Chapter Eight.Introduces the Reader to Various Personages, and touches on Glaciers.At this time our travellers, having only just been introduced to the mountain, had a great deal to hear and see before they understood him. They returned to the hotel with the feeling of disappointment still upon them, but with excellent appetites for dinner.In theSalle à mangerthey met with a miscellaneous assortment of tourists. These, of whom there were above thirty, varied not only as to size and feature, but as to country and experience. There were veteran Alpine men—steady, quiet, bronzed-looking fellows, some of them—who looked as if they had often “attacked” and conquered the most dangerous summits, and meant to do so again. There were men, and women too, from England, America, Germany, France, and Russia. Some had been at Chamouni before, and wore the self-possessed air of knowledge; others had obviously never been there before, and were excited. Many were full of interest and expectation, a few, chiefly very young men, wore ablasé, half-pitiful, half-patronising air, as though to say, “that’s right, good people, amuse yourselves with your day-dreams while you may.Wehave tried a few weeks of this sort of thing, and have done a summit or two; in imagination we have also been up Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, and the Matterhorn, and a few of the Hymalaya peaks, and most of the mountains in the moon, and several of the fixed stars, and—haw—are now rather boa–ord with it all than otherwise!” There were men who had done much and who said little, and men who had done little and who spoke much. There were “ice-men” who had a desire to impart their knowledge, and would-be ice-men who were glad to listen. Easy-going men and women there were, who flung the cares of life behind them, and “went in,” as they said, for enjoyment; and who, with abounding animal spirits, a dash of religious sentiment, much irrepressible humour and fun, were really pleasant objects to look at, and entertaining companions to travel with. Earnest men and women there were, too, who gathered plants and insects, and made pencil-sketches and water-colour drawings during their rambles among mountains and valleys, and not a few of whom chronicled faithfully their experiences from day to day. There was a Polish Count, a tall, handsome, middle-aged, care-worn, anxious-looking man, who came there, apparently in search of health, and who was cared for and taken care of by a dark-eyed little daughter. This daughter was so beautiful, that it ought to have made the Count well—so thought most of the young men—simply to look at her! There was a youthful British Lord, who had come to “do” Mont Blanc and a few other peaks. He was under charge of a young man of considerable experience in mountaineering, whose chief delight seemed to be the leading of his charge to well-known summits by any other and more difficult tracks than the obvious and right ones, insomuch that Lewis Stoutley, who had a tendency to imprudent remark, said in his hearing that he had heard of men who, in order to gain the roof of a house, preferred to go up by the waterspout rather than the staircase. There was an artist, whom Lewis—being, as already observed, given to insolence—styled the mad artist because he was enthusiastic in his art, galvanic in his actions, and had large, wild eyes, with long hair, and a broad-brimmed conical hat. Besides these, there was a Russian Professor, who had come there for purposes of scientific investigation, and a couple of German students, and a Scotch man of letters, whose aim was general observation, and several others, whose end was simply seeing the world.In the arrangements of the table, Captain Wopper found himself between Emma Gray and the Polish Count, whose name was Horetzki. Directly opposite to him sat Mrs Stoutley, having her son Lewis on her right, and Dr Lawrence on her left. Beside the Count sat his lovely little daughter Nita, and just opposite to her was the mad artist. This arrangement was maintained throughout the sojourn of the various parties during their stay at Chamouni. They did, indeed, shift their position as regarded the table, according to the arrival or departure of travellers, but not in regard to each other.Now it is an interesting, but by no means surprising fact, that Cupid planted himself in the midst of this party, and, with his fat little legs, in imminent danger of capsizing the dishes, began to draw his bow and let fly his arrows right and left. Being an airy sprite, though fat, and not at any time particularly visible, a careless observer might have missed seeing him; but to any one with moderate powers of observation, he was there, straddling across a dish of salad as plain as the salt-cellar before Captain Wopper’s nose. His deadly shafts, too, were visibly quivering in the breasts of Lewis Stoutley, George Lawrence, and the mad artist. Particularly obvious were these shafts in the case of the last, who was addicted to gazing somewhat presumptuously on “lovely woman” in general, from what he styled an artistic point of view—never from any other point of view; of course not.Whether or not Cupid had discharged his artillery at the young ladies, we cannot say, for they betrayed no evidence of having been wounded. In their case, he must either have missed his aim, or driven his shafts home with such vigour, that they were buried out of sight altogether in their tender hearts. It is probable that not one member of that miscellaneous company gave a thought at that time to the wounded men, except the wounded men themselves, so absorbing is the love of food! The wounded were, however, sharp-set in all respects. They at once descried each other’s condition, and, instead of manifesting sympathy with each other, were, strange to say, filled with intense jealousy. This at least is true of the younger men. Lawrence, being somewhat older, was more secretive and self-possessed.At first Captain Wopper, having declined a dish of cauliflower because it was presentedalone, and having afterwards accepted a mutton chopalone, with feelings of poignant regret that he had let the cauliflower go by, was too busy to observe what the heathen-mythological youngster was doing. Indeed, at most times, the said youngster might have discharged a whole quiver of arrows into the Captain’s eyes without his being aware of the attack; but, at the present time, the Captain, as the reader is aware, was up to the eyes in a plot in which Cupid’s aid was necessary; he had, as it were, invoked the fat child’s presence. When, therefore, he had got over the regrets about the cauliflower, and had swallowed the mutton-chop, he began to look about him—to note the converse that passed between the young men, and the frequent glances they cast at the young women.It was not the first time that the Captain had, so to speak, kept his weather-eye open in regard to the affection which he had made up his mind must now have been awakened in the breasts of George Lawrence and Emma Gray; but hitherto his hopes, although sanguine, had not received encouragement. Though polite and respectful to each other, they were by no means tender; altogether, they acted quite differently from what the Captain felt that he would have done in similar circumstances. A suspicion had even crossed the poor seaman’s mind that Emma was in love with her handsome and rattling cousin Lewis; but anxiety on this head was somewhat allayed by other and conflicting circumstances, such as occasional remarks by Lewis, to the effect that Emma was a goose, or a pert little monkey, or that she knew nothing beyond house-keeping and crochet, and similar compliments. Now, however, in a certain animated conversation between Lawrence and Emma, the designing seaman thought he saw the budding of his deep-laid plans, and fondly hoped ere long to behold the bud developed into the flower of matrimony. Under this conviction he secretly hugged himself, but in the salon, that evening, he opened his arms and released himself on beholding the apparently fickle Lawrence deeply engaged in converse with the Count Horetzki, to whose pretty daughter, however, he addressed the most of his remarks.The Captain, being a blunt honest, straightforward man, could not understand this state of matters, and fell into a fit of abstracted perplexity on the sofa beside Mrs Stoutley, who listened listlessly to the Russian Professor as he attempted to explain to her and Emma the nature of a glacier.“Well, I don’t understand it at all,” said Mrs Stoutley, at the end of one of the Professor’s most lucid expositions.We may remark, in passing, that the Professor, like many of his countrymen, was a good linguist and spoke English well.“Not understand it!” he exclaimed, with a slight elevation of his eyebrows. “My dear madam, it is most plain, but I fear my want of good English does render me not quite intelligible.”“Your English is excellent,” replied Mrs Stoutley, with a smile, “but I fear that my brain is not a sufficiently clear one on such matters, for I confess that I cannot understand it. Can you, Captain Wopper?”“Certainly not, ma’am,” answered the Captain, thinking of the fickle Lawrence; “it takes the wind out of my sails entirely.”“Indeed!” said the Professor. “Well, do permit me to try again. You understand that all the mountain-tops and elevated plateaus, for many miles around here, are covered with ice and snow.”“Oh!” exclaimed the Captain, awaking to the fact that his answer was not relevant; “may I ax what is the particular pint that puzzles you, ma’am?”Emma laughed aloud at this, and coughed a little to conceal the fact. She was rather easily taken by surprise with passing touches of the ludicrous, and had not yet acquired the habit of effectually suppressing little explosions of undertoned mirth.“The thing that puzzles me,” said Mrs Stoutley, “is, that glaciers shouldflow, as I am told they do, and yet that they should be as hard and brittle as glass.”“Ah, well, yes, just so, h’m!” said the Captain, looking very wise; “that is exactly the pint that I want to know myself; for no man who looks at the great tongue of that glacier day Bossung—”“Des Bossons,” said the Professor, with a bland smile.“Day Bossong,” repeated the Captain, “can deny that it is marked with all the lines, and waves, an eddies of a rollin’ river, an’ yet as little can they deny that it seems as hard-and-fast as the rock of Gibraltar.”The Professor nodded approvingly.“You are right, Captain Whipper—”“Wopper,” said the Captain, with a grave nod.“Wopper,” repeated the Professor, “the glacier des Bossons, like all the other glaciers, seems to remain immovable, though in reality it flows—ever flows—downward; but its motion is so slow, that it is not perceptible to the naked eye. Similarly, the hour-hand of a watch is to appearance motionless. Do you want proof? Mark it just now; look again in quarter of an hour, and you see that it has moved. You are convinced. It is so with the glacier. Mark him to-day, go back to-morrow—the mark has changed. Some glaciers flow at the rate of two and three feet in the twenty-four hours.”“Yes, buthowdo they flow, being so brittle?” demanded Mrs Stoutley.“Ay, that’s the pint, Professor,” said the Captain, nodding, “howdo they flow, bein’ made of hard and brittle ice?”“Why, by rolling higgledy-piggledy over itself of course,” said Lewis, flippantly, as he came up and sat down on the end of the sofa, being out of humour with himself and everybody in consequence of having utterly failed to gain the attention of Nita Horetzki, although he had made unusually earnest efforts to join in conversation with her father. Owing to somewhat similar feelings, the artist had flung himself into a chair, and sat glaring at the black fireplace with a degree of concentration that ought to have lighted the firewood therein.“The cause of a glacier flowing,” said the Professor, “has long been a disputed point. Some men of science have held that it is the pressure of ice and snow behind it which causes it to flow. They do not think that it flows like water, but say it is forced from behind, and crushed through gorges and down valleys, as it were, unwillingly. They say that, if left alone, as they now are, without additions, from this time forward, glaciers would no longer move; they would rest, and slowly melt away; that their motion is due to the fact that there are miles and miles of snow-fields, thousands of feet deep, on the mountain-tops and in the gorges, to which fresh snows are added every winter, so that the weight of what is behind, slipping off the slopes and falling from the cliffs, crushes down and forward that which is below; thus glaciers cannot choose but advance.”“Ay, ay,” said the Captain, “no doubt no doubt that may be so; but why is it that, bein’ as brittle as glass, a glacier don’t come rumblin’ and clatterin’ down the valleys in small hard bits, like ten thousand millions of smashed-up chandeliers?”“Ay, there’s the rub,” exclaimed Lewis; “what say you to that?”“Ha!” exclaimed the Professor, again smiling blandly, “there you have touched what once was, and, to some philosophers it seems, still is, the great difficulty. By some great men it has been held that glacier ice is always in a partially soft, viscid, or semi-fluid condition, somewhat like pitch, so that, althoughapparentlya solid, brittle, and rigid body, it flows sluggishly in reality. Other philosophers have denied this theory, insisting that the ice of glaciers isnotlike pitch, but like glass, and that it cannot be squeezed without being broken, nor drawn without being cracked. These philosophers have discovered that when ice is subjected to great pressure it melts, and that, when the pressure is removed, the part so melted immediately freezes again—hence the name regelation, or re-freezing, is given to the process. Thus a glacier, they say, is in many places being continually melted and continually and instantaneously re-frozen, so that it is made to pass through narrow gorges, and to open out again when the enormous pressure has been removed. But this theory of regelation, although unquestionably true, and although it exercisessomeinfluence on glacier motion, does not, in my opinion, alone account for it. The opinion which seems to be most in favour among learned men—and that which I myself hold firmly—is, the theory of the Scottish Professor Forbes, namely, that a glacier is a semi-fluid body, it is largely impregnated throughout its extent with water, its particles move round and past each other—in other words, it flows in precisely the same manner as water, the only difference being that it is not quite so fluid; it is sluggish in its flow, but it certainly models itself to the ground over which it is forced by its own gravity, and it is only rent or broken into fragments when it is compelled to turn sharp angles, or to pass over steep convex slopes. Forbes, by his careful measurements and investigations, proved incontestably that in some glaciers the central portion travelled down its valley at double or treble the rate of its sides, without the continuity of the mass being broken. In small masses, indeed, glacier-ice is to all appearance rigid, but on a large scale it is unquestionably ductile.”“Has the theory of regelation been put to the proof?” asked Lewis, with a degree of interest in glaciers which he had never before felt.“It has,” answered the Professor. “An experimentalist once cut a bar of solid ice, like to a bar of soap in form and size, from a glacier. To this an iron weight of several pounds was suspended by means of a very fine wire, which was tied round the bar. The pressure of the wire melted the ice under it; as the water escaped it instantly re-froze above the wire; thus the wire went on cutting its way through the bar, and the water went on freezing, until at last the weight fell to the ground, and left the bar as solid and entire as if it had never been cut.”“Well, now,” said Captain Wopper, bringing his hand down on his thigh with a slap that did more to arouse Mrs Stoutley out of her languor than the Professor’s lecture on glacier ice, “I’ve sailed round the world, I have, an’ seen many a strange sight, and what I’ve got to say is that I’ll believe that when Iseeit.”“You shall see it soon then, I hope,” said the Professor, more blandly than ever, “for I intend to verify this experiment along with several others. I go to the Mer de Glace, perhaps as far as the Jardin, to-morrow. Will you come?”“What may the Jardang be?” asked the Captain.“Hallo! monkey, what’s wrong?” said Lewis to Emma, referring to one of the undertoned safety-valves before mentioned.“Nothing,” replied Emma, pursing her little lips till they resembled a cherry.“The Jardin, or garden,” said the Professor, “is a little spot of exquisite beauty in the midst of the glaciers, where a knoll of green grass and flowers peeps up in the surrounding sterility. It is one of the regular excursions from Chamouni.”“Can ladies go?” asked Lewis.“Young and active ladies can,” said the Professor, with his blandest possible smile, as he bowed to Emma.“Then, we’ll all go together,” cried Lewis, with energy.“Not all,” said Mrs Stoutley, with a sigh, “I am neither young nor active.”“Nonsense, mother, you’re quite young yet, you know, and as active as a kitten when you’ve a mind to be. Come, we’ll have a couple of porters and a chair to have you carried when you knock up.”Notwithstanding the glowing prospects of ease and felicity thus opened up to her, Mrs Stoutley resolutely refused to go on this excursion, but she generously allowed Emma to go if so disposed. Emma, being disposed, it was finally arranged that, on the following day, she, the Captain, Lewis, and Lawrence, with Gillie White as her page, should proceed up the sides of Mont Blanc with the man of science, and over the Mer de Glace to the Jardin.
At this time our travellers, having only just been introduced to the mountain, had a great deal to hear and see before they understood him. They returned to the hotel with the feeling of disappointment still upon them, but with excellent appetites for dinner.
In theSalle à mangerthey met with a miscellaneous assortment of tourists. These, of whom there were above thirty, varied not only as to size and feature, but as to country and experience. There were veteran Alpine men—steady, quiet, bronzed-looking fellows, some of them—who looked as if they had often “attacked” and conquered the most dangerous summits, and meant to do so again. There were men, and women too, from England, America, Germany, France, and Russia. Some had been at Chamouni before, and wore the self-possessed air of knowledge; others had obviously never been there before, and were excited. Many were full of interest and expectation, a few, chiefly very young men, wore ablasé, half-pitiful, half-patronising air, as though to say, “that’s right, good people, amuse yourselves with your day-dreams while you may.Wehave tried a few weeks of this sort of thing, and have done a summit or two; in imagination we have also been up Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, and the Matterhorn, and a few of the Hymalaya peaks, and most of the mountains in the moon, and several of the fixed stars, and—haw—are now rather boa–ord with it all than otherwise!” There were men who had done much and who said little, and men who had done little and who spoke much. There were “ice-men” who had a desire to impart their knowledge, and would-be ice-men who were glad to listen. Easy-going men and women there were, who flung the cares of life behind them, and “went in,” as they said, for enjoyment; and who, with abounding animal spirits, a dash of religious sentiment, much irrepressible humour and fun, were really pleasant objects to look at, and entertaining companions to travel with. Earnest men and women there were, too, who gathered plants and insects, and made pencil-sketches and water-colour drawings during their rambles among mountains and valleys, and not a few of whom chronicled faithfully their experiences from day to day. There was a Polish Count, a tall, handsome, middle-aged, care-worn, anxious-looking man, who came there, apparently in search of health, and who was cared for and taken care of by a dark-eyed little daughter. This daughter was so beautiful, that it ought to have made the Count well—so thought most of the young men—simply to look at her! There was a youthful British Lord, who had come to “do” Mont Blanc and a few other peaks. He was under charge of a young man of considerable experience in mountaineering, whose chief delight seemed to be the leading of his charge to well-known summits by any other and more difficult tracks than the obvious and right ones, insomuch that Lewis Stoutley, who had a tendency to imprudent remark, said in his hearing that he had heard of men who, in order to gain the roof of a house, preferred to go up by the waterspout rather than the staircase. There was an artist, whom Lewis—being, as already observed, given to insolence—styled the mad artist because he was enthusiastic in his art, galvanic in his actions, and had large, wild eyes, with long hair, and a broad-brimmed conical hat. Besides these, there was a Russian Professor, who had come there for purposes of scientific investigation, and a couple of German students, and a Scotch man of letters, whose aim was general observation, and several others, whose end was simply seeing the world.
In the arrangements of the table, Captain Wopper found himself between Emma Gray and the Polish Count, whose name was Horetzki. Directly opposite to him sat Mrs Stoutley, having her son Lewis on her right, and Dr Lawrence on her left. Beside the Count sat his lovely little daughter Nita, and just opposite to her was the mad artist. This arrangement was maintained throughout the sojourn of the various parties during their stay at Chamouni. They did, indeed, shift their position as regarded the table, according to the arrival or departure of travellers, but not in regard to each other.
Now it is an interesting, but by no means surprising fact, that Cupid planted himself in the midst of this party, and, with his fat little legs, in imminent danger of capsizing the dishes, began to draw his bow and let fly his arrows right and left. Being an airy sprite, though fat, and not at any time particularly visible, a careless observer might have missed seeing him; but to any one with moderate powers of observation, he was there, straddling across a dish of salad as plain as the salt-cellar before Captain Wopper’s nose. His deadly shafts, too, were visibly quivering in the breasts of Lewis Stoutley, George Lawrence, and the mad artist. Particularly obvious were these shafts in the case of the last, who was addicted to gazing somewhat presumptuously on “lovely woman” in general, from what he styled an artistic point of view—never from any other point of view; of course not.
Whether or not Cupid had discharged his artillery at the young ladies, we cannot say, for they betrayed no evidence of having been wounded. In their case, he must either have missed his aim, or driven his shafts home with such vigour, that they were buried out of sight altogether in their tender hearts. It is probable that not one member of that miscellaneous company gave a thought at that time to the wounded men, except the wounded men themselves, so absorbing is the love of food! The wounded were, however, sharp-set in all respects. They at once descried each other’s condition, and, instead of manifesting sympathy with each other, were, strange to say, filled with intense jealousy. This at least is true of the younger men. Lawrence, being somewhat older, was more secretive and self-possessed.
At first Captain Wopper, having declined a dish of cauliflower because it was presentedalone, and having afterwards accepted a mutton chopalone, with feelings of poignant regret that he had let the cauliflower go by, was too busy to observe what the heathen-mythological youngster was doing. Indeed, at most times, the said youngster might have discharged a whole quiver of arrows into the Captain’s eyes without his being aware of the attack; but, at the present time, the Captain, as the reader is aware, was up to the eyes in a plot in which Cupid’s aid was necessary; he had, as it were, invoked the fat child’s presence. When, therefore, he had got over the regrets about the cauliflower, and had swallowed the mutton-chop, he began to look about him—to note the converse that passed between the young men, and the frequent glances they cast at the young women.
It was not the first time that the Captain had, so to speak, kept his weather-eye open in regard to the affection which he had made up his mind must now have been awakened in the breasts of George Lawrence and Emma Gray; but hitherto his hopes, although sanguine, had not received encouragement. Though polite and respectful to each other, they were by no means tender; altogether, they acted quite differently from what the Captain felt that he would have done in similar circumstances. A suspicion had even crossed the poor seaman’s mind that Emma was in love with her handsome and rattling cousin Lewis; but anxiety on this head was somewhat allayed by other and conflicting circumstances, such as occasional remarks by Lewis, to the effect that Emma was a goose, or a pert little monkey, or that she knew nothing beyond house-keeping and crochet, and similar compliments. Now, however, in a certain animated conversation between Lawrence and Emma, the designing seaman thought he saw the budding of his deep-laid plans, and fondly hoped ere long to behold the bud developed into the flower of matrimony. Under this conviction he secretly hugged himself, but in the salon, that evening, he opened his arms and released himself on beholding the apparently fickle Lawrence deeply engaged in converse with the Count Horetzki, to whose pretty daughter, however, he addressed the most of his remarks.
The Captain, being a blunt honest, straightforward man, could not understand this state of matters, and fell into a fit of abstracted perplexity on the sofa beside Mrs Stoutley, who listened listlessly to the Russian Professor as he attempted to explain to her and Emma the nature of a glacier.
“Well, I don’t understand it at all,” said Mrs Stoutley, at the end of one of the Professor’s most lucid expositions.
We may remark, in passing, that the Professor, like many of his countrymen, was a good linguist and spoke English well.
“Not understand it!” he exclaimed, with a slight elevation of his eyebrows. “My dear madam, it is most plain, but I fear my want of good English does render me not quite intelligible.”
“Your English is excellent,” replied Mrs Stoutley, with a smile, “but I fear that my brain is not a sufficiently clear one on such matters, for I confess that I cannot understand it. Can you, Captain Wopper?”
“Certainly not, ma’am,” answered the Captain, thinking of the fickle Lawrence; “it takes the wind out of my sails entirely.”
“Indeed!” said the Professor. “Well, do permit me to try again. You understand that all the mountain-tops and elevated plateaus, for many miles around here, are covered with ice and snow.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Captain, awaking to the fact that his answer was not relevant; “may I ax what is the particular pint that puzzles you, ma’am?”
Emma laughed aloud at this, and coughed a little to conceal the fact. She was rather easily taken by surprise with passing touches of the ludicrous, and had not yet acquired the habit of effectually suppressing little explosions of undertoned mirth.
“The thing that puzzles me,” said Mrs Stoutley, “is, that glaciers shouldflow, as I am told they do, and yet that they should be as hard and brittle as glass.”
“Ah, well, yes, just so, h’m!” said the Captain, looking very wise; “that is exactly the pint that I want to know myself; for no man who looks at the great tongue of that glacier day Bossung—”
“Des Bossons,” said the Professor, with a bland smile.
“Day Bossong,” repeated the Captain, “can deny that it is marked with all the lines, and waves, an eddies of a rollin’ river, an’ yet as little can they deny that it seems as hard-and-fast as the rock of Gibraltar.”
The Professor nodded approvingly.
“You are right, Captain Whipper—”
“Wopper,” said the Captain, with a grave nod.
“Wopper,” repeated the Professor, “the glacier des Bossons, like all the other glaciers, seems to remain immovable, though in reality it flows—ever flows—downward; but its motion is so slow, that it is not perceptible to the naked eye. Similarly, the hour-hand of a watch is to appearance motionless. Do you want proof? Mark it just now; look again in quarter of an hour, and you see that it has moved. You are convinced. It is so with the glacier. Mark him to-day, go back to-morrow—the mark has changed. Some glaciers flow at the rate of two and three feet in the twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, buthowdo they flow, being so brittle?” demanded Mrs Stoutley.
“Ay, that’s the pint, Professor,” said the Captain, nodding, “howdo they flow, bein’ made of hard and brittle ice?”
“Why, by rolling higgledy-piggledy over itself of course,” said Lewis, flippantly, as he came up and sat down on the end of the sofa, being out of humour with himself and everybody in consequence of having utterly failed to gain the attention of Nita Horetzki, although he had made unusually earnest efforts to join in conversation with her father. Owing to somewhat similar feelings, the artist had flung himself into a chair, and sat glaring at the black fireplace with a degree of concentration that ought to have lighted the firewood therein.
“The cause of a glacier flowing,” said the Professor, “has long been a disputed point. Some men of science have held that it is the pressure of ice and snow behind it which causes it to flow. They do not think that it flows like water, but say it is forced from behind, and crushed through gorges and down valleys, as it were, unwillingly. They say that, if left alone, as they now are, without additions, from this time forward, glaciers would no longer move; they would rest, and slowly melt away; that their motion is due to the fact that there are miles and miles of snow-fields, thousands of feet deep, on the mountain-tops and in the gorges, to which fresh snows are added every winter, so that the weight of what is behind, slipping off the slopes and falling from the cliffs, crushes down and forward that which is below; thus glaciers cannot choose but advance.”
“Ay, ay,” said the Captain, “no doubt no doubt that may be so; but why is it that, bein’ as brittle as glass, a glacier don’t come rumblin’ and clatterin’ down the valleys in small hard bits, like ten thousand millions of smashed-up chandeliers?”
“Ay, there’s the rub,” exclaimed Lewis; “what say you to that?”
“Ha!” exclaimed the Professor, again smiling blandly, “there you have touched what once was, and, to some philosophers it seems, still is, the great difficulty. By some great men it has been held that glacier ice is always in a partially soft, viscid, or semi-fluid condition, somewhat like pitch, so that, althoughapparentlya solid, brittle, and rigid body, it flows sluggishly in reality. Other philosophers have denied this theory, insisting that the ice of glaciers isnotlike pitch, but like glass, and that it cannot be squeezed without being broken, nor drawn without being cracked. These philosophers have discovered that when ice is subjected to great pressure it melts, and that, when the pressure is removed, the part so melted immediately freezes again—hence the name regelation, or re-freezing, is given to the process. Thus a glacier, they say, is in many places being continually melted and continually and instantaneously re-frozen, so that it is made to pass through narrow gorges, and to open out again when the enormous pressure has been removed. But this theory of regelation, although unquestionably true, and although it exercisessomeinfluence on glacier motion, does not, in my opinion, alone account for it. The opinion which seems to be most in favour among learned men—and that which I myself hold firmly—is, the theory of the Scottish Professor Forbes, namely, that a glacier is a semi-fluid body, it is largely impregnated throughout its extent with water, its particles move round and past each other—in other words, it flows in precisely the same manner as water, the only difference being that it is not quite so fluid; it is sluggish in its flow, but it certainly models itself to the ground over which it is forced by its own gravity, and it is only rent or broken into fragments when it is compelled to turn sharp angles, or to pass over steep convex slopes. Forbes, by his careful measurements and investigations, proved incontestably that in some glaciers the central portion travelled down its valley at double or treble the rate of its sides, without the continuity of the mass being broken. In small masses, indeed, glacier-ice is to all appearance rigid, but on a large scale it is unquestionably ductile.”
“Has the theory of regelation been put to the proof?” asked Lewis, with a degree of interest in glaciers which he had never before felt.
“It has,” answered the Professor. “An experimentalist once cut a bar of solid ice, like to a bar of soap in form and size, from a glacier. To this an iron weight of several pounds was suspended by means of a very fine wire, which was tied round the bar. The pressure of the wire melted the ice under it; as the water escaped it instantly re-froze above the wire; thus the wire went on cutting its way through the bar, and the water went on freezing, until at last the weight fell to the ground, and left the bar as solid and entire as if it had never been cut.”
“Well, now,” said Captain Wopper, bringing his hand down on his thigh with a slap that did more to arouse Mrs Stoutley out of her languor than the Professor’s lecture on glacier ice, “I’ve sailed round the world, I have, an’ seen many a strange sight, and what I’ve got to say is that I’ll believe that when Iseeit.”
“You shall see it soon then, I hope,” said the Professor, more blandly than ever, “for I intend to verify this experiment along with several others. I go to the Mer de Glace, perhaps as far as the Jardin, to-morrow. Will you come?”
“What may the Jardang be?” asked the Captain.
“Hallo! monkey, what’s wrong?” said Lewis to Emma, referring to one of the undertoned safety-valves before mentioned.
“Nothing,” replied Emma, pursing her little lips till they resembled a cherry.
“The Jardin, or garden,” said the Professor, “is a little spot of exquisite beauty in the midst of the glaciers, where a knoll of green grass and flowers peeps up in the surrounding sterility. It is one of the regular excursions from Chamouni.”
“Can ladies go?” asked Lewis.
“Young and active ladies can,” said the Professor, with his blandest possible smile, as he bowed to Emma.
“Then, we’ll all go together,” cried Lewis, with energy.
“Not all,” said Mrs Stoutley, with a sigh, “I am neither young nor active.”
“Nonsense, mother, you’re quite young yet, you know, and as active as a kitten when you’ve a mind to be. Come, we’ll have a couple of porters and a chair to have you carried when you knock up.”
Notwithstanding the glowing prospects of ease and felicity thus opened up to her, Mrs Stoutley resolutely refused to go on this excursion, but she generously allowed Emma to go if so disposed. Emma, being disposed, it was finally arranged that, on the following day, she, the Captain, Lewis, and Lawrence, with Gillie White as her page, should proceed up the sides of Mont Blanc with the man of science, and over the Mer de Glace to the Jardin.
Chapter Nine.A Solid Stream.There is a river of ice in Switzerland, which, taking its rise on the hoary summit of Mont Blanc, flows through a sinuous mountain-channel, and terminates its grand career by liquefaction in the vale of Chamouni. A mighty river it is in all respects, and a wonderful one—full of interest and mystery and apparent contradiction. It has a grand volume and sweep, varying from one to four miles in width, and is about twelve miles long, with a depth of many hundreds of feet. It is motionless to the eye, yet it descends into the plain continually. It is hard and unyielding in its nature, yet it flows as really and steadily, if not with as lithe a motion, as a liquid river. It isnota half solid mass like mud, which might roll slowly down an incline; it is solid, clear, transparent, brittle ice, which refuses to bend, and cracks sharply under a strain; nevertheless, it has its waves and rapids, cross-currents, eddies, and cascades, which, seen from a moderate distance, display all the grace and beauty of flowing water—as if a grand river in all its varied parts, calm and turbulent, had been actually and suddenly arrested in its course and frozen to the bottom.It is being melted perpetually too. The fierce sun of summer sends millions of tiny streamlets down into its interior, which collect, augment, cut channels for themselves through the ice, and finally gush into the plain from its lower end in the form of a muddy river. Even in winter this process goes on, yet the ice-river never melts entirely away, but holds on its cold, stately, solemn course from year to year—has done so for unknown ages, and will probably do so to the end of time. It is picturesque in its surroundings, majestic in its motion, tremendous in its action, awful in its sterility, and, altogether, one of the most impressive and sublime works of God.This gigantic glacier, or stream of ice, springing, as it does, from the giant-mountain of Europe, is appropriately hemmed in, and its mighty force restrained, by a group of Titans, whose sharp aiguilles, or needle-like peaks, shoot upward to a height little short of their rounded and white-headed superior, and from whose wild gorges and riven sides tributary ice-rivers flow, and avalanches thunder incessantly. Leaving its cradle on the top of Mont Blanc, the great river sweeps round the Aiguille du Géant; and, after receiving its first name of Glacier du Géant from that mighty obelisk of rock, which rises 13,156 feet above the sea, it passes onward to welcome two grand tributaries, the Glacier de Léchaud, from the rugged heights of the Grandes Jorasses, and the Glacier du Talèfre from the breast of the Aiguille du Talèfre and the surrounding heights. Thus augmented, the river is named the Mer de Glace, or sea of ice, and continues its downward course; but here it encounters what may be styled “the narrows,” between the crags at the base of the Aiguille Charmoz and Aiguille du Moine, through which it steadily forces its way, though compressed to much less than half its width by the process. In one place the Glacier du Géant is above eleven hundred yards wide; that of the Léchaud is above eight hundred; that of Talèfre above six hundred—the total, when joined, two thousand five hundred yards; and this enormous mass of solid ice is forced through a narrow neck of the valley, which is, in round numbers, onlynine hundredyards wide! Of course the ice-river must gain in depth what it loses in breadth in this gorge, through which it travels at the rate of twenty inches a day. Thereafter, it tumbles ruggedly to its termination in the vale of Chamouni, under the name of the Glacier des Bois.The explanation of the causes of the rise and flow of this ice-river we will leave to the genial and enthusiastic Professor, who glories in dilating on such matters to Captain Wopper, who never tires of the dilations.Huge, however, though this glacier of the Mer de Glace be, it is only one of a series of similar glaciers which constitute the outlets to that vast reservoir of ice formed by the wide range of Mont Blanc, where the snows of successive winters are stored, packed, solidified, and rendered, as it were, self-regulating in their supplies of water to the plains. And the Mont Blanc range itself is but a portion of the great glacial world of Switzerland, the area occupied by which is computed at 900 square miles. Two-thirds of these send their waters to the sea through the channel of the Rhine. The most extensive of these glaciers is the Aletsch glacier, which is fifteen miles in length. It is said that above six hundred distinct glaciers have been reckoned in Switzerland.This, good reader, is but a brief reference to the wonders of the glacial world. It is but a scratching of the surface. There is a very mine of interesting, curious, and astonishing facts below the surface. Nature is prodigal of her information to those who question her closely, correctly, and perseveringly. Even to those who observe her carelessly, she is not altogether dumb. She is generous; and the God of Nature has caused it to be written for our instruction that, “His works are wonderful, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.”We may not, however, prolong our remarks on the subject of ice-rivers at this time. Our travellers at Chamouni are getting ready to start, and it is our duty at present to follow them.
There is a river of ice in Switzerland, which, taking its rise on the hoary summit of Mont Blanc, flows through a sinuous mountain-channel, and terminates its grand career by liquefaction in the vale of Chamouni. A mighty river it is in all respects, and a wonderful one—full of interest and mystery and apparent contradiction. It has a grand volume and sweep, varying from one to four miles in width, and is about twelve miles long, with a depth of many hundreds of feet. It is motionless to the eye, yet it descends into the plain continually. It is hard and unyielding in its nature, yet it flows as really and steadily, if not with as lithe a motion, as a liquid river. It isnota half solid mass like mud, which might roll slowly down an incline; it is solid, clear, transparent, brittle ice, which refuses to bend, and cracks sharply under a strain; nevertheless, it has its waves and rapids, cross-currents, eddies, and cascades, which, seen from a moderate distance, display all the grace and beauty of flowing water—as if a grand river in all its varied parts, calm and turbulent, had been actually and suddenly arrested in its course and frozen to the bottom.
It is being melted perpetually too. The fierce sun of summer sends millions of tiny streamlets down into its interior, which collect, augment, cut channels for themselves through the ice, and finally gush into the plain from its lower end in the form of a muddy river. Even in winter this process goes on, yet the ice-river never melts entirely away, but holds on its cold, stately, solemn course from year to year—has done so for unknown ages, and will probably do so to the end of time. It is picturesque in its surroundings, majestic in its motion, tremendous in its action, awful in its sterility, and, altogether, one of the most impressive and sublime works of God.
This gigantic glacier, or stream of ice, springing, as it does, from the giant-mountain of Europe, is appropriately hemmed in, and its mighty force restrained, by a group of Titans, whose sharp aiguilles, or needle-like peaks, shoot upward to a height little short of their rounded and white-headed superior, and from whose wild gorges and riven sides tributary ice-rivers flow, and avalanches thunder incessantly. Leaving its cradle on the top of Mont Blanc, the great river sweeps round the Aiguille du Géant; and, after receiving its first name of Glacier du Géant from that mighty obelisk of rock, which rises 13,156 feet above the sea, it passes onward to welcome two grand tributaries, the Glacier de Léchaud, from the rugged heights of the Grandes Jorasses, and the Glacier du Talèfre from the breast of the Aiguille du Talèfre and the surrounding heights. Thus augmented, the river is named the Mer de Glace, or sea of ice, and continues its downward course; but here it encounters what may be styled “the narrows,” between the crags at the base of the Aiguille Charmoz and Aiguille du Moine, through which it steadily forces its way, though compressed to much less than half its width by the process. In one place the Glacier du Géant is above eleven hundred yards wide; that of the Léchaud is above eight hundred; that of Talèfre above six hundred—the total, when joined, two thousand five hundred yards; and this enormous mass of solid ice is forced through a narrow neck of the valley, which is, in round numbers, onlynine hundredyards wide! Of course the ice-river must gain in depth what it loses in breadth in this gorge, through which it travels at the rate of twenty inches a day. Thereafter, it tumbles ruggedly to its termination in the vale of Chamouni, under the name of the Glacier des Bois.
The explanation of the causes of the rise and flow of this ice-river we will leave to the genial and enthusiastic Professor, who glories in dilating on such matters to Captain Wopper, who never tires of the dilations.
Huge, however, though this glacier of the Mer de Glace be, it is only one of a series of similar glaciers which constitute the outlets to that vast reservoir of ice formed by the wide range of Mont Blanc, where the snows of successive winters are stored, packed, solidified, and rendered, as it were, self-regulating in their supplies of water to the plains. And the Mont Blanc range itself is but a portion of the great glacial world of Switzerland, the area occupied by which is computed at 900 square miles. Two-thirds of these send their waters to the sea through the channel of the Rhine. The most extensive of these glaciers is the Aletsch glacier, which is fifteen miles in length. It is said that above six hundred distinct glaciers have been reckoned in Switzerland.
This, good reader, is but a brief reference to the wonders of the glacial world. It is but a scratching of the surface. There is a very mine of interesting, curious, and astonishing facts below the surface. Nature is prodigal of her information to those who question her closely, correctly, and perseveringly. Even to those who observe her carelessly, she is not altogether dumb. She is generous; and the God of Nature has caused it to be written for our instruction that, “His works are wonderful, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.”
We may not, however, prolong our remarks on the subject of ice-rivers at this time. Our travellers at Chamouni are getting ready to start, and it is our duty at present to follow them.
Chapter Ten.The First Excursion.“A Splendid morning!” exclaimed Dr George Lawrence, as he entered theSalle à mangerwith an obviously new alpenstock in his hand.“Jolly!” replied Lewis Stoutley, who was stooping at the moment to button one of his gaiters.Lewis was addicted to slang, not by any means an uncommon characteristic of youth!“The man,” he said, with some bitterness, “who invented big buttons and little button-holes should have had his nose skewered with a button-hook. He was an ass!”In order to relieve his feelings and accomplish his ends, Lewis summarily enlarged the holes with his penknife.“Androundbuttons, too,” he said, indignantly; “what on earth was the use of making round buttons when flat ones had been invented? A big hole and a flat button will hold against anything—even against Scotch whins and heather. There, now, that abominable job is done.”“You are fond of strong language, Lewie,” said Lawrence, as he examined the spike at the end of his alpenstock.“I am. It relieves my feelings.”“But don’t you think it weakens your influence on occasions when nothing but strong language will serve? You rob yourself of the power, you know, to increase the force of it.”“Oh bother! don’t moralise, man, but let’s have your opinion of the weather, which is an all-important subject just now.”“I have already given my opinion as to that,” said Lawrence, “but here comes one who will give us an opinion of value.—He is in capital time.”“Good morning, Antoine.”Their guide for the day, Antoine Grennon, a fine stalwart specimen of his class, returned the salutation, and added that it was a very fine morning.“Capital, isn’t it?” cried Lewis, cheerfully, for he had got over the irritation caused by the buttons. “Couldn’t be better; could it?”The guide did not admit that the weather could not be better.“You look doubtful, Antoine,” said Lawrence. “Don’t you think the day will keep up?”“Keep up!” exclaimed Lewis; “why, the sky is perfectly clear. Of course it will. I never saw a finer day, even in England. Why do you doubt it, Antoine?”The guide pointed to a small cloud that hung over the brow of one of the higher peaks.“Appearances are sometimes deceitful in this country,” he said. “I don’t doubt the fineness of the day at present, but—”He was interrupted here by the sudden and noisy entrance of Captain Wopper and the Professor, followed by the mad artist, whose name, by the way, was Slingsby.“No, no,” said the Captain to the Professor, with whom he had already become very intimate, “it won’t do to part company. If the Jardang is too far for the ladies, we will steer for the Mairdyglass, an’ cross over to the what’s-’is-name—”“Chapeau,” said the Professor.“Ah! the shappo,” continued the Captain, “and so down by the glacier dez boys—”“The what?” asked Lewis, with a half-suppressed smile.“The glacier dez boys, youngster,” repeated the Captain, stoutly.“Oh, I see; you mean the Glacier des Bois?” said Lewis, suppressing the smile no longer.“What I mean, young man,” said the Captain, sternly, “is best known to myself. You and other College-bred coxcombs may call it day bwa, if you like, but I have overhauled the chart, and there it’s spelt d-e-s, which sounds dez, and b-o-i-s, which seafarin’ men pronounce boys, so don’t go for to cross my hawse again, but rather join me in tryin’ to indooce the Professor to putt off his trip to the Jardang, an’ sail in company with us for the day.”“I will join you heartily in that,” said Lewis, turning to the man of science, who stood regarding the Captain with an amiable smile, as a huge Newfoundland dog might regard a large mastiff; “but why is our proposed excursion to the Jardin to be altered?”“Because,” said the Professor, “your amiable sister—I beg pardon, cousin—with that irresistible power of suasion which seems inherent in her nature, has prevailed on Mademoiselle Horetzki to join the party, and Mademoiselle is too delicate—sylph-like—to endure the fatigues of so long an excursion over the ice. Our worthy guide suggests that it would afford more pleasure to the ladies—and of course, therefore, to the gentlemen—if you were to make your first expedition only to the Montanvert which is but a two hours’ climb from Chamouni, picnic there, cross the Mer de Glace, which is narrow at that point, and descend again to Chamouni by the side of the Glacier des Bois, where you can behold the great moraines, and also the source of the river Arveiron. This would be a pleasant and not too fatiguing round, and I, who might perhaps be an encumbrance to you, will prosecute my inquiries at the Jardin alone.”“Impossible,” exclaimed Lewis, “the Captain is right when he observes that we must not part company. As my mother says, we are a giddy crew, and will be the better of a little scientific ballast to keep us from capsizing into a crevasse. Do come, my dear sir, if it were only out of charity, to keep us in order.”To this entreaty Lawrence and the artist added their persuasions, which were further backed by the eloquence of Emma Gray and Nita Horetzki, who entered at the moment radiant with the flush of life’s dawning day, and irresistible in picturesque mountain attire, the chief characteristics of which consisted in an extensive looping up of drapery, and an ostentatious display of those staffs called alpenstocks, five feet long, tipped with chamois horn, which are an indispensable requisite in Alpine work.“Oh! youmussgo,” said Nita, in silvery tones and disjointed English. “If you go not, monsieur,Igo not!”“That of course decides the question, Mademoiselle,” said the gallant Professor, with one of his blandest smiles, “I shall accompany you with pleasure. But I have one little request to make. My time at Chamouni is short; will you permit me, on arriving at the Mer de Glace, to prosecute my inquiries? I am here to ask questions of Nature, and must do so with perseverance and patience. Will you allow me to devote more of my attention toherthan to yourself?”“H’m! well—what you say, Mademoiselle Gray?” demanded Nita, with an arch look at her companion. “Is the Professor’s request reasonable?”To this Emma replied that as Nature was, upon the whole, a more important lady than either of them, she thought itwasreasonable; whereupon the Professor agreed to postpone his visit to the Jardin, and devote his day to fixing stakes and making observations on the Mer de Glace, with a view to ascertaining the diurnal rate of speed at which the glacier flowed.“You spoke of putting certain questions to Nature, Professor,” said Lawrence, when the party were slowly toiling up the mountain-side. “Have they not already been put to her, and satisfactorily answered some time ago?”“They have been put,” replied the Professor, “by such learned men as Saussure, Agassiz, Rendu, Charpentier, and by your own countryman Forbes, and others, and undoubtedly their questions have received distinct answers, insomuch that our knowledge of the nature and action of glacial ice is now very considerable. But, my dear sir, learned men have not been agreed as to what Nature’s replies mean, nor have they exhausted the subject; besides, no true man of science is quite satisfied with merely hearing the reports of others, he is not content until he has met and conversed with Nature face to face. I wish, therefore, to have a personal interview with her in these Alps, or rather,” continued the Professor, in a more earnest tone, “I do wish to see the works of my Maker with my own eyes, and to hear His voice with the ears of my own understanding.”“Your object, then, is to verify, not to discover?” said Lawrence.“It is both. Primarily to verify; but the man of science always goes forth with the happy consciousness that the mine in which he proposes to dig is rich in gems, and that, while seeking for one sort, he may light upon another unexpectedly.”“When Captain Wopper turned up yonder gem, he lit on one which, if not of the purest water, is unquestionably a brilliant specimen of the class to which it belongs,” said Lewis, coming up at that moment, and pointing to a projection in the somewhat steep part of the path up which they were winding.The gem referred to was no other than our friend Gillie White. That hilarious youth, although regenerated outwardly as regards blue cloth and buttons, had not by any means changed his spirit since fortune began to smile on him. Finding that his mistress, being engaged with her dark-eyed friend, did not require his services, and observing that his patron, Captain Wopper, held intercourse with the guide—in broken English, because he, the guide, also spoke broken English—that Lawrence and the Professor seemed capable of entertaining each other, that Lewis and the artist, although dreadfully jealous of each other, were fain to hold social intercourse, the ladies being inseparable, and that he, Gillie, was therefore left to entertain himself he set about amusing himself to the best of his power by keeping well in rear of the party and scrambling up dangerous precipices, throwing stones at little birds, charging shrubs and stabbing the earth with Emma’s alpenstock, immolating snails, rolling rocks down precipitous parts of the hill, and otherwise exhibiting a tendency to sport with Nature—all of which he did to music whistled by himself, and in happy forgetfulness of everything save the business in hand. He was engaged in some apparently difficult piece of fancy work, involving large boulders, when Lewis drew attention to him.“What can the imp be up to?” he said.“Most likely worrying some poor reptile to death,” said the artist, removing his conical wideawake and fanning himself therewith. (Mr Slingsby was very warm, his slender frame not being equal to his indomitable spirit.)“I think he is trying to break your alpenstock, Emma,” observed Lewis.There seemed to be truth in this, for Gillie, having fixed the staff as a lever, was pulling at it with all his might. The projection of rock on which he stood, and which overhung the zigzag road, was partially concealed by bushes, so that the precise intention of his efforts could not be discovered.At that moment Antoine, the guide, turned to see what detained the party, and instantly uttered a loud shout of alarm as he ran back to them.The warning or remonstrance came too late. Gillie had loosened an enormous rock which had been on the point of falling, and with a throb of exultation, which found vent in a suppressed squeal, he hurled a mass, something about the size and weight of a cart of coals, down the precipice.But the current of Gillie’s feelings was rudely changed when a shriek from the ladies, and something between a roar and a yell from the gentlemen, told that they had observed a man with a mule, who, in ascending from the valley, had reached a spot which lay in the direct line of the miniature avalanche; and when the muleteer, also observing the missile, added a hideous howl to the chorus, the poor urchin shrank back appalled. The rock struck the track directly behind the mule with a force which, had it been expended only six inches more to the right, would have driven that creature’s hind legs into the earth as if they had been tenpenny nails; it then bounded clear over the next turning of the track, crashed madly through several bushes, overturned five or six trees, knocked into atoms a sister rock which had taken the same leap some ages before, and finally, leaving behind it a grand tail of dust anddébris, rolled to its rest upon the plain.At the first symptom of the danger, Captain Wopper had rushed towards the culprit.“Rascal!” he growled between his teeth, as he seized Gillie by the nape of the neck, lifted him almost off his legs, and shook him, “d’ee see what you’ve done?”He thrust the urchin partially over the precipice, and pointed to the man and the mule.“Please, Ihaven’tdone it,” pleaded Gillie.“But you did your best to—you—you small—there!”He finished off the sentence with an open-handed whack that aroused the echoes of Mont Blanc, and cast the culprit adrift.“Now, look ’ee, lad,” said the Captain, with impressive solemnity, “if you ever go to chuck stones like that over the precipices of this here mountain again, I’ll chuck you over after ’em. D’ee hear?”“Yes, Cappen,” grumbled Gillie, rubbing himself, “but if you do, it’s murder. No jury of Englishmen would think of recommendin’ you to mercy in the succumstances. You’d be sure to swing—an’ I—I could wish you a better fate.”The Captain did not wait to hear the boy’s good wishes, but hastened to rejoin his friends, while Gillie followed in rear, commenting audibly on the recent incident.“Well, well,” he said, thrusting both hands deep into bush trouser-pockets, according to custom when in a moralising frame of mind, “who’d a thought it, Gillie White, that you’d ’ave bin brought all the way from London to the Halps to make such a close shave o’ committin’ man-slaughter to say nothin’ of mule-slaughter, and to git whacked by your best friend? Oh! Cappen, Cappen, I couldn’t ’ave believed it of you if I ’adn’t felt it. But, I say, Gillie,wasn’tit a big ’un? Ha! ha! The Cappen threatened to chuck me over the precipice, but I’ve chucked over a wopper that beatshimall to sticks. Hallo! I say that’s worthy ofPunch. P’r’aps I’ll be a contributor to it w’en I gets back from Zwizzerland, if I ever does get back, vich is by no means certain. Susan, my girl, I’ll ’ave summat to enliven you with this evenin’.”We need scarcely say that this last remark had reference to Mrs Stoutley’s maid, with whom the boy had become a great favourite. Indeed the regard was mutual, though there was this difference about it, that Susan, being two years older than Gillie, and tall as well as womanly for her age, looked upon the boy as a precocious little oddity, whereas Gillie, esteeming himself a man—“all but”—regarded Susan with the powerful feelings of a first affection.From this, and what has been already said, it will be apparent to our fair readers that Cupid had accompanied Mrs Stoutley’s party to Chamouni, with the intention apparently of amusing himself as well as interfering with Captain Wopper’s matrimonial designs.The road to the Montanvert is a broad and easy bridle-path, which, after leaving the valley, traverses a pine-forest in its ascent and becomes in places somewhat steep. Here and there a zigzag is found necessary, and in several places there are tracks of avalanches. About half-way up there is a spring named the Caillet which was shaded by trees in days of yore, but the avalanches have swept these away. Beside the spring of pure water there was a spring of “fire-water,” in a hut where so-called “refreshments” might also be obtained. As none of our party deemed it necessary to stimulate powers, which, at that time of the day, were fresh and vigorous, they passed this point of temptation without halting.Other temptations, however, were not so easily resisted. The Professor was stopped by rocky stratifications, the ladies were stopped by flowers and views, the younger gentlemen were of course stopped by the ladies, and the mad artist was stopped by everything. Poor Mr Slingsby, who had been asked to join the party, in virtue of his being a friend of the Count, and, therefore, of Nita, was so torn by the conflict resulting from his desire to cultivate Nita, and cut out Lewis and Lawrence, and his desire to prosecute his beloved art, that he became madder than usual. “Splendid foregrounds” met him at every turn; “lovely middle-distances” chained him in everywhere; “enchanting backgrounds” beset him on all sides; gorgeous colours dazzled him above and below; and Nita’s black eyes pierced him continually through and through. It was terrible! He was constantly getting into positions of danger—going out on ledges to obtain particular views, rolling his large eyes, pulling off his hat and tossing back his long hair, so as to drink in more thoroughly the beauties around him, and clambering up precipices to fetch down bunches of wild flowers when Nita chanced to express the most distant allusion to, or admiration of, them.“He will leave his bones in one crevasse!” growled Antoine, on seeing him rush to a point of vantage, and, for the fiftieth time, squat down to make a rapid sketch of some “exquisite bit” that had taken his fancy.“’Tis of no use,” he said, on returning to his friends, “I cannot sketch. The beauties around me are too much for me.”He glanced timidly at Nita, who looked at him boldly, laughed, and advised him to shut his eyes, so as not to be distracted with such beauties.“Impossible; I cannot choose but look. See,” he said, pointing backward to their track, “see what a lovely effect of tender blue and yellow through yonder opening—”“D’you mean Gillie?” asked Lewis, with a quiet grin, as that reckless youth suddenly presented his blue coat and yellow buttons in the very opening referred to.The laugh called forth by this was checked by the voice of Captain Wopper, who was far in advance shouting to them to come on.A few minutes more, and the whole party stood on the Montanvert beside the small inn which has been erected there for the use of summer tourists, and from which point the great glacier broke for the first time in all its grandeur, on their view.Well might Emma and Nita stand entranced for some time, unable to find utterance to their feelings, save in the one word—wonderful! Even Slingsby’s mercurial spirit was awed into silence, for, straight before them, the white and frozen billows of the Mer de Glace stretched for miles away up into the gorges of the giant hills until lost in and mingled with the clouds of heaven.
“A Splendid morning!” exclaimed Dr George Lawrence, as he entered theSalle à mangerwith an obviously new alpenstock in his hand.
“Jolly!” replied Lewis Stoutley, who was stooping at the moment to button one of his gaiters.
Lewis was addicted to slang, not by any means an uncommon characteristic of youth!
“The man,” he said, with some bitterness, “who invented big buttons and little button-holes should have had his nose skewered with a button-hook. He was an ass!”
In order to relieve his feelings and accomplish his ends, Lewis summarily enlarged the holes with his penknife.
“Androundbuttons, too,” he said, indignantly; “what on earth was the use of making round buttons when flat ones had been invented? A big hole and a flat button will hold against anything—even against Scotch whins and heather. There, now, that abominable job is done.”
“You are fond of strong language, Lewie,” said Lawrence, as he examined the spike at the end of his alpenstock.
“I am. It relieves my feelings.”
“But don’t you think it weakens your influence on occasions when nothing but strong language will serve? You rob yourself of the power, you know, to increase the force of it.”
“Oh bother! don’t moralise, man, but let’s have your opinion of the weather, which is an all-important subject just now.”
“I have already given my opinion as to that,” said Lawrence, “but here comes one who will give us an opinion of value.—He is in capital time.”
“Good morning, Antoine.”
Their guide for the day, Antoine Grennon, a fine stalwart specimen of his class, returned the salutation, and added that it was a very fine morning.
“Capital, isn’t it?” cried Lewis, cheerfully, for he had got over the irritation caused by the buttons. “Couldn’t be better; could it?”
The guide did not admit that the weather could not be better.
“You look doubtful, Antoine,” said Lawrence. “Don’t you think the day will keep up?”
“Keep up!” exclaimed Lewis; “why, the sky is perfectly clear. Of course it will. I never saw a finer day, even in England. Why do you doubt it, Antoine?”
The guide pointed to a small cloud that hung over the brow of one of the higher peaks.
“Appearances are sometimes deceitful in this country,” he said. “I don’t doubt the fineness of the day at present, but—”
He was interrupted here by the sudden and noisy entrance of Captain Wopper and the Professor, followed by the mad artist, whose name, by the way, was Slingsby.
“No, no,” said the Captain to the Professor, with whom he had already become very intimate, “it won’t do to part company. If the Jardang is too far for the ladies, we will steer for the Mairdyglass, an’ cross over to the what’s-’is-name—”
“Chapeau,” said the Professor.
“Ah! the shappo,” continued the Captain, “and so down by the glacier dez boys—”
“The what?” asked Lewis, with a half-suppressed smile.
“The glacier dez boys, youngster,” repeated the Captain, stoutly.
“Oh, I see; you mean the Glacier des Bois?” said Lewis, suppressing the smile no longer.
“What I mean, young man,” said the Captain, sternly, “is best known to myself. You and other College-bred coxcombs may call it day bwa, if you like, but I have overhauled the chart, and there it’s spelt d-e-s, which sounds dez, and b-o-i-s, which seafarin’ men pronounce boys, so don’t go for to cross my hawse again, but rather join me in tryin’ to indooce the Professor to putt off his trip to the Jardang, an’ sail in company with us for the day.”
“I will join you heartily in that,” said Lewis, turning to the man of science, who stood regarding the Captain with an amiable smile, as a huge Newfoundland dog might regard a large mastiff; “but why is our proposed excursion to the Jardin to be altered?”
“Because,” said the Professor, “your amiable sister—I beg pardon, cousin—with that irresistible power of suasion which seems inherent in her nature, has prevailed on Mademoiselle Horetzki to join the party, and Mademoiselle is too delicate—sylph-like—to endure the fatigues of so long an excursion over the ice. Our worthy guide suggests that it would afford more pleasure to the ladies—and of course, therefore, to the gentlemen—if you were to make your first expedition only to the Montanvert which is but a two hours’ climb from Chamouni, picnic there, cross the Mer de Glace, which is narrow at that point, and descend again to Chamouni by the side of the Glacier des Bois, where you can behold the great moraines, and also the source of the river Arveiron. This would be a pleasant and not too fatiguing round, and I, who might perhaps be an encumbrance to you, will prosecute my inquiries at the Jardin alone.”
“Impossible,” exclaimed Lewis, “the Captain is right when he observes that we must not part company. As my mother says, we are a giddy crew, and will be the better of a little scientific ballast to keep us from capsizing into a crevasse. Do come, my dear sir, if it were only out of charity, to keep us in order.”
To this entreaty Lawrence and the artist added their persuasions, which were further backed by the eloquence of Emma Gray and Nita Horetzki, who entered at the moment radiant with the flush of life’s dawning day, and irresistible in picturesque mountain attire, the chief characteristics of which consisted in an extensive looping up of drapery, and an ostentatious display of those staffs called alpenstocks, five feet long, tipped with chamois horn, which are an indispensable requisite in Alpine work.
“Oh! youmussgo,” said Nita, in silvery tones and disjointed English. “If you go not, monsieur,Igo not!”
“That of course decides the question, Mademoiselle,” said the gallant Professor, with one of his blandest smiles, “I shall accompany you with pleasure. But I have one little request to make. My time at Chamouni is short; will you permit me, on arriving at the Mer de Glace, to prosecute my inquiries? I am here to ask questions of Nature, and must do so with perseverance and patience. Will you allow me to devote more of my attention toherthan to yourself?”
“H’m! well—what you say, Mademoiselle Gray?” demanded Nita, with an arch look at her companion. “Is the Professor’s request reasonable?”
To this Emma replied that as Nature was, upon the whole, a more important lady than either of them, she thought itwasreasonable; whereupon the Professor agreed to postpone his visit to the Jardin, and devote his day to fixing stakes and making observations on the Mer de Glace, with a view to ascertaining the diurnal rate of speed at which the glacier flowed.
“You spoke of putting certain questions to Nature, Professor,” said Lawrence, when the party were slowly toiling up the mountain-side. “Have they not already been put to her, and satisfactorily answered some time ago?”
“They have been put,” replied the Professor, “by such learned men as Saussure, Agassiz, Rendu, Charpentier, and by your own countryman Forbes, and others, and undoubtedly their questions have received distinct answers, insomuch that our knowledge of the nature and action of glacial ice is now very considerable. But, my dear sir, learned men have not been agreed as to what Nature’s replies mean, nor have they exhausted the subject; besides, no true man of science is quite satisfied with merely hearing the reports of others, he is not content until he has met and conversed with Nature face to face. I wish, therefore, to have a personal interview with her in these Alps, or rather,” continued the Professor, in a more earnest tone, “I do wish to see the works of my Maker with my own eyes, and to hear His voice with the ears of my own understanding.”
“Your object, then, is to verify, not to discover?” said Lawrence.
“It is both. Primarily to verify; but the man of science always goes forth with the happy consciousness that the mine in which he proposes to dig is rich in gems, and that, while seeking for one sort, he may light upon another unexpectedly.”
“When Captain Wopper turned up yonder gem, he lit on one which, if not of the purest water, is unquestionably a brilliant specimen of the class to which it belongs,” said Lewis, coming up at that moment, and pointing to a projection in the somewhat steep part of the path up which they were winding.
The gem referred to was no other than our friend Gillie White. That hilarious youth, although regenerated outwardly as regards blue cloth and buttons, had not by any means changed his spirit since fortune began to smile on him. Finding that his mistress, being engaged with her dark-eyed friend, did not require his services, and observing that his patron, Captain Wopper, held intercourse with the guide—in broken English, because he, the guide, also spoke broken English—that Lawrence and the Professor seemed capable of entertaining each other, that Lewis and the artist, although dreadfully jealous of each other, were fain to hold social intercourse, the ladies being inseparable, and that he, Gillie, was therefore left to entertain himself he set about amusing himself to the best of his power by keeping well in rear of the party and scrambling up dangerous precipices, throwing stones at little birds, charging shrubs and stabbing the earth with Emma’s alpenstock, immolating snails, rolling rocks down precipitous parts of the hill, and otherwise exhibiting a tendency to sport with Nature—all of which he did to music whistled by himself, and in happy forgetfulness of everything save the business in hand. He was engaged in some apparently difficult piece of fancy work, involving large boulders, when Lewis drew attention to him.
“What can the imp be up to?” he said.
“Most likely worrying some poor reptile to death,” said the artist, removing his conical wideawake and fanning himself therewith. (Mr Slingsby was very warm, his slender frame not being equal to his indomitable spirit.)
“I think he is trying to break your alpenstock, Emma,” observed Lewis.
There seemed to be truth in this, for Gillie, having fixed the staff as a lever, was pulling at it with all his might. The projection of rock on which he stood, and which overhung the zigzag road, was partially concealed by bushes, so that the precise intention of his efforts could not be discovered.
At that moment Antoine, the guide, turned to see what detained the party, and instantly uttered a loud shout of alarm as he ran back to them.
The warning or remonstrance came too late. Gillie had loosened an enormous rock which had been on the point of falling, and with a throb of exultation, which found vent in a suppressed squeal, he hurled a mass, something about the size and weight of a cart of coals, down the precipice.
But the current of Gillie’s feelings was rudely changed when a shriek from the ladies, and something between a roar and a yell from the gentlemen, told that they had observed a man with a mule, who, in ascending from the valley, had reached a spot which lay in the direct line of the miniature avalanche; and when the muleteer, also observing the missile, added a hideous howl to the chorus, the poor urchin shrank back appalled. The rock struck the track directly behind the mule with a force which, had it been expended only six inches more to the right, would have driven that creature’s hind legs into the earth as if they had been tenpenny nails; it then bounded clear over the next turning of the track, crashed madly through several bushes, overturned five or six trees, knocked into atoms a sister rock which had taken the same leap some ages before, and finally, leaving behind it a grand tail of dust anddébris, rolled to its rest upon the plain.
At the first symptom of the danger, Captain Wopper had rushed towards the culprit.
“Rascal!” he growled between his teeth, as he seized Gillie by the nape of the neck, lifted him almost off his legs, and shook him, “d’ee see what you’ve done?”
He thrust the urchin partially over the precipice, and pointed to the man and the mule.
“Please, Ihaven’tdone it,” pleaded Gillie.
“But you did your best to—you—you small—there!”
He finished off the sentence with an open-handed whack that aroused the echoes of Mont Blanc, and cast the culprit adrift.
“Now, look ’ee, lad,” said the Captain, with impressive solemnity, “if you ever go to chuck stones like that over the precipices of this here mountain again, I’ll chuck you over after ’em. D’ee hear?”
“Yes, Cappen,” grumbled Gillie, rubbing himself, “but if you do, it’s murder. No jury of Englishmen would think of recommendin’ you to mercy in the succumstances. You’d be sure to swing—an’ I—I could wish you a better fate.”
The Captain did not wait to hear the boy’s good wishes, but hastened to rejoin his friends, while Gillie followed in rear, commenting audibly on the recent incident.
“Well, well,” he said, thrusting both hands deep into bush trouser-pockets, according to custom when in a moralising frame of mind, “who’d a thought it, Gillie White, that you’d ’ave bin brought all the way from London to the Halps to make such a close shave o’ committin’ man-slaughter to say nothin’ of mule-slaughter, and to git whacked by your best friend? Oh! Cappen, Cappen, I couldn’t ’ave believed it of you if I ’adn’t felt it. But, I say, Gillie,wasn’tit a big ’un? Ha! ha! The Cappen threatened to chuck me over the precipice, but I’ve chucked over a wopper that beatshimall to sticks. Hallo! I say that’s worthy ofPunch. P’r’aps I’ll be a contributor to it w’en I gets back from Zwizzerland, if I ever does get back, vich is by no means certain. Susan, my girl, I’ll ’ave summat to enliven you with this evenin’.”
We need scarcely say that this last remark had reference to Mrs Stoutley’s maid, with whom the boy had become a great favourite. Indeed the regard was mutual, though there was this difference about it, that Susan, being two years older than Gillie, and tall as well as womanly for her age, looked upon the boy as a precocious little oddity, whereas Gillie, esteeming himself a man—“all but”—regarded Susan with the powerful feelings of a first affection.
From this, and what has been already said, it will be apparent to our fair readers that Cupid had accompanied Mrs Stoutley’s party to Chamouni, with the intention apparently of amusing himself as well as interfering with Captain Wopper’s matrimonial designs.
The road to the Montanvert is a broad and easy bridle-path, which, after leaving the valley, traverses a pine-forest in its ascent and becomes in places somewhat steep. Here and there a zigzag is found necessary, and in several places there are tracks of avalanches. About half-way up there is a spring named the Caillet which was shaded by trees in days of yore, but the avalanches have swept these away. Beside the spring of pure water there was a spring of “fire-water,” in a hut where so-called “refreshments” might also be obtained. As none of our party deemed it necessary to stimulate powers, which, at that time of the day, were fresh and vigorous, they passed this point of temptation without halting.
Other temptations, however, were not so easily resisted. The Professor was stopped by rocky stratifications, the ladies were stopped by flowers and views, the younger gentlemen were of course stopped by the ladies, and the mad artist was stopped by everything. Poor Mr Slingsby, who had been asked to join the party, in virtue of his being a friend of the Count, and, therefore, of Nita, was so torn by the conflict resulting from his desire to cultivate Nita, and cut out Lewis and Lawrence, and his desire to prosecute his beloved art, that he became madder than usual. “Splendid foregrounds” met him at every turn; “lovely middle-distances” chained him in everywhere; “enchanting backgrounds” beset him on all sides; gorgeous colours dazzled him above and below; and Nita’s black eyes pierced him continually through and through. It was terrible! He was constantly getting into positions of danger—going out on ledges to obtain particular views, rolling his large eyes, pulling off his hat and tossing back his long hair, so as to drink in more thoroughly the beauties around him, and clambering up precipices to fetch down bunches of wild flowers when Nita chanced to express the most distant allusion to, or admiration of, them.
“He will leave his bones in one crevasse!” growled Antoine, on seeing him rush to a point of vantage, and, for the fiftieth time, squat down to make a rapid sketch of some “exquisite bit” that had taken his fancy.
“’Tis of no use,” he said, on returning to his friends, “I cannot sketch. The beauties around me are too much for me.”
He glanced timidly at Nita, who looked at him boldly, laughed, and advised him to shut his eyes, so as not to be distracted with such beauties.
“Impossible; I cannot choose but look. See,” he said, pointing backward to their track, “see what a lovely effect of tender blue and yellow through yonder opening—”
“D’you mean Gillie?” asked Lewis, with a quiet grin, as that reckless youth suddenly presented his blue coat and yellow buttons in the very opening referred to.
The laugh called forth by this was checked by the voice of Captain Wopper, who was far in advance shouting to them to come on.
A few minutes more, and the whole party stood on the Montanvert beside the small inn which has been erected there for the use of summer tourists, and from which point the great glacier broke for the first time in all its grandeur, on their view.
Well might Emma and Nita stand entranced for some time, unable to find utterance to their feelings, save in the one word—wonderful! Even Slingsby’s mercurial spirit was awed into silence, for, straight before them, the white and frozen billows of the Mer de Glace stretched for miles away up into the gorges of the giant hills until lost in and mingled with the clouds of heaven.
Chapter Eleven.The Pursuit of Science under Difficulties.After the first burst of enthusiasm and interest had abated, the attention of the party became engrossed in the proceedings of the Professor, who, with his assistants, began at once to adjust his theodolite, and fix stakes in the ice. While he was thus engaged, Captain Wopper regarded the Mer de Glace with a gaze of fixedness so intense as to draw on him the attention and arouse the curiosity of his friends.“D’you see anything curious, Captain?” asked Emma, who chanced to stand beside him.“Coorious—eh?” repeated the Captain slowly, without altering his gaze or adding to his reply.“Monsieur le Capitaine is lost in consternation,” said Nita, with a smile.“I think, Miss Horetzki,” said Lewis, “that you probably meanadmiration.”“How you knows w’at I mean?” demanded Nita, quickly.“Ha! a very proper and pertinent question,” observed Slingsby, in an audible though under tone.“I nevair do putpertinentquestions, sir,” said Nita, turning her black eyes sharply, though with something of a twinkle in them, on the mad artist.Poor Slingsby began to explain, but Nita cut him short by turning to Lewis and again demanding, “How you knows w’at I mean?”“The uniform propriety of your thoughts, Mademoiselle,” replied Lewis, with a continental bow, and an air of pretended respect, “induces me to suppose that your words misinterpret them.”Nita’s knowledge of English was such that this remark gave her only a hazy idea of the youth’s meaning; she accepted it, however, as an apologetic explanation, and ordered him to awaken the Captain and find out from him what it was that so riveted his attention.“You hear my orders,” said Lewis, laying his hand with a slap on the Captain’s shoulder. “What are you staring at?”“Move!” murmured the Captain, returning as it were to consciousness with a long deep sigh, “it don’t move an inch.”“Whatdoes not move?” said Lawrence, who had been assisting to adjust the theodolite, and came forward at the moment.“The ice, to be sure,” answered the Captain. “I say, Professor, do ’ee mean to tell me that the whole of that there Mairdy-glass is movin’?”“I do,” answered the Professor, pausing for a minute in his arrangements, and looking over his spectacles at the Captain with an amused expression.“Then,” returned the Captain, with emphasis, “I think you’ll find that you’re mistaken.”“Ha! Captain Weeper—”“Wopper,” said the Captain.“Wopper,” repeated the Professor, “you are not the first who has expressed disbelief in what he cannot see, and you will assuredly not be the last; but if you will wait I will convince you.”“Very good,” replied the Captain, “I’m open to conviction.”“Which means,” said Lewis, “that you have nailed your colours to the mast, and mean to die rather than give in.”“No doubt,” said the Captain, paying no attention to the last remark, “I see,andbelieve, that at some time or other the ice here must have been in a flowin’ state. I’m too well aware o’ the shape of waves an’ eddies, cross-currents and ripples, to doubt or deny that but any man with half an eye can see that it’s anchored hard and fastnow. I’ve looked at it without flinchin’ for good ten minutes, and not the smallest sign of motion can I detect.”“So might you say of the hour-hand of a watch,” observed Lawrence.“Not at all,” retorted the Captain, becoming argumentative. “I look at the hour-hand of a watch for ten minutes and don’t see it move, but Idosee that it has in reality passed over a very small but appreciable space in that time.”“Just so,” said the Professor, “I will ere long show you the same thing in regard to the ice.”“I’ll bet you ten thousand pounds you don’t,” returned the Captain, with an assured nod.“Colours nailed!” said Lewis; “but I say, Captain,” he added, remonstratively, “I thought you were a sworn enemy to gambling. Isn’t betting gambling?”“It is, young man,” answered the Captain, “but I always bet ten thousand pounds sterling, which I never mean to pay if I lose, nor to accept if I win—and that isnotgambling. Put that in your pipe and smoke it; and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go look after your friend Slingsby, who is gambolling up yonder in another fashion that will soon bring him to grief if he’s not stopped.”All eyes were turned towards the mad artist, who, finding that his advances to Mademoiselle Nita were not well received, had for the time forsaken her, and returned to his first (and professional) love. In wooing her, he had clambered to an almost inaccessible cliff from which he hoped to obtain a very sketchable view of the Mer de Glace, and, when Captain Wopper drew attention to him, was making frantic efforts to swing himself by the branch of a tree to a projecting rock, which was so slightly attached to its parent cliff that his weight would in all probability have hurled it and himself down the precipice.The remonstrative shouts of his friends, however, induced him to desist, and he sat down to work in a less perilous position.Meanwhile the Professor, having completed his preliminary preparations, ordered his assistants to go and “fix the stakes in the ice.”It had been arranged that while the scientific experiments were in progress, the young ladies should ramble about the neighbourhood in search of flowers and plants, under the care of Lewis, until two o’clock, at which hour all were to assemble at the Montanvert hotel for luncheon, Captain Wopper and Lawrence resolving to remain and assist, or at least observe, the Professor. The former, indeed, bearing in mind his great and ruling wish even in the midst of scientific doubt and inquiries, had suggested that the latter should also accompany the ladies, the country being somewhat rugged, and the ladies—especially Miss Emma—not being very sure-footed; but Lawrence, to his disappointment, had declined, saying that the ladies had a sufficient protector in the gallant Lewis, and that Miss Emma was unquestionably the surest-footed of the whole party.Lawrence therefore remained, and, at the Professor’s request, accompanied the party who were to fix the stakes on the ice.As this operation was attended with considerable difficulty and some danger, we will describe the process.Finding that the spot which he had first chosen for his observations was not a very good one, the Professor changed his position to a point farther down on the steep sloping rocks that form the left bank of the Glacier des Bois. Here the theodolite was fixed. This instrument as even our young readers may probably know, is a small telescope attached to a stand with three long legs, and having spirit-levels, by means of which it can be fixed in a position, if we may say so, of exact flatness with reference to the centre of the earth. Within the telescope are two crossed hairs of a spider’s-web, so fine as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye, and so arranged that their crossing-point is exactly in the centre of the tube. By means of pivots and screws the telescope can be moved up or down, right or left, without in the smallest degree altering the flatness or position of its stand. On looking through the telescope the delicate threads can be distinctly seen, and the point where they cross can be brought to bear on any distant object.Having fixed the instrument on the rocks quite clear of the ice, the Professor determined the direction of a supposed line perpendicular to the axis of the glacier. He then sought for a conspicuous and well-defined object on the opposite side of the valley, as near as possible to that direction. In this he was greatly helped by Captain Wopper, who, having been long accustomed to look-out with precision at sea, found it not very difficult to apply his powers on land.“There’s a good land-mark, Professor,” he said, pointing towards a sharply-cut rock, “as like the Dook of Wellington’s nose as two peas.”“I see it,” said the Professor, whose solid and masculine countenance was just the smallest possible degree flushed by the strong under-current of enthusiasm with which he prosecuted his experiments.“You couldn’t have a better object than the pint o’ that,” observed the Captain, whose enthusiasm was quite as great as, and his excitement much greater than, that of the Professor.Having carefully directed the telescope to the extreme point of the “Dook’s” nose, the Professor now ordered one of his assistants to go on the glacier with a stake. Lawrence descended with him, and thus planted his foot on glacier-ice for the first time, as Lewis afterwards remarked, in the pursuit scientific knowledge.While they were clambering slowly down among the loose boulders anddébriswhich had been left by the glacier in previous years, the Professor carefully sketched the Duke of Wellington’s nose with the rocks, etcetera, immediately around it, in his notebook, so that it might be easily recognised again on returning to the spot on a future day.The assistant who had been sent out with the first stake proved to be rather stupid, so that it was fortunate he had been accompanied by Lawrence, and by the guide, Antoine Grennon, who stirred up his perceptions. By rough signalling he was made to stand near the place where the first stake was to be driven in. The telescope was then lowered, and the man was made, by signals, to move about and plant his stake here and there in an upright position until the point of intersection of the spider’s threads fell exactly on the bottom of the stake. A pre-arranged signal was then made, and at that point an auger hole was bored deep into the ice and the stake driven home.“So much for number one,” said Captain Wopper, with a look of satisfaction.“They won’t fix the other ones so easily,” observed the Professor, re-examining the stake through the telescope with great care.He was right in this. The first stake had been planted not far from the shore, but now Lawrence and his party had to proceed in a straight line over the glacier, which, at this steep portion of its descent into the Vale of Chamouni, was rent, dislocated, and tortured, to such an extent that it was covered with huge blocks and pinnacles of ice, and seamed with yawning crevasses. To clamber over some of the ice-ridges was almost impossible, and, in order to avoid pinnacles and crevasses, which were quite impassable, frequentdétourshad to be made. If the object of the ice-party had merely been to cross the glacier, the difficulties would not have been great; but the necessity of always returning to the straight line pointed out by the inexorable theodolite, led them into positions of considerable difficulty. To the inexperienced Lawrence they also appeared to be positions of great danger, much to the amusement of Antoine, who, accustomed as he was to the fearful ice-slopes and abysses of the higher regions, looked upon this work as mere child’s play.“You’ll come to have a different notion of crevasses, sir,” he said, with a quiet smile, “after you’ve bin among the seracs of the Grand Mulet, and up some of the couloirs of Monte Rosa.”“I doubt it not, Antoine,” said Lawrence, gazing with feelings of awe into a terrible split in the ice, whose beautiful light-blue sides deepened into intense blackness as they were lost to vision in an abyss, out of which arose the deep-toned gurgling of sub-glacial streams; “but you must not forget that this is quite new to me, and my feet are not yet aware of the precise grip with which they must hold on to so slippery a foundation.”It was in truth no discredit to Lawrence that he felt a tendency to shrink from edges of chasms which appeared ready to break off, or walked with caution on ice-slopes which led to unfathomable holes, for the said slopes, although not steep, were undoubtedly slippery.After much clambering, a ridge was at length gained, on which the second stake was set up, and then the party proceeded onwards to fix the third; but now the difficulties proved to be greater than before. A huge block of ice was fixed upon as that which would suit their purpose, but it stood like a peninsula in the very midst of a crevasse, and connected with the main body of ice by a neck which looked as sharp as a knife on its upper edge, so that none but tight-rope or slack-wire dancers could have proceeded along it; and even such performers would have found the edge too brittle to sustain them.“You’ll have to show, Monsieur, some of your mountaineer skill here?” said the man who carried the stakes to Antoine.He spoke in French, which Lawrence understood perfectly. We render it as nearly as possible into the counterpart English.Antoine at once stepped forward with his Alpine axe, and, swinging it vigorously over his head, cut a deep notch on the sloping side of the neck of ice. Beyond it he cut a second notch. No man—not even a monkey—could have stood on the glassy slope which descended into the abyss at their side; but Antoine, putting one foot in the first notch, and the other in the second, stood as secure as if he had been on a flat rock. Again he swung his axe, and planted his foot in a third notch, swinging his axe the instant it was fixed for the purpose of cutting the fourth. Thus, cut by cut and step by step, he passed over to the block of ice aimed at. It was but a short neck. A few notches were sufficient, yet without an axe to cut these notches, the place had been absolutely impassable. It was by no means a “dangerous” place, according to the ideas of Alpine mountaineers, nevertheless a slip, or the loss of balance, would have been followed by contain death. Antoine knew this, and, like a wise guide, took proper precautions.“Stay, sir,” he said, as Lawrence was screwing up his courage to follow him, “I will show you another piece of Alpine practice.”He returned as he spoke, and, unwinding a coil of rope which he carried, fastened one end thereof round his waist. Allowing a few feet of interval, he then fastened the rope round Lawrence’s waist, and the assistants with the stakes—of whom there were two besides the man already referred to—also attached themselves to the rope in like manner. By this means they all passed over with comparative security, because if any one of them had chanced to slip, the others would have fixed the points of their axes and alpenstocks in the ice and held on until their overbalanced comrade should have been restored to his position.On gaining the block, however, it was found that the line communicating with the theodolite on the one hand, and the Dook’s nose on the other, just missed it. The Professor’s signals continued to indicate “more to the left,” (hisleft, that is) until the stake-driver stood on the extreme edge of the crevasse, and his comrades held on tight by the rope to prevent him from falling over. Still the professor indicated “more to the left!”As “more to the left” implied the planting of the stake in atmospheric air, they were fain to search for a suitable spot farther on.This they found, after some scrambling, on a serrated ridge whose edge was just wide and strong enough to sustain them. Here the exact line was marked, but while the hole was being bored, an ominous crack was heard ascending as if from the heart of the glacier.“What was that?” said Lawrence, turning to the guide with a quick surprised look.“Only a split in the ice somewhere. It’s a common sound enough, as you might expect in a mass that is constantly moving,” replied Antoine, looking gravely round him, “but I can’t help thinking that this lump of ice, with crevasses on each side, is not the best of all spots for fixing a stake. It isn’t solid enough.”As he spoke, another crash was heard, not quite so loud as the last and at the same moment the whole mass on which the party stood slid forward a few inches. It seemed as if it were about to tumble into the very jaws of the crevasse. With the natural instinct of self-preservation strong upon him, Lawrence darted across the narrow ridge to the firm ice in rear, dispensing entirely with that extreme caution which had marked his first passage over it. Indeed the tight-rope and slack-wire dancers formerly referred to could not have performed the feat with greater lightness, rapidity, and precision. The stake-drivers followed him with almost similar alacrity. Even the guide retraced his steps without further delay than was necessary to permit of his picking up the stakes which their proper custodians had left behind in their alarm—for they were not guides, merely young and inexperienced porters.“For shame, lads,” said Antoine, laughing and shaking his head, “you’ll be but bad specimens of the men of Chamouni if you don’t learn more coolness on the ice.”One would have thought that coolness on the ice was an almost unavoidable consequence of the surrounding conditions, yet Lawrence seemed to contradict the idea, for his face appeared unusually warm as he laughed and said:—“The shame lies with me, Antoine, for I set them the example, and all history goes to prove that even brave men are swept away under the influence of a panic which the act of one cowardly man may produce.”As Lawrence spoke in French, the porters understood and appreciated his defence of them, but Antoine would by no means encourage the fallacy.“It is not cowardly, sir,” he said, “to spring quickly out of a danger that one don’t understand the nature of, but the young men of Chamouni have, or ought to have, a good understanding of the nature of ice, and the danger should be great indeed that would necessitate the leaving of their tools behind them.”A roar like that of a bull of Bashan, or a boatswain, here interrupted the conversation.“Don’t plant your post the–r–r–re,” shouted Captain Wopper from the banks of the ice-river, “the Professor says the ice ain’t firm enough. Heave ahead—to where its ha–a–ard an’ fa–a–ast.”“Ay, ay, sir,” shouted Lawrence, with nautical brevity, in reply.The next stake was accordingly fixed on a part of the ice which was obviously incapable of what might be called a local slip, and which must, if it moved at all, do so in accordance with the movements of the entire glacier.Thus one by one the stakes were planted in a perfectly straight line, so that when Captain Wopper was requested by the Professor to look through the telescope—which he did with a seaman’s readiness and precision—he observed that all the stakes together appeared to form but one stake, the bottom of which was touched on one side of the Mer de Glace by the centre-point of the crossed threads, and, on the other, by the extreme point of the “Dook” of Wellington’s nose. The last stake had been fixed not many yards distant from the opposite bank of the glacier.“Now,” said the Professor, with a deep sigh of satisfaction when all this was accomplished and noted, “we will go have our luncheon and return hither to-morrow to observe the result of our experiments. But first we must fix the exact position of our theodolite, for unless it occupies to a hair’s-breadth to-morrow the same position which it occupies to-day, the result will be quite inconclusive.”So saying, the man of science took a little line and plummet from his pocket, which he hung under the theodolite, and the spot where the plummet touched the ground was carefully marked by a small stake driven quite down to its head.Thereafter an attempt was made to gather together the scattered party, but this was difficult. Owing to various causes several members of it had become oblivious of time. Emma had forgotten time in the pursuit of wild-flowers, of which she was excessively fond, partly because she had learned to press and classify and write their proper names under them, but chiefly because they were intrinsically lovely, and usually grew in the midst of beautiful scenery. Nita had forgotten it in the pursuit of Emma, of whom she had become suddenly and passionately fond, partly because she possessed a loving nature, but chiefly because Emma was her counterpart. Lewis had forgotten it in pursuit of Nita, of whom he had become extremely fond, partly because she was pretty and pert, but chiefly because he—he—well, we cannot say precisely why, seeing that he did not inform us, and did not himself appear clearly to know. Slingsby had forgotten it in the ardent effort to reproduce on paper and with pencil, a scene so magnificent that a brush dipped in the rainbow and applied by Claude or Turner would have utterly failed to do it justice; and last, as well as least, Gillie White had forgotten it in the pursuit of general knowledge, in which pursuit he had used his alpenstock effectively in opening up everything, stabbing, knocking down, uprooting, overturning, and generally shattering everything that was capable of being in any degree affected by the physical powers and forces at his command. There can be no doubt whatever that if Gillie White had been big and strong enough, Mont Blanc itself would have succumbed that day to his inquiring mind, and the greatest ice-reservoir of Europe would have been levelled with the plain. As it was, he merely levelled himself, after reaching the point of exhaustion, and went to sleep on the sunny side of a rock, where he was nearly roasted alive before being aroused by the shouts of Captain Wopper.At last, however, the party assembled at the Montanvert, where, amid interjectional accounts of the various incidents and adventures of the forenoon, strength was recruited for the subsequent operations of the day. These, however, were only matters of amusement. The Professor, remarking jocosely that he now cast science to the dogs and cats (which latter he pronounced cawts), sent his instruments back to Chamouni, and, with the zest of a big boy let loose from school, crossed the Mer de Glace to the Chapeau.This feat was by no means so difficult as that which had been accomplished by Lawrence. It will be remembered that the spot selected for measurement had been at the steep and rugged part of the ice-river styled the Glacier des Bois, below the Montanvert. The ordinary crossing-place lay considerably higher up, just opposite to the inn. The track had been marked out over the easiest and flattest part of the ice, and levelled here and there where necessary for the special benefit of tourists. Still man—even when doing his worst in the way of making rough places plain, and robbing nature of some of her romance—could not do much to damage the grandeur of that impressive spot. His axe only chipped a little of the surface and made the footing secure. It could not mar the beauty of the picturesque surroundings, or dim the sun’s glitter on the ice-pinnacles, or taint the purity of these delicate blue depths into which Emma and Nita gazed for the first time with admiration and surprise while they listened to the mysterious murmurings of sub-glacial waters with mingled feelings of curiosity and awe.Full of interest they traversed the grand unfathomable river of ice,—the product of the compressed snows of innumerable winters,—and, reaching the other side in less than an hour, descended the Chapeau through the terminal moraine.Those who have not seen it can form but a faint conception of the stupendous mass ofdébriswhich is cut, torn, wrenched, carried, swept, hurled, rolled, crushed, and ground down by a glacier from the mountain-heights into the plain below. The terminal moraine of the Mer de Glace is a whole valley whose floor and sides are not only quite, but deeply, covered with rocks of every shape and size, from a pebble the size of a pea, to a boulder as large as a cottage, all strewn, piled, and heaped together in a wild confusion that is eminently suggestive of the mighty force which cast them there.“To me there do seem something dreadful as well as grand in it,” said Nita, as she sat down on a boulder beside Emma, near the lower end of the chaotic valley.“It is, indeed, terrible,” answered Emma, “and fills me with wonder when I think that frozen water possesses power so stupendous.”“And yet the same element,” said the Professor, “which, when frozen, thus rends the mountains with force irresistible, when melted flows through the land in gentle fertilising streams. In both forms its power is most wonderful.”“Like that of Him who created it,” said Emma, in a low tone.The party stood on the margin of a little pond or lakelet that had collected in the midst of thedébris, and which, by reflecting the clear sky and their figures, with several large boulders on its margin, gave point and a measure of softness to the otherwise confused and rugged scene. While they stood and sat rapt in silent contemplation of the tongue of the Mer de Glace, at whose tip was the blue ice-cave whence issued the Arveiron, a lordly eagle rose from a neighbouring cliff and soared grandly over their heads, while a bright gleam of the sinking sun shot over the white shoulders of Mont Blanc and lit up the higher end of the valley, throwing the lower part into deeper shade by contrast.“There is a warning to us,” said Lewis, whose chief interest in the scene lay in the reflection of it that gleamed from Nita Horetzki’s eyes.“Which is the warning,” asked Slingsby, “the gleam of sunshine or the eagle?”“Both, for while the sun is going to bed behind the snow, the eagle is doubtless going home to her eyrie, and Antoine tells me that it is full three miles from this spot to our hotel in Chamouni.”It did not take them long to traverse that space, and ere long, like the eagle and the sun, the whole party had retired to rest—the younger members, doubtless, to dreamless slumber; the Professor and the Captain, probably, to visions of theodolites and ice.Although, however, these worthies must needs await the coming day to have their scientific hopes realised, it would be cruel to keep our patient reader in suspense. We may therefore note here that when, on the following day, the theodolite was re-fixed, and the man of science and his amateur friend had applied their respective eyes to the telescope, they were assured beyond a doubt that the stakeshad moved, some more and some less, while the “Dook’s nose,” of course, remained hard and fast as the rock of which it was composed. The stakes had descended from about one to three feet during the twenty-four hours—those near the edge having moved least and those near the centre of the ice-river’s flow having moved farthest.Of course there was a great deal of observing with the theodolite, and careful measuring as well as scrambling on the ice, similar to that of the previous day; but the end of the whole was that the glacier was ascertained to have flowed, definitely and observably down its channel, there could be no doubt whatever about that; the thing had been clearly proved, therefore the Professor was triumphant and the Captain, being a reasonable man, was convinced.
The Pursuit of Science under Difficulties.
After the first burst of enthusiasm and interest had abated, the attention of the party became engrossed in the proceedings of the Professor, who, with his assistants, began at once to adjust his theodolite, and fix stakes in the ice. While he was thus engaged, Captain Wopper regarded the Mer de Glace with a gaze of fixedness so intense as to draw on him the attention and arouse the curiosity of his friends.
“D’you see anything curious, Captain?” asked Emma, who chanced to stand beside him.
“Coorious—eh?” repeated the Captain slowly, without altering his gaze or adding to his reply.
“Monsieur le Capitaine is lost in consternation,” said Nita, with a smile.
“I think, Miss Horetzki,” said Lewis, “that you probably meanadmiration.”
“How you knows w’at I mean?” demanded Nita, quickly.
“Ha! a very proper and pertinent question,” observed Slingsby, in an audible though under tone.
“I nevair do putpertinentquestions, sir,” said Nita, turning her black eyes sharply, though with something of a twinkle in them, on the mad artist.
Poor Slingsby began to explain, but Nita cut him short by turning to Lewis and again demanding, “How you knows w’at I mean?”
“The uniform propriety of your thoughts, Mademoiselle,” replied Lewis, with a continental bow, and an air of pretended respect, “induces me to suppose that your words misinterpret them.”
Nita’s knowledge of English was such that this remark gave her only a hazy idea of the youth’s meaning; she accepted it, however, as an apologetic explanation, and ordered him to awaken the Captain and find out from him what it was that so riveted his attention.
“You hear my orders,” said Lewis, laying his hand with a slap on the Captain’s shoulder. “What are you staring at?”
“Move!” murmured the Captain, returning as it were to consciousness with a long deep sigh, “it don’t move an inch.”
“Whatdoes not move?” said Lawrence, who had been assisting to adjust the theodolite, and came forward at the moment.
“The ice, to be sure,” answered the Captain. “I say, Professor, do ’ee mean to tell me that the whole of that there Mairdy-glass is movin’?”
“I do,” answered the Professor, pausing for a minute in his arrangements, and looking over his spectacles at the Captain with an amused expression.
“Then,” returned the Captain, with emphasis, “I think you’ll find that you’re mistaken.”
“Ha! Captain Weeper—”
“Wopper,” said the Captain.
“Wopper,” repeated the Professor, “you are not the first who has expressed disbelief in what he cannot see, and you will assuredly not be the last; but if you will wait I will convince you.”
“Very good,” replied the Captain, “I’m open to conviction.”
“Which means,” said Lewis, “that you have nailed your colours to the mast, and mean to die rather than give in.”
“No doubt,” said the Captain, paying no attention to the last remark, “I see,andbelieve, that at some time or other the ice here must have been in a flowin’ state. I’m too well aware o’ the shape of waves an’ eddies, cross-currents and ripples, to doubt or deny that but any man with half an eye can see that it’s anchored hard and fastnow. I’ve looked at it without flinchin’ for good ten minutes, and not the smallest sign of motion can I detect.”
“So might you say of the hour-hand of a watch,” observed Lawrence.
“Not at all,” retorted the Captain, becoming argumentative. “I look at the hour-hand of a watch for ten minutes and don’t see it move, but Idosee that it has in reality passed over a very small but appreciable space in that time.”
“Just so,” said the Professor, “I will ere long show you the same thing in regard to the ice.”
“I’ll bet you ten thousand pounds you don’t,” returned the Captain, with an assured nod.
“Colours nailed!” said Lewis; “but I say, Captain,” he added, remonstratively, “I thought you were a sworn enemy to gambling. Isn’t betting gambling?”
“It is, young man,” answered the Captain, “but I always bet ten thousand pounds sterling, which I never mean to pay if I lose, nor to accept if I win—and that isnotgambling. Put that in your pipe and smoke it; and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go look after your friend Slingsby, who is gambolling up yonder in another fashion that will soon bring him to grief if he’s not stopped.”
All eyes were turned towards the mad artist, who, finding that his advances to Mademoiselle Nita were not well received, had for the time forsaken her, and returned to his first (and professional) love. In wooing her, he had clambered to an almost inaccessible cliff from which he hoped to obtain a very sketchable view of the Mer de Glace, and, when Captain Wopper drew attention to him, was making frantic efforts to swing himself by the branch of a tree to a projecting rock, which was so slightly attached to its parent cliff that his weight would in all probability have hurled it and himself down the precipice.
The remonstrative shouts of his friends, however, induced him to desist, and he sat down to work in a less perilous position.
Meanwhile the Professor, having completed his preliminary preparations, ordered his assistants to go and “fix the stakes in the ice.”
It had been arranged that while the scientific experiments were in progress, the young ladies should ramble about the neighbourhood in search of flowers and plants, under the care of Lewis, until two o’clock, at which hour all were to assemble at the Montanvert hotel for luncheon, Captain Wopper and Lawrence resolving to remain and assist, or at least observe, the Professor. The former, indeed, bearing in mind his great and ruling wish even in the midst of scientific doubt and inquiries, had suggested that the latter should also accompany the ladies, the country being somewhat rugged, and the ladies—especially Miss Emma—not being very sure-footed; but Lawrence, to his disappointment, had declined, saying that the ladies had a sufficient protector in the gallant Lewis, and that Miss Emma was unquestionably the surest-footed of the whole party.
Lawrence therefore remained, and, at the Professor’s request, accompanied the party who were to fix the stakes on the ice.
As this operation was attended with considerable difficulty and some danger, we will describe the process.
Finding that the spot which he had first chosen for his observations was not a very good one, the Professor changed his position to a point farther down on the steep sloping rocks that form the left bank of the Glacier des Bois. Here the theodolite was fixed. This instrument as even our young readers may probably know, is a small telescope attached to a stand with three long legs, and having spirit-levels, by means of which it can be fixed in a position, if we may say so, of exact flatness with reference to the centre of the earth. Within the telescope are two crossed hairs of a spider’s-web, so fine as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye, and so arranged that their crossing-point is exactly in the centre of the tube. By means of pivots and screws the telescope can be moved up or down, right or left, without in the smallest degree altering the flatness or position of its stand. On looking through the telescope the delicate threads can be distinctly seen, and the point where they cross can be brought to bear on any distant object.
Having fixed the instrument on the rocks quite clear of the ice, the Professor determined the direction of a supposed line perpendicular to the axis of the glacier. He then sought for a conspicuous and well-defined object on the opposite side of the valley, as near as possible to that direction. In this he was greatly helped by Captain Wopper, who, having been long accustomed to look-out with precision at sea, found it not very difficult to apply his powers on land.
“There’s a good land-mark, Professor,” he said, pointing towards a sharply-cut rock, “as like the Dook of Wellington’s nose as two peas.”
“I see it,” said the Professor, whose solid and masculine countenance was just the smallest possible degree flushed by the strong under-current of enthusiasm with which he prosecuted his experiments.
“You couldn’t have a better object than the pint o’ that,” observed the Captain, whose enthusiasm was quite as great as, and his excitement much greater than, that of the Professor.
Having carefully directed the telescope to the extreme point of the “Dook’s” nose, the Professor now ordered one of his assistants to go on the glacier with a stake. Lawrence descended with him, and thus planted his foot on glacier-ice for the first time, as Lewis afterwards remarked, in the pursuit scientific knowledge.
While they were clambering slowly down among the loose boulders anddébriswhich had been left by the glacier in previous years, the Professor carefully sketched the Duke of Wellington’s nose with the rocks, etcetera, immediately around it, in his notebook, so that it might be easily recognised again on returning to the spot on a future day.
The assistant who had been sent out with the first stake proved to be rather stupid, so that it was fortunate he had been accompanied by Lawrence, and by the guide, Antoine Grennon, who stirred up his perceptions. By rough signalling he was made to stand near the place where the first stake was to be driven in. The telescope was then lowered, and the man was made, by signals, to move about and plant his stake here and there in an upright position until the point of intersection of the spider’s threads fell exactly on the bottom of the stake. A pre-arranged signal was then made, and at that point an auger hole was bored deep into the ice and the stake driven home.
“So much for number one,” said Captain Wopper, with a look of satisfaction.
“They won’t fix the other ones so easily,” observed the Professor, re-examining the stake through the telescope with great care.
He was right in this. The first stake had been planted not far from the shore, but now Lawrence and his party had to proceed in a straight line over the glacier, which, at this steep portion of its descent into the Vale of Chamouni, was rent, dislocated, and tortured, to such an extent that it was covered with huge blocks and pinnacles of ice, and seamed with yawning crevasses. To clamber over some of the ice-ridges was almost impossible, and, in order to avoid pinnacles and crevasses, which were quite impassable, frequentdétourshad to be made. If the object of the ice-party had merely been to cross the glacier, the difficulties would not have been great; but the necessity of always returning to the straight line pointed out by the inexorable theodolite, led them into positions of considerable difficulty. To the inexperienced Lawrence they also appeared to be positions of great danger, much to the amusement of Antoine, who, accustomed as he was to the fearful ice-slopes and abysses of the higher regions, looked upon this work as mere child’s play.
“You’ll come to have a different notion of crevasses, sir,” he said, with a quiet smile, “after you’ve bin among the seracs of the Grand Mulet, and up some of the couloirs of Monte Rosa.”
“I doubt it not, Antoine,” said Lawrence, gazing with feelings of awe into a terrible split in the ice, whose beautiful light-blue sides deepened into intense blackness as they were lost to vision in an abyss, out of which arose the deep-toned gurgling of sub-glacial streams; “but you must not forget that this is quite new to me, and my feet are not yet aware of the precise grip with which they must hold on to so slippery a foundation.”
It was in truth no discredit to Lawrence that he felt a tendency to shrink from edges of chasms which appeared ready to break off, or walked with caution on ice-slopes which led to unfathomable holes, for the said slopes, although not steep, were undoubtedly slippery.
After much clambering, a ridge was at length gained, on which the second stake was set up, and then the party proceeded onwards to fix the third; but now the difficulties proved to be greater than before. A huge block of ice was fixed upon as that which would suit their purpose, but it stood like a peninsula in the very midst of a crevasse, and connected with the main body of ice by a neck which looked as sharp as a knife on its upper edge, so that none but tight-rope or slack-wire dancers could have proceeded along it; and even such performers would have found the edge too brittle to sustain them.
“You’ll have to show, Monsieur, some of your mountaineer skill here?” said the man who carried the stakes to Antoine.
He spoke in French, which Lawrence understood perfectly. We render it as nearly as possible into the counterpart English.
Antoine at once stepped forward with his Alpine axe, and, swinging it vigorously over his head, cut a deep notch on the sloping side of the neck of ice. Beyond it he cut a second notch. No man—not even a monkey—could have stood on the glassy slope which descended into the abyss at their side; but Antoine, putting one foot in the first notch, and the other in the second, stood as secure as if he had been on a flat rock. Again he swung his axe, and planted his foot in a third notch, swinging his axe the instant it was fixed for the purpose of cutting the fourth. Thus, cut by cut and step by step, he passed over to the block of ice aimed at. It was but a short neck. A few notches were sufficient, yet without an axe to cut these notches, the place had been absolutely impassable. It was by no means a “dangerous” place, according to the ideas of Alpine mountaineers, nevertheless a slip, or the loss of balance, would have been followed by contain death. Antoine knew this, and, like a wise guide, took proper precautions.
“Stay, sir,” he said, as Lawrence was screwing up his courage to follow him, “I will show you another piece of Alpine practice.”
He returned as he spoke, and, unwinding a coil of rope which he carried, fastened one end thereof round his waist. Allowing a few feet of interval, he then fastened the rope round Lawrence’s waist, and the assistants with the stakes—of whom there were two besides the man already referred to—also attached themselves to the rope in like manner. By this means they all passed over with comparative security, because if any one of them had chanced to slip, the others would have fixed the points of their axes and alpenstocks in the ice and held on until their overbalanced comrade should have been restored to his position.
On gaining the block, however, it was found that the line communicating with the theodolite on the one hand, and the Dook’s nose on the other, just missed it. The Professor’s signals continued to indicate “more to the left,” (hisleft, that is) until the stake-driver stood on the extreme edge of the crevasse, and his comrades held on tight by the rope to prevent him from falling over. Still the professor indicated “more to the left!”
As “more to the left” implied the planting of the stake in atmospheric air, they were fain to search for a suitable spot farther on.
This they found, after some scrambling, on a serrated ridge whose edge was just wide and strong enough to sustain them. Here the exact line was marked, but while the hole was being bored, an ominous crack was heard ascending as if from the heart of the glacier.
“What was that?” said Lawrence, turning to the guide with a quick surprised look.
“Only a split in the ice somewhere. It’s a common sound enough, as you might expect in a mass that is constantly moving,” replied Antoine, looking gravely round him, “but I can’t help thinking that this lump of ice, with crevasses on each side, is not the best of all spots for fixing a stake. It isn’t solid enough.”
As he spoke, another crash was heard, not quite so loud as the last and at the same moment the whole mass on which the party stood slid forward a few inches. It seemed as if it were about to tumble into the very jaws of the crevasse. With the natural instinct of self-preservation strong upon him, Lawrence darted across the narrow ridge to the firm ice in rear, dispensing entirely with that extreme caution which had marked his first passage over it. Indeed the tight-rope and slack-wire dancers formerly referred to could not have performed the feat with greater lightness, rapidity, and precision. The stake-drivers followed him with almost similar alacrity. Even the guide retraced his steps without further delay than was necessary to permit of his picking up the stakes which their proper custodians had left behind in their alarm—for they were not guides, merely young and inexperienced porters.
“For shame, lads,” said Antoine, laughing and shaking his head, “you’ll be but bad specimens of the men of Chamouni if you don’t learn more coolness on the ice.”
One would have thought that coolness on the ice was an almost unavoidable consequence of the surrounding conditions, yet Lawrence seemed to contradict the idea, for his face appeared unusually warm as he laughed and said:—
“The shame lies with me, Antoine, for I set them the example, and all history goes to prove that even brave men are swept away under the influence of a panic which the act of one cowardly man may produce.”
As Lawrence spoke in French, the porters understood and appreciated his defence of them, but Antoine would by no means encourage the fallacy.
“It is not cowardly, sir,” he said, “to spring quickly out of a danger that one don’t understand the nature of, but the young men of Chamouni have, or ought to have, a good understanding of the nature of ice, and the danger should be great indeed that would necessitate the leaving of their tools behind them.”
A roar like that of a bull of Bashan, or a boatswain, here interrupted the conversation.
“Don’t plant your post the–r–r–re,” shouted Captain Wopper from the banks of the ice-river, “the Professor says the ice ain’t firm enough. Heave ahead—to where its ha–a–ard an’ fa–a–ast.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” shouted Lawrence, with nautical brevity, in reply.
The next stake was accordingly fixed on a part of the ice which was obviously incapable of what might be called a local slip, and which must, if it moved at all, do so in accordance with the movements of the entire glacier.
Thus one by one the stakes were planted in a perfectly straight line, so that when Captain Wopper was requested by the Professor to look through the telescope—which he did with a seaman’s readiness and precision—he observed that all the stakes together appeared to form but one stake, the bottom of which was touched on one side of the Mer de Glace by the centre-point of the crossed threads, and, on the other, by the extreme point of the “Dook” of Wellington’s nose. The last stake had been fixed not many yards distant from the opposite bank of the glacier.
“Now,” said the Professor, with a deep sigh of satisfaction when all this was accomplished and noted, “we will go have our luncheon and return hither to-morrow to observe the result of our experiments. But first we must fix the exact position of our theodolite, for unless it occupies to a hair’s-breadth to-morrow the same position which it occupies to-day, the result will be quite inconclusive.”
So saying, the man of science took a little line and plummet from his pocket, which he hung under the theodolite, and the spot where the plummet touched the ground was carefully marked by a small stake driven quite down to its head.
Thereafter an attempt was made to gather together the scattered party, but this was difficult. Owing to various causes several members of it had become oblivious of time. Emma had forgotten time in the pursuit of wild-flowers, of which she was excessively fond, partly because she had learned to press and classify and write their proper names under them, but chiefly because they were intrinsically lovely, and usually grew in the midst of beautiful scenery. Nita had forgotten it in the pursuit of Emma, of whom she had become suddenly and passionately fond, partly because she possessed a loving nature, but chiefly because Emma was her counterpart. Lewis had forgotten it in pursuit of Nita, of whom he had become extremely fond, partly because she was pretty and pert, but chiefly because he—he—well, we cannot say precisely why, seeing that he did not inform us, and did not himself appear clearly to know. Slingsby had forgotten it in the ardent effort to reproduce on paper and with pencil, a scene so magnificent that a brush dipped in the rainbow and applied by Claude or Turner would have utterly failed to do it justice; and last, as well as least, Gillie White had forgotten it in the pursuit of general knowledge, in which pursuit he had used his alpenstock effectively in opening up everything, stabbing, knocking down, uprooting, overturning, and generally shattering everything that was capable of being in any degree affected by the physical powers and forces at his command. There can be no doubt whatever that if Gillie White had been big and strong enough, Mont Blanc itself would have succumbed that day to his inquiring mind, and the greatest ice-reservoir of Europe would have been levelled with the plain. As it was, he merely levelled himself, after reaching the point of exhaustion, and went to sleep on the sunny side of a rock, where he was nearly roasted alive before being aroused by the shouts of Captain Wopper.
At last, however, the party assembled at the Montanvert, where, amid interjectional accounts of the various incidents and adventures of the forenoon, strength was recruited for the subsequent operations of the day. These, however, were only matters of amusement. The Professor, remarking jocosely that he now cast science to the dogs and cats (which latter he pronounced cawts), sent his instruments back to Chamouni, and, with the zest of a big boy let loose from school, crossed the Mer de Glace to the Chapeau.
This feat was by no means so difficult as that which had been accomplished by Lawrence. It will be remembered that the spot selected for measurement had been at the steep and rugged part of the ice-river styled the Glacier des Bois, below the Montanvert. The ordinary crossing-place lay considerably higher up, just opposite to the inn. The track had been marked out over the easiest and flattest part of the ice, and levelled here and there where necessary for the special benefit of tourists. Still man—even when doing his worst in the way of making rough places plain, and robbing nature of some of her romance—could not do much to damage the grandeur of that impressive spot. His axe only chipped a little of the surface and made the footing secure. It could not mar the beauty of the picturesque surroundings, or dim the sun’s glitter on the ice-pinnacles, or taint the purity of these delicate blue depths into which Emma and Nita gazed for the first time with admiration and surprise while they listened to the mysterious murmurings of sub-glacial waters with mingled feelings of curiosity and awe.
Full of interest they traversed the grand unfathomable river of ice,—the product of the compressed snows of innumerable winters,—and, reaching the other side in less than an hour, descended the Chapeau through the terminal moraine.
Those who have not seen it can form but a faint conception of the stupendous mass ofdébriswhich is cut, torn, wrenched, carried, swept, hurled, rolled, crushed, and ground down by a glacier from the mountain-heights into the plain below. The terminal moraine of the Mer de Glace is a whole valley whose floor and sides are not only quite, but deeply, covered with rocks of every shape and size, from a pebble the size of a pea, to a boulder as large as a cottage, all strewn, piled, and heaped together in a wild confusion that is eminently suggestive of the mighty force which cast them there.
“To me there do seem something dreadful as well as grand in it,” said Nita, as she sat down on a boulder beside Emma, near the lower end of the chaotic valley.
“It is, indeed, terrible,” answered Emma, “and fills me with wonder when I think that frozen water possesses power so stupendous.”
“And yet the same element,” said the Professor, “which, when frozen, thus rends the mountains with force irresistible, when melted flows through the land in gentle fertilising streams. In both forms its power is most wonderful.”
“Like that of Him who created it,” said Emma, in a low tone.
The party stood on the margin of a little pond or lakelet that had collected in the midst of thedébris, and which, by reflecting the clear sky and their figures, with several large boulders on its margin, gave point and a measure of softness to the otherwise confused and rugged scene. While they stood and sat rapt in silent contemplation of the tongue of the Mer de Glace, at whose tip was the blue ice-cave whence issued the Arveiron, a lordly eagle rose from a neighbouring cliff and soared grandly over their heads, while a bright gleam of the sinking sun shot over the white shoulders of Mont Blanc and lit up the higher end of the valley, throwing the lower part into deeper shade by contrast.
“There is a warning to us,” said Lewis, whose chief interest in the scene lay in the reflection of it that gleamed from Nita Horetzki’s eyes.
“Which is the warning,” asked Slingsby, “the gleam of sunshine or the eagle?”
“Both, for while the sun is going to bed behind the snow, the eagle is doubtless going home to her eyrie, and Antoine tells me that it is full three miles from this spot to our hotel in Chamouni.”
It did not take them long to traverse that space, and ere long, like the eagle and the sun, the whole party had retired to rest—the younger members, doubtless, to dreamless slumber; the Professor and the Captain, probably, to visions of theodolites and ice.
Although, however, these worthies must needs await the coming day to have their scientific hopes realised, it would be cruel to keep our patient reader in suspense. We may therefore note here that when, on the following day, the theodolite was re-fixed, and the man of science and his amateur friend had applied their respective eyes to the telescope, they were assured beyond a doubt that the stakeshad moved, some more and some less, while the “Dook’s nose,” of course, remained hard and fast as the rock of which it was composed. The stakes had descended from about one to three feet during the twenty-four hours—those near the edge having moved least and those near the centre of the ice-river’s flow having moved farthest.
Of course there was a great deal of observing with the theodolite, and careful measuring as well as scrambling on the ice, similar to that of the previous day; but the end of the whole was that the glacier was ascertained to have flowed, definitely and observably down its channel, there could be no doubt whatever about that; the thing had been clearly proved, therefore the Professor was triumphant and the Captain, being a reasonable man, was convinced.