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appeared a face--not François' face--but the face of a dead man. Suddenly
it rose into the colorless light, pallid and wax-like, with open,
sightless eyes and a dropped jaw, and one horrid splash of color on the
left forehead, where blood had frozen. It was the face of Chayne's
friend, John Lattery; and in a way most grotesque and horrible it bobbed
and nodded at him, as though the neck was broken and the man yet lived.
When François just below cried, "Gently! Gently," it seemed that the dead
man's mouth was speaking.

Chayne uttered a cry; then a deathly sickness overcame him. He dropped
the rope, staggered a little way off like a drunken man and sat down upon
the ice with his head between his hands.

Some while later a man came to him and said:

"We are ready, monsieur."

Chayne returned to the crevasse. Lattery's guide had been raised from the
crevasse. Both bodies had been wrapped in sacks and cords had been fixed
about their legs. The rescue party dragged the bodies down the glacier to
the path, and placing them upon doors taken from a chalet, carried them
down to Chamonix. On the way down François talked for a while to Michel


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