With such marvellous quickness does the mind act in an emergency, that all these thoughts came to Alaric even as he bent anxiously over his injured friend and began to examine tenderly into the nature of his hurts. As he lifted the left arm the sufferer uttered a cry of pain, and its hand hung limp. The other limbs were sound, but Bonny said that every breath was like a stab.
"One arm broken, and I'm afraid something gone wrong inside," announced Alaric at length; "but it might be ever so much worse," he continued, in as cheerful a tone as he could command. "One of your legs might have been broken, you know, and then we should be in a fix, for I couldn't carry you, and we should have to stay right here. Now, though, I am sure you can walk as far as the timber if you will only try. Of course it will hurt terribly."
Very slowly, and with many a stifled cry of acute pain, Bonny gained his feet. Then, with his right arm about Alaric's neck, and with the latter stoutly supporting him, the injured lad managed to cross the few hundred feet intervening between that place and the longed-for shelter.
Both Bonny's weakness and the darkness, which was now that of night, prevented their penetrating deep into the timber; but before the sufferer sank to the ground, declaring that he could not take another step, they had gone far enough to escape the icy blast that, sweeping down from the upper snow-fields, had chilled them to the marrow. This alone was a notable achievement, and already Alaric believed he could perceive a glimmer of the light he had set out to find.
Now for a fire, and how grateful they were for M. Filbert's forethought that had provided each one of his party with plenty of matches! Feeling about for twigs, and whittling a few shavings with his sheath-knife, Alaric quickly started a tiny flame, and with its first cheery glow their situation seemed robbed of half its terrors. An armful of sticks produced a brave crackling blaze that drove the black forest shadows to a respectful distance.
With Bonny's hatchet Alaric next lopped all the branches from the lower side of a thick-growing hemlock and wove them among those that were left, so as to form a wind-break. An armful of the same flat boughs, cut from other trees and strewn on the ground, formed a springy bed on which to unfold the sleeping-bags, that by rare good fortune had remained strapped to the lads' shoulders during all their terrible journey from the summit camp of the night before.
