a day's sport on the krammets berg. 173 



" Be careful," said Xavier, now for the first time 

 breaking silence, seeing the danger was past; and he 

 went on. 



He presently called to me not to come further, to 

 stand aside and look out for stones ; and directly after 

 one came leaping down and whizzing through the air. 

 I went toward a wall of rock that rose upright beside 

 the inclined plane above referred to, and hardly had I 

 reached it when larger fragments of rock came leaping 

 by me into the chasm below : they passed close before 

 my face, and then for the first time I comprehended the 

 terrific force of such missiles, and the havoc they are 

 capable of causing in mountain warfare. They were 

 pieces of rock that Xavier had detached in climbing up- 

 wards, and the impetus with which they came whizzing 

 by made them bound back with renewed force from 

 every object in their way, and shoot out far beyond the 

 brink before they fell. They then swept on, out of sight, 

 while the clam re-echoed with their rolling ; but deep 

 and oppressive as was the stillness of that yawning place, 

 the silence thus broken had something discordant, some- 

 thing unearthly in it, and I was almost glad when the 

 sounds died away in some distant hollow.* 



At length I saw Xavier making his way back again. 

 The chamois was not to be seen. We followed its traces 

 some distance, first however binding up my torn fingers, 

 in order not to confound the drops of blood falling from 

 them with that of the chamois : we saw that it had got 

 out of the clam, and was doubtless among the latschen. 

 Without a dog we could then do nothing, for by this 

 time the chamois had probably ceased to bleed ; and to 

 follow it by the slot alone on the hard ground, crossed 



* The drawing facing this page is not a sketch of the clam in ques- 

 tion, but there is much resemblance between the two. — C. B. 



