While he was making his way up, I amused myself by chopping and carving at the ice at various points to examine its structure, until at length a _Jodel_ from above announced that Christian had reached his post; and a vast amount of hammering ensued, of which I could not understand the meaning.

Presently he called out that 'it' was coming, and assuredly it did come.

There was a loud crash on the upper part of the fall, and a shower of fragments of ice came whizzing past, and almost dislodged me; while the sound of pieces of ice bounding and gliding down the slope seemed as if it never would cease.

It turned out to mean that my friend had not been able to find a stone; so he had smashed a block of ice from the column which presided over the fall, and having attached the string to this, had hurled the whole apparatus in my direction, fortunately not doing as much damage as he might have done.

My end of the string was not to be seen, so he repeated the experiment, with a piece of wood in place of the block of ice, and this time it succeeded.