The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 08

The snow-clouds had sunk below the mountains on all sides and a vault entirely dark-blue, almost black, full of densely clustered burning stars extended above the children; and through the midst of them was woven a shimmering broad milky band which they had, indeed, seen also below in the valley, but never so distinctly. The night was advancing. The children did not know that the stars change their position and move toward the west, else they might have recognized the hour of night by their progress. New stars came and the old ones disappeared, but they believed them to be always the same. It grew somewhat brighter about the children by the radiance of the stars; but they saw no valley, no known places, but everywhere white—only white. Only some dark peak, some dark knob became visible looming up out of the shimmering waste. The moon was nowhere to be seen in the heavens, perhaps it had set early with the sun, or it had not yet risen.

After a long time the boy said: "Sanna, you must not sleep; for do you remember what father said, that if one sleeps in the mountains one will freeze to death, as the old hunter slept and sat four months dead on that stone and no one had known where he was."

"No, I shall not sleep," said the little girl feebly. Conrad had shaken her by a corner of her coat, in order to make her listen to his words.

Then there was silence again.

After a little while, the boy felt a soft pressure against his arm which became ever heavier. Sanna had fallen asleep and had sunk over toward him.

"Sanna, don't sleep, please, don't sleep!" he said.

"No," she mumbled drowsily, "I shall not sleep."

He moved farther away from her, in order to make her move; she toppled over and would have continued sleeping on the ground. He took hold of her shoulder and shook her. As he moved a little more, he noticed that he was feeling cold himself and that his arm had grown numb. He was frightened and jumped up. He seized his sister, shook her more vigorously and said, "Sanna, get up a little, we want to stand up a little so that we shall feel better."

"I am not cold, Conrad," she answered.

"Yes indeed you are, Sanna, get up," he cried.

"My fur-jacket is warm," she said.

"I shall help you up," he said.

"No," she replied, and lay still.

Then something else occurred to the boy. Grandmother had said: "Just one little mouthful of it will warm the stomach so that one's body will not be cold on the coldest winter day."

He reached for his little calfskin knapsack, opened it, and groped around in it until he found the little flask into which grandmother had put the black coffee for mother. He took away the wrappings from the bottle and with some exertion uncorked it. Then he bent down to Sanna and said: "Here is the coffee that grandmother sends mother, taste a little of it, it will make you feel warm. Mother would give it to us if she knew what we needed it for."

The little girl, who was by nature inclined to be passive, answered, "I am not cold."

"Just take a little," urged the boy, "and then you may go to sleep again."

This expectation tempted Sanna and she mastered herself so far that she took a swallow of the liquor. Then the boy drank a little, too.

The exceedingly strong extract took effect at once and all the more powerfully as the children had never in their life tasted coffee. Instead of going to sleep, Sanna became more active and acknowledged that she was cold, but that she felt nice and warm inside, and that the warmth was already passing into her hands and feet. The children even spoke a while together.

In this fashion they drank ever more of the liquor in spite of its bitter taste as the effect of it began to die away and roused their nerves to a fever heat which was able to counteract their utter weariness.

It had become midnight, meanwhile. As they still were so young, and because on every Christmas eve in the excess of their joy they went to bed very late and only after being overcome by sleep, they never had heard the midnight tolling, and never the organ of the church when holy mass was being celebrated, although they lived close by. At this moment of the Holy Night, all bells were being rung, the bells of Millsdorf were ringing, the bells of Gschaid were ringing, and behind the mountain there was still another church whose three bells were pealing brightly. In the distant lands outside the valley there were innumerable churches and bells, and all of them were ringing at this moment, from village to village the wave of sound traveled, from one village to another one could hear the peal through the bare branches of the trees; but up to the children there came not a sound, nothing was heard here, for nothing was to be announced here. In the winding valleys, the lights of lanterns gleamed along the mountain-slopes, and from many a farm came the sound of the farm bell to rouse the hands. But far less could all this be seen and heard up here. Only the stars gleamed and calmly twinkled and shone.

Even though Conrad kept before his mind the fate of the huntsman who was frozen to death, and even though the children had almost emptied the bottle of black coffee—which necessarily would bring on a corresponding relaxation afterwards, they would not have been able to conquer their desire for sleep, whose seductive sweetness outweighs all arguments against it, had not nature itself in all its grandeur assisted them and in its own depths awakened a force which was able to cope with sleep.

In the enormous stillness that reigned about them, a silence in which no snow-crystal seemed to move, the children heard three times the bursting of the ice. That which seems the most rigid of all things and yet is most flexible and alive, the glacier, had produced these sounds. Thrice they heard behind them a crash, terrific as if the earth were rent asunder,—a sound that ramified through the ice in all directions and seemed to penetrate all its veins. The children remained sitting open-eyed and looked out upon the stars.

Their eyes also were kept busy. As the children sat there, a pale light began to blossom forth on the sky before them among the stars and extended a flat arc through them. It had a greenish tinge which gradually worked downward. But the arc became ever brighter until the stars paled in it. It sent a luminosity also into other regions of the heavens which shed greenish beams softly and actively among the stars. Then, sheaves of vari-colored light stood in burning radiance on the height of the arc like the spikes of a crown. Mildly it flowed through the neighboring regions of the heavens, it flashed and showered softly, and in gentle vibrations extended through vast spaces. Whether now the electric matter of the atmosphere had become so tense by the unexampled fall of snow that it resulted in this silent, splendid efflorescence of light, or whether some other cause of unfathomable nature may be assigned as reason for the phenomenon—however that be: gradually the light grew weaker and weaker, first the sheaves died down, until by unnoticeable degrees it grew ever less and there was nothing in the heavens but the thousands upon thousands of simple stars.

The children never exchanged a word, but remained sitting and gazed open-eyed into the heavens.

Nothing particular happened afterward. The stars gleamed and shone and twinkled, only an occasional shooting star traversed them.

At last, after the stars had shone alone for a long time, and nothing had been seen of the moon, something else happened. The sky began to grow brighter, slowly but recognizably brighter; its color became visible, the faintest stars disappeared and the others were not clustered so densely any longer. Finally, also the bigger stars faded away, and the snow on the heights became more distinct. Now, one region of the heavens grew yellow and a strip of cloud floating in it was inflamed to a glowing line. All things became clearly visible and the remote snow-hills assumed sharp outlines.

"Sanna, day is breaking," said the boy.

"Yes, Conrad," answered the girl.

"After it grows just a bit brighter we shall go out of the cave and run down from the mountain."

It grew brighter, no star was visible any longer, and all things stood out clear in the dawn.

"Well, then, let us go," said the boy.

"Yes, let us go," answered Sanna.

The children arose and tried their limbs which only now felt their tiredness. Although they had not slept, the morning had reinvigorated them. The boy slung the calfskin bag around his shoulder and fastened Sanna's fur-jacket about her. Then he led her out of the cave.

As they had believed it would be an easy matter to run down from the mountain they had not thought of eating and had not searched the bag, to see whether it contained any wheat-bread or other eatables.

The sky being clear, Conrad had wanted to look down from the mountain into the valleys in order to recognize the valley of Gschaid and descend to it. But he saw no valleys whatever. He seemed not to stand on any mountain from which one can look down, but in some strange, curious country in which there were only unknown objects. Today they saw awful rocks stand up out of the snow at some distance which they had not seen the day before; they saw the glacier, they saw hummocks and slanting snow-fields, and behind these, either the sky or the blue peak of some very distant mountain above the edge of the snowy horizon.

At this moment the sun arose.

A gigantic, bloody red disk emerged above the white horizon and immediately the snow about the children blushed as if it had been strewn with millions of roses. The knobs and pinnacles of the mountain cast very long and greenish shadows along the snow.

"Sanna, we shall go on here, until we come to the edge of the mountain and can look down," said the boy.

They went farther into the snow. In the clear night, it had become still drier and easily yielded to their steps. They waded stoutly on. Their limbs became even more elastic and strong as they proceeded, but they came to no edge and could not look down. Snowfield succeeded snowfield, and at the end of each always shone the sky.

They continued nevertheless.

Before they knew it, they were on the glacier again. They did not know how the ice had got there, but they felt the ground smooth underfoot, and although there were not such awful boulders as in the moraine where they had passed the night, yet they were aware of the glacier being underneath them, they saw the blocks growing ever larger and coming ever nearer, forcing them to clamber again.

Yet they kept on in the same direction.

Again they were clambering up some boulders; again they stood on the glacier. Only today, in the bright sunlight, could they see what it was like. It was enormously large, and beyond it, again, black rocks soared aloft. Wave heaved behind wave, as it were, the snowy ice was crushed, raised up, swollen as if it pressed onward and were flowing toward the children. In the white of it they perceived innumerable advancing wavy blue lines. Between those regions where the icy masses rose up, as if shattered against each other, there were lines like paths, and these were strips of firm ice or places where the blocks of ice had not been screwed up very much. The children followed these paths as they intended to cross part of the glacier, at least, in order to get to the edge of the mountain and at last have a glimpse down. They said not a word. The girl followed in the footsteps of the boy. The place where they had meant to cross grew ever broader, it seemed. Giving up their direction, they began, to retreat. Where they could not walk they broke with their hands through the masses of snow which often gave way before their eyes, revealing the intense blue of a crevasse where all had been pure white before. But they did not mind this and labored on until they again emerged from the ice somewhere.

"Sanna," said the boy, "we shall not go into the ice again at all, because we cannot make our way in it. And because we cannot look down into our valley, anyway, we want to go down from the mountain in a straight line. We must come into some valley, and there we shall tell people that we are from Gschaid and they will show us the way home."

"Yes, Conrad," said the girl.

So they began to descend on the snow in the direction which its slope offered them. The boy led the little girl by her hand. However, after having descended some distance, the slope no longer followed that direction and the snowfield rose again. The children, therefore, changed their direction and descended toward a shallow basin. But there they struck ice again. So they climbed up along the side of the basin in order to seek a way down in some other direction. A slope led them downward, but that gradually became so steep that they could scarcely keep a footing and feared lest they should slide down. So they retraced their steps upward to find some other way down. After having clambered up the snowfield a long time and then continuing along an even ridge, they found it to be as before: either the snow sloped so steeply that they would have fallen, or it ascended so that they feared it would lead to the very peak of the mountain. And thus it continued to be.

Then they had the idea of finding the direction from which they had come and of descending to the red post. As it is not snowing and the sky is bright, thought the boy, they should be able, after all, to see the spot where the post ought to be, and to descend down from it to Gschaid.

The boy told his little sister his thought and she followed him.

But the way down to the "neck" was not to be found.

However clear the sun shone, however beautifully the snowy heights stood there, and the fields of snow lay there, yet they could not recognize the places over which they had come the day before. Yesterday, all had been veiled by the immense snowfall, so they had scarcely seen a couple of feet ahead of them, and then all had been a mingled white and gray. They had seen only the rocks along and between which they had passed; but today also they had seen many rocks and they all resembled those they had seen the day before. Today, they left fresh tracks behind them in the snow; yesterday, all tracks had been obliterated by the falling snow. Neither could they gather from the aspect of things which way they had to return to the "neck," since all places looked alike. Snow and snow again. But on they marched and hoped to succeed in the end. They avoided the declivities and did not attempt to climb steep slopes.

Today also they frequently stood still to listen; but they heard nothing, not the slightest sound. Neither was anything to be seen excepting the dazzling snow from which emerged, here and there, black peaks and ribs of rock.

At last the boy thought he saw a flame skipping over a far-away snow-slope. It bobbed up and dipped down again. Now they saw it, and then again they did not. They remained standing and steadfastly gazed in that direction. The flame kept on skipping up and down and seemed to be approaching, for they saw it grow bigger and skipping more plainly. It did not disappear so often and for so long a time as before. After awhile they heard in the still blue air faintly, very faintly, something like the long note of a shepherd's horn. As if from instinct, both children shouted aloud. A little while, and they heard the sound again. They shouted again and remained standing on the same spot. The flame also came nearer. The sound was heard for the third time, and this time more plainly. The children answered again by shouting loudly. After some time, they also recognized that it was no flame they had seen but a red flag which was being swung. At the same time the shepherd's horn resounded closer to them and the children made reply.

"Sanna," cried the boy, "there come people from Gschaid. I know the flag, it is the red flag that the stranger gentleman planted on the peak, when he had climbed the Gars with the young hunter, so that the reverend father could see it with his spyglass, and that was to be the sign that they had reached the top, and the stranger gentleman gave him the flag afterward as a present. You were a real small child, then."

"Yes, Conrad."

After awhile the children could also see the people near the flag, like little black dots that seemed to move. The call of the horn came again and again, and ever nearer. Each time, the children made answer.

Finally they saw on the snow-slope opposite them several men with the flag in their midst coast down on their Alpen-stocks. When they had come closer the children recognized them. It was the shepherd Philip with his horn, his two sons, the young hunter, and several men of Gschaid.

"God be blessed," cried Philip, "why here you are. The whole mountain is full of people. Let one of you run down at once to the Sideralp chalet and ring the bell, that they down below may hear that we have found them; and one must climb the Krebsstein and plant the flag there so that they in the valley may see it and fire off the mortars, so that the people searching in the Millsdorf forest may hear it and that they may kindle the smudge-fires in Gschaid, and all those on the mountain may come down to the Sideralp chalet. This is a Christmas for you!"

"I shall climb down to the chalet," one said.

"And I shall carry the flag to the Krebsstein," said another.

"And we will get the children down to the Sideralp chalet as well as we can, if God help us;" said Philip.

One of Philip's sons made his way downward, and the other went his way with the flag.

The hunter took the little girl by her hand, and the shepherd Philip the boy. The others helped as they could. Thus they started out. They turned this way and that. Now they followed one direction, now they took the opposite course, now they climbed up, now down, always through snow, and the surroundings seemed to remain the same. On very steep inclines they fastened climbing-irons to their feet and carried the children. Finally, after a long time, they heard the ringing of a little bell that sounded up to them soft and thin, which was the first sign the lower regions sent to them again. They must really have descended quite far; for now they saw a snowy bluish peak lift up its head to a great height above them. The bell, however, which they had heard was that of the Sideralp chalet which was being rung, because there the meeting was to be. As they proceeded farther they also heard in the still atmosphere the faint report of the mortars which were fired at the sight of the flag; and still later they saw thin columns of smoke rising into the still air.

When they, after a little while, descended a gentle slope they caught sight of the Sideralp chalet. They approached. In the hut a fire was burning, the mother of the children was there, and with a terrible cry she sank in the snow as she saw her children coming with the hunter.

Then she ran up, looked them all over, wanted to give them something to eat, wanted to warm them, and bed them in the hay that was there; but soon she convinced herself that the children were more stimulated by their rescue than she had thought and only required some warm food and a little rest, both of which they now obtained.

When, after some time of rest, another group of men descended the snow-slope while the little bell continued tolling, the children themselves ran out to see who they were. It was the shoemaker, the former mountaineer, with Alpen-stock and climbing-irons, accompanied by friends and comrades.

"Sebastian, here they are!" cried the woman.

He, however, remained speechless, shaking with emotion, and then ran up to her. Then his lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but he said nothing, caught the children in his embrace and held them long. Thereupon he turned to his wife, embraced her and cried "Sanna, Sanna!"

After awhile he picked up his hat which had fallen on the snow and stepped among the men as if to speak. But he only said: "Neighbors and friends, I thank you!"

After waiting awhile, until the children had recovered from their excitement, he said: "If we are all together we may start, in God's name."

"We are not all together yet, I believe," said the shepherd Philip, "but those who are still missing will know from the smoke that we have found the children and will go home when they find the chalet empty."

All got ready to depart.

The Sideralp chalet is not so very far from Gschaid, from whose windows one can, in summer time, very well see the green pasture on which stands the gray hut with its small belfry; but below it there is a perpendicular wall with a descent of many fathoms which one could climb in summer, with the help of climbing-irons, but which was not to be scaled in winter. They were, therefore, compelled to go by way of the "neck" in order to get down to Gschaid. On their way, they came to the Sider meadow which is still nearer to Gschaid so that from it one could see the windows in the village.

As they were crossing these meadows, the bell of the Gschaid church sounded up to them bright and clear, announcing the Holy Transubstantiation.

On account of the general commotion that obtained in Gschaid that morning, the celebration of the High-mass had been deferred, as the priest thought the children would soon be found. Finally, however, as still no news came, the holy mass had to be celebrated.

When they heard the bell announcing the Holy Transsubstantiation, all those crossing the Sider meadow sank upon their knees in the snow and prayed. When the tolling had ceased they arose and marched on.

The shoemaker was carrying his little girl for the most part and made her tell him all.

When they were descending toward the forest of the "neck" they saw tracks which, he declared, came not from shoes of his make.

The explanation came soon. Attracted probably by the many voices they heard, another body of men joined them. It was the dyer—ash-gray in the face from fright—descending at the head of his workmen, apprentices, and several men of Millsdorf.

"They climbed over the glacier and the crevasses without knowing it," the shoemaker shouted to his father-in-law.

"There they are—there they are—praised be the Lord," answered the dyer, "I knew already that they had been on the mountain when your messenger came to us in the night, and we had searched through the whole forest with lanterns and had not found anything—and then, when it dawned, I observed that on the road which leads on the left up toward the snow-mountain, on the spot where the post stands—that there some twigs and stalks were broken off, as children like to do on their way—and then I knew it, and then they could not get away, because they walked in the hollow, and then between the rocks on to the ridge which is so steep on either side that they could not get down. They just had to ascend. After making this observation I sent a message to Gschaid, but the wood-cutter Michael who carried it told us at his return, when he joined us up there near the ice, that you had found them already, and so we came down again."

"Yes," said Michael, "I told you so because the red flag is hung out on the Krebsstein, and this was the sign agreed upon in Gschaid. And I told you that they all would come down this way, as one cannot climb down the precipice."

"And kneel down and thank God on your knees, my son-in-law," continued the dyer, "that there was no wind. A hundred years will pass before there will be another such fall of snow that will come down straight like wet cords hanging from a pole. If there had been any wind the children would have perished."

"Yes, let us thank God, let us thank God," said the shoemaker.

The dyer who since the marriage of his daughter had never been in Gschaid decided to accompany the men to the village.

When they approached the red post where the side-road began they saw the sleigh waiting for them which the shoemaker had ordered there, whatever the outcome. They let mother and children get into it, covered them well up in the rugs and furs provided for them and let them ride ahead to Gschaid.

The others followed and arrived in Gschaid by afternoon. Those who still were on the mountain and had only learned through the smoke that the signal for returning had been given, gradually also found their way into the valley. The last to appear in the evening was the son of the shepherd Philip who had carried the red flag to the Krebsstein and planted it there.