possibly we owed our salvation.

"Now, calm and freed of that haunting jar of descent, I became conscious
that a sound, that I had at first taken for the rush of my own arteries,
had an origin apart from us. It was like the wash and thunder of waters
in a deep sewer.

"'Fidèle!' I said again.

"'I am listening.'

"'Hear, then! Canst thou free my right arm, that I may feel for the
lucifers in my pocket?'

"She moved at once, never raising her face from my breast. I groped for
the box, found it; and manipulating with one hand, succeeded in striking
a match. It flamed up--a long wax vesta.

"A glory of sleek fires sprang on the instant into life. We lay
imprisoned in a house of glass at the foot of a smooth incline rising
behind us to unknown heights. A wall of porous and opaque ice-rubbish,
into which our feet had plunged deep, had stayed our progress.

"I placed the box by my side ready for use. Our last moments should be
lavish of splendour. Stooping for another match, to kindle from the flame
of the near-expired one, a thought struck me. Why had we not been at once
frozen to death? Yet we lay where we had brought up, as snug and glowing
as if we were wrapped in bedclothes.

"The answer came to me in a flash. We had fallen sheer to the glacier