Rivers of Ice by R. M. Ballantyne (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

“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 and débris, 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, I haven’t done 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’t it a big ’un? Ha! ha! The Cappen threatened to chuck me over the precipice, but I’ve chucked over a wopper that beats him all to sticks. Hallo! I say that’s worthy of Punch. 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.