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

“Ha! a very proper and pertinent question,” observed Slingsby, in an audible though under tone.

“I nevair do put pertinent questions, 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.”

“What does 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, and believe, 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 fast now. 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 I do see 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 is not gambling. 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 and débris which 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, frequent détours had 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