordinary mountain sickness i have often heard men tell of. up here, above the world, the air is lighter than we are wont to breathe. we have gone too fast. let us rest, and grow used to it."

he accepted the explanation with the illogical combination of civilization and barbarism which was the key to his extraordinary character.

"peter," he grunted, pointing weakly.

i looked around to find the dutchman in a dead faint, the blood trickling from mouth and nose, to all appearances dying. but after i had bathed his temples with snow for a short while he struggled to a sitting position.

"who shoots us?" he quavered.

i explained the phenomenon to him as simply as i could—he was actually more ignorant of physics than the seneca—and once he had comprehended its significance he was for continuing the ascent immediately; but upon my insistence agreed to allow his body an opportunity to readjust itself to the new strains upon it. we occupied the enforced rest by examining the country disclosed to us at this height, a panorama of dense forests and snowy peaks, and westward, in the distance, a winding body of water, too broad for a river, too irregular for a lake.* but nowhere a sign of habitation, of beings, human or otherwise, who might have enjoyed this land of natural happiness and plenty. indeed, 'twas avoided by the surrounding savages as the abode of that divinity they visualized in the snowy majesty of the mountain, tamanoas.

* apparently, puget sound.—a.d.h.s.

tawannears rose first, a look of grim determination in his eyes.

"the sun is high, brothers," he said. "if corlaer's pain is gone——"

"oof!" interrupted the dutchman, with the distaste of any man of abnormal physique for admitting weakness. "we go to der top now. if der air is thin i hafe fat, eh? dot's enough. ja."

to us, then, it seemed as though the summit was at most an hour's climb away, but actually our stiffest effort was ahead of us. all of that weary afternoon we climbed, risking precipice and crevice, pausing at frequent intervals for the rest that was essential, if we were not to become light headed and dizzy. once we slipped and slid a half-mile toward death, bringing up by driving our staves through the ice and checking gradually the impetus of our descent. that meant an hour's work to do over again. we gritted our teeth and did it. our moccasins were shredded on knife-edged rocks and ice-chunks. our faces were blistered by the sun-glare. our hands were cut and sore from constant contact with the ice. we had spells of nausea. but we went up—and up.

i was leading, head bowed, my eyes on the rocks and ice ahead in search of the safest foot-holds, when tawannears touched my shoulder.

"see, brother," he exclaimed. "tamanoas breathes."

i looked up, startled. the rim was several hundred yards away, and above it floated what i took to be a cloud low in the sky. but there were no clouds, and i soon saw that the mist in the air above the rim was constantly disintegrating, constantly being replenished. it was like the steam that exudes from the spout of a boiling kettle.

"we shall soon learn what it means," i said. "there is an opening here. keep to the snow—the rocks are shifty."

we crossed a ramp of snow, sloping easily, and entered a huge gap in the crest. what a spectacle! no, i speak not of the view spread out around the mountain's base. we did not look at that. our eyes were on the vast bowl, a mile in breadth, that was carved in the mountain's top. snow filled it deep in many places, poured over the rim through gaps such as that we stood in to form the sources of the glaciers that twisted downward into the flower-zone like gigantic serpents with silver tails and dingy-gray, scale-covered coils. but here and there over the snowy floor were scattered groups of peculiar, black rocks out of which jetted the steamy clouds that tawannears had noticed.

"whose fires?" squeaked corlaer.

the seneca looked eagerly in all directions, hungry for—— who can say what vague form his thoughts were molded in?

"the great spirit built them," i answered. "ay, and tends them this moment."

tawannears bent doubting glance upon my face.

"'tis so," i affirmed. "do you remember in the missionary's school, talk of mountains called volcanoes?"

"but those were found only in hot countries—or so they taught us," answered the seneca.

"then they taught you wrong. i, myself, have seen such a mountain in italy, which is in europe. and here we stand on a mountain that is—or has been—a volcano."

corlaer jumped perceptibly.

"volcanoes hafe fires?" he protested.

"yes," i agreed. "did not our indian friends tell us that sometimes tamanoas exploded—made a loud noise? that is what they meant. deep down, under all this ice and snow, in the bowels of the rocks, burns the undying fire of the world. and i suppose 'tis not far wrong to say the great spirit tends that. from it flows all life, and is not he the giver of life?"

"ja," said the dutchman thoughtfully. "andt now we go down pretty —— quick, eh?"

but i pointed to the sun dropping in the west behind a welter of clouds, and then to the miles of icy rocks betwixt us and the timber-line.

"what chance of coming down whole of limb in darkness?" i asked.

tawannears spoke up before he could answer me.

"tamanoas is—tamanoas," he proclaimed in his resonant voice. "as otetiani has said, under us burns the fire of the life-giver of the world. brothers, tawannears goes to make his prayer to the great spirit. surely, here in his own abode, he will listen!"

and he strode to the nearest rock-pile whence issued the steam of the earth-fires, and flung up his arms in the indians' dignified gesture of prayer—for i think it incomparably more dignified for man to approach the great spirit, in whatever form, not as a suppliant upon bended knee, but as one who craves favor from an honorable master. and his voice rang sonorously again in the rhythmic oratory of the hodenosaunee, as he stated his case, pleaded his hungry heart, cited his bitter need.

we could not hear his words. they were not for us; and we welcomed the little wind that blew into the crater, twining his stately figure in the mist of the fumeroles and carrying the echoing phrases over the opposite snow-banks. but we watched him enthralled, the while the shadows blackened on the mountain's lower flanks and a pink glow flooded the peak around us, shooting a miniature rainbow through the steam-clouds. tawannears tossed out his arms in one final appeal, proudly, as though he had a right to ask, then turned, with a light of exultation in his eyes, and walked back to us.

"i think hawenneyu opened his ears to me," he said simply. "my heart that was sad commenced to sing bravely. it grows strong. all fear has left me."

with the approach of night the little wind became a gale that moaned amongst the rocks. the air, deprived of the sun's heat, was deadly cold. we were in the grip of a winter frost. and true it is we should have died there before morning had it not been for a steam-chamber i found in one of the clumps of black rocks. 'twas unpleasantly damp, but the warmth gave us opportunity for sleep. we awoke in a different world. the peak was wrapped in a thick, moist blanket of fog. the air that had been briskly cold was now clammy. water congealed on our foreheads. our hide garments were stiffened by it. we shivered like people with marsh fever. our teeth rattled as we ate our breakfast—the last food we had, for in our ignorance we had thought to complete the ascent and return in a single day. even tawannears, uplifted by his conviction that he had secured for his quest the aid and endorsement of an unearthly power, was depressed by this outlook.

having finished our scanty meal, we fumbled our way to the gap in the crater wall by which we had entered the previous evening, and hesitated there, peering into the fog.

"we have two choices," i said at length, shattering the uncomfortable silence. "we can stay here without food in the dampness until the clouds are dispersed—or we perish. or we can commit ourselves to the hazards of chance in this pit-mirk and essay to go down where yesterday we came up—with every chance, comrades, that a misstep will hurl us all to destruction."

at that instant the fog was rent for as long as the eye can remain open without blinking, and we caught a fair glimpse of the flower-fields and the lordly stands of timber those few short miles away.

"let us go down, brothers," said tawannears.

"ja," squeaked corlaer. "here i hafe shifers in my back."

i had been leader on the ascent, but when we came to rope ourselves together tawannears insisted upon going first.

"tawannears brought you into this peril, brothers," he declared. "it is for tawannears to lead you out."

so 'twas he who headed us as we scrambled down the outer side of the crater rim. i came next, and corlaer, puffing lustily, was third. at the beginning our task was simple. we had only to follow the foot-holes we had chopped in the snow-ramp under the crest, and we made this initial stage at a rapid rate. below the snow-ramp was a rock-ledge, and we negotiated this with equally swift success; but tawannears was confused by the swirling gray fog and missed the chain of foot-prints that started from the lower edge of the rocks across the next snow-bank.

we blundered around for a time trying to find them, and finally, in desperation, launched out upon the dim white expanse of the snow-field, here so level that we did not need to chop foot-holds. when we started we had been able to see perhaps a dozen feet ahead. tawannears, in advance, was a ghostly figure in my eyes, no more than a voice in the mist to corlaer. but in the middle of this level snow-field the fog suddenly thickened to a soupy consistency, and we all three disappeared, one from another. i could not see the hand i held in front of my face. the clouds were so dense as to seem stifling.

"what shall we do, brothers?" called tawannears in a voice that was muffled and bodiless.

"oof!" grunted corlaer behind me. "we choke to death here, eh?"

"bide, and give the mirk time to weaken," i advised.

we sat and waited until our garments were so saturated with moisture as to weigh heavy upon us, and our clicking teeth warned us of the danger of inaction. the seneca rose abruptly.

"tawannears did wrong to say we should descend, brothers," he said. "but we will die of the cold and wet if we stay here. to try to climb back to the top is as dangerous as to climb down. we have no choice save to continue. if hawenneyu has his eyes upon us we shall live."

ten steps farther on i bumped into his crouching figure.

"back!" he cried fiercely. "here is death!"

i looked down past his feet at a blue-green gulf that showed in an eddy of the mist and was promptly swallowed up again. we had wandered out upon a glacier, of which the snow-bank was the source, and this was one of those fathomless abysses that descended into the icy vestments of the mountain.

foot by foot, on hands and knees, we traced the course of the crevice to a snow-bridge that spanned it, an arch of icy masonry. this tawannears beat upon with his staff to test its resistance. it did not quiver, and he ventured but upon it, whilst corlaer and i dug our heels into the snow and leaned back to catch him up should it bear him down. presently the fog swallowed him—and his voice hailed us announcing he had crossed. i followed him with celerity, and gave the word to corlaer. the dutchman's figure, distorted out of its true proportions by the shifting mists, swam into our view, stepping cautiously across the arch, when, without warning there was a crackle of splitting ice, and peter bounded into the air and dug his heels into the very margin of the precipice's brink as the snow-arch sank beneath his weight.

tawannears and i gasped in horror and braced ourselves for the shock of his fall; but he teetered back and forth for two breaths, there on the verge of eternity, then balanced erect and stepped toward us.

"oof," he remarked with shrill glumness. "dot time peter heardt der angels sing. ja!"

we worked off the top of the glacier onto a second rock-ledge, none too sure of the direction we were taking, but thinking mainly of escaping the treacherous network of crevices. but we could not have avoided the tangle of glaciers on the mountain's sides with the sun shining to light our way, and in the fog it was a certainty we should stumble onto them so soon as we had reached the lower margin of the rock-island—for that was what it really was—we had gained. we were encouraged, however, by an apparent tendency of the mist to dissipate, which enabled us to achieve almost satisfactory progress across the yawning surface of this second stretch of glacier—probably a lower coil of the one which had nearly trapped us above. but just as we were congratulating ourselves upon our success and hoping that we should soon pass out of the cloud-bank, the wind veered and the thick, gray blanket walled us in again.

we kept on doggedly, now immune to fear—or rather, fearing more the suffering of inertia. tawannears walked like a blind man, tapping the ground in front of him with his staff, and shouting to us from time to time the nature of the ground ahead. the descent was regular, and for a quarter-mile or so the ice had given excellent footing. i suppose it made him over-confident. the mist was thinning once more, too, and i could discern his figure, a shadow gliding in advance of me a dozen feet away.

"the ice is broken, brothers—beware a bowlder on the right—no——"

he vanished! there was a violent wrench upon the rope hitched around my waist, and i was jerked from my feet, clawing with all my limbs for a hold to stay me. small stones and ice chunks rattled down as i slid forward. i felt one leg pass over a declivity, sensed that my right arm was beating space. then some new force was exerted behind me. my descent was arrested. i sprawled half over the precipice, but i did not fall further, as i normally should have done.

"who is there?" gasped corlaer out of the fog.

"'tis i! ormerod!" i answered. "tawannears is over the brink."

"is he dead?"

i mustered courage to peer into a blue-green caldron of writhing mist.

"tawannears!" i shouted in an oddly cracked voice.

"yes, brother," he answered calmly, surprisingly near. "i am here."

"are you hurt?"

"no. i am holding to the rope. i have one foot on an ice-shelf."

"i hear," came corlaer's voice behind me. "now, you do what i say. i pull—like——! first comes ormerod. he lets oudt der rope as he comes. when he is safe, we pull togedder for tawannears. readty? oop!"

the dutchman's breath came in great, gagging pants. it seemed as though a dozen yoke of oxen were tugging at that rope. an exclamation from tawannears warned me that the haulage might pull him from his foot-hold on the ice-shelf, with a resulting increase in the strain upon corlaer, and i managed to wriggle sideways as peter dragged me up, so as to release a spare coil of the hide-rope. the instant i had all four limbs on hard ice, i shouted to peter to let be, lifted myself shakily to my knees and crawled to where he sat, with his feet propped on the bowlder tawannears had warned us against, taking in the slack of the line, hand over hand.

"now, we pull tawannears oudt," he puffed.

i seized the line beside him, but my efforts were not what counted. his immense shoulders bent forward. his back and arm-muscles bulged through his hide shirt. his legs braced like steel pillars against the bowlder, luckily frozen fast to its icy bed. and slowly, very slowly, i was able to collect a few inches of slack. the heavy rope chafed against the dull, rounded edge of the precipice, but it held is no hempen cable could have done.

tawannears' arms appeared above the brink, clutching for something to hold to. presently, the seneca's face rose to view—and peter's breath came in the same regular, explosive puffs. then tawannears got one hand on a level space, found leverage for the other.

"corlaer has done enough," he panted. "hold fast! tawannears can bring himself up the rest of the way."

we held the line taut, the seneca gave a heave, swung one leg over the edge—and crawled out of danger, carefully, inch by inch, lest the broken ice betray him a second time.

corlaer straightened to his feet, and released the breath from his lungs in one mighty blast.

"oof!" he grunted. "dot was no choke."

"no joke!" i protested. "you saved our lives!"

"corlaer has added more to the debt which tawannears can never repay," said the seneca. "he is stronger than the buffalo bull. he is like the great tree which upholds the sky. tawannears will not forget."

"ja," mumbled the dutchman. "andt now we go down, eh? it is not goodt here. i hafe shifers in my back."

we brushed the moisture from our eyelashes and started forth anew with redoubled caution. the mist was not so thick, but the wind-currents were brisker, and the clouds eddied in a way that was most perplexing. we succeeded in getting off the glacier onto a rock-edge, and this fetched us to a snow-field, so steep that we must resort again to our hatchets to cut steps for our descent—and here, i think, the blinding mist was an advantage, for it prevented us from being confused by the giddy depths below.

i had just taken the lead from tawannears to rest him from the taxing labor of chopping out the foot-holds, when the whole surface of the field commenced to slip. corlaer lost his footing first, and was flung head over heels across the snow, dragging tawannears and me after him. the mass of snow gathered headway as it sped on, but a short distance below the starting-point it was arrested by a terrace in the mountain-side, and only a miniature torrent of ice-chunks attended us on our continued descent. for we, probably because of our individual weight, were bounced off the terrace, and rolled down a farther slope, sometimes flung into each other's arms, occasionally separated by the length of our connecting lines, anon ramming one another in head or stomach.

how far we slid i cannot say, but it must have been several thousand feet. of a sudden, the clouds around us seemed to thin away, and we rolled out of darkness into the comparative brilliance of an overcast day. i had a fleeting perception of the lowering wrack overhead, glanced down as i turned an involuntary somersault and perceived the wild-flower zone almost at hand, and the next moment we were cascaded over a bluff and dropped into a snow-drift within a quarter mile of the glade from which we had started the ascent.

bruised and sore, our clothing slashed to ribbons, we were yet sound in limb, and we picked ourselves up from the snow with feeble grins of amusement at the figures of dilapidation we presented. then, limping through the flowers to our hut, we made a fire, broiled a haunch of green venison and crawled into a bed of sweet-smelling cedar boughs for a sleep that lasted until after sun-up the next morning.