A Tramp Abroad
than any estimate in figures, how high the experimenter went.
We had nothing to do, now, but bridge the cellar and proceed on our way.
With a cheer the men went at their work. I attended to the engineering,
myself. I appointed a strong detail to cut down trees with ice-axes and
trim them for piers to support the bridge. This was a slow business, for
ice-axes are not good to cut wood with. I caused my piers to be firmly
set up in ranks in the cellar, and upon them I laid six of my forty-foot
ladders, side by side, and laid six more on top of them. Upon this
bridge I caused a bed of boughs to be spread, and on top of the boughs
a bed of earth six inches deep. I stretched ropes upon either side to
serve as railings, and then my bridge was complete. A train of elephants
could have crossed it in safety and comfort. By nightfall the caravan
was on the other side and the ladders were taken up.
Next morning we went on in good spirits for a while, though our way
was slow and difficult, by reason of the steep and rocky nature of the
ground and the thickness of the forest; but at last a dull despondency
crept into the men's faces and it was apparent that not only they, but
even the guides, were now convinced that we were lost. The fact that we
still met no tourists was a circumstance that was but too significant.
Another thing seemed to suggest that we were not only lost, but very
badly lost; for there must surely be searching-parties on the road
before this time, yet we had seen no sign of them.
Demoralization was spreading; something must be done, and done quickly,
too. Fortunately, I am not unfertile in expedients. I contrived one
now which commended itself to all, for it promised well. I took
three-quarters of a mile of rope and fastened one end of it around the
waist of a guide, and told him to go find the road, while the caravan
waited. I instructed him to guide himself back by the rope, in case of
failure; in case of success, he was to give the rope a series of violent
jerks, whereupon the Expedition would go to him at once. He departed,
and in two minutes had disappeared among the trees. I payed out the rope
myself, while everybody watched the crawling thing with eager eyes.
The rope crept away quite slowly, at times, at other times with some
briskness. Twice or thrice we seemed to get the signal, and a shout was
just ready to break from the men's lips when they perceived it was a
false alarm. But at last, when over half a mile of rope had slidden
away, it stopped gliding and stood absolutely still--one minute--two
minutes--three--while we held our breath and watched.
Was the guide resting? Was he scanning the country from some high point?
Was he inquiring of a chance mountaineer? Stop,--had he fainted from
excess of fatigue and anxiety?
This thought gave us a shock. I was in the very first act of detailing
an Expedition to succor him, when the cord was assailed with a series of
such frantic jerks that I could hardly keep hold of it. The huzza that
went up, then, was good to hear. “Saved! saved!” was the word that rang
out, all down the long rank of the caravan.
We rose up and started at once. We found the route to be good enough
for a while, but it began to grow difficult, by and by, and this feature
steadily increased. When we judged we had gone half a mile, we momently
expected to see the guide; but no, he was not visible anywhere; neither
was he waiting, for the rope was still moving, consequently he was
doing the same. This argued that he had not found the road, yet, but
was marching to it with some peasant. There was nothing for us to do
but plod along--and this we did. At the end of three hours we were
still plodding. This was not only mysterious, but exasperating. And very
fatiguing, too; for we had tried hard, along at first, to catch up with
the guide, but had only fagged ourselves, in vain; for although he was
traveling slowly he was yet able to go faster than the hampered caravan
over such ground.
At three in the afternoon we were nearly dead with exhaustion--and still
the rope was slowly gliding out. The murmurs against the guide had been
growing steadily, and at last they were become loud and savage. A mutiny
ensued. The men refused to proceed. They declared that we had been
traveling over and over the same ground all day, in a kind of circle.
They demanded that our end of the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to
halt the guide until we could overtake him and kill him. This was not an
unreasonable requirement, so I gave the order.
As soon as the rope was tied, the Expedition moved forward with that
alacrity which the thirst for vengeance usually inspires. But after a
tiresome march of almost half a mile, we came to a hill covered thick
with a crumbly rubbish of stones, and so steep that no man of us all
was now in a condition to climb it. Every attempt failed, and ended in
crippling somebody. Within twenty minutes I had five men on crutches.
Whenever a climber tried to assist himself by the rope, it yielded and
let him tumble backward. The frequency of this result suggested an idea
to me. I ordered the caravan to 'bout face and form in marching order; I
then made the tow-rope fast to the rear mule, and gave the command:
“Mark time--by the right flank--forward--march!”
The procession began to move, to the impressive strains of a
battle-chant, and I said to myself, “Now, if the rope don't break I
judge THIS will fetch that guide into the camp.” I watched the rope
gliding down the hill, and presently when I was all fixed for triumph
I was confronted by a bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied to
the rope, it was only a very indignant old black ram. The fury of the
baffled Expedition exceeded all bounds. They even wanted to wreak their
unreasoning vengeance on this innocent dumb brute. But I stood between
them and their prey, menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and
alpenstocks, and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder,
and it was directly over my corpse. Even as I spoke I saw that my doom
was sealed, except a miracle supervened to divert these madmen from
their fell purpose. I see the sickening wall of weapons now; I see that
advancing host as I saw it then, I see the hate in those cruel eyes; I
remember how I drooped my head upon my breast, I feel again the
sudden earthquake shock in my rear, administered by the very ram I was
sacrificing myself to save; I hear once more the typhoon of laughter
that burst from the assaulting column as I clove it from van to rear
like a Sepoy shot from a Rodman gun.
I was saved. Yes, I was saved, and by the merciful instinct of
ingratitude which nature had planted in the breast of that treacherous
beast. The grace which eloquence had failed to work in those men's
hearts, had been wrought by a laugh. The ram was set free and my life
was spared.
We lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon as he had
placed a half-mile between himself and us. To avert suspicion, he had
judged it best that the line should continue to move; so he caught that
ram, and at the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast to
it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon, overcome by fatigue
and distress. When he allowed the ram to get up it fell to plunging
around, trying to rid itself of the rope, and this was the signal which
we had risen up with glad shouts to obey. We had followed this ram round
and round in a circle all day--a thing which was proven by the discovery
that we had watered the Expedition seven times at one and same spring in
seven hours. As expert a woodman as I am, I had somehow failed to notice
this until my attention was called to it by a hog. This hog was always
wallowing there, and as he was the only hog we saw, his frequent
repetition, together with his unvarying similarity to himself, finally
caused me to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led me to
the deduction that this must be the same spring, also--which indeed it
was.
I made a note of this curious thing, as showing in a striking manner the
relative difference between glacial action and the action of the hog.
It is now a well-established fact that glaciers move; I consider that
my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness, that a hog in a
spring does not move. I shall be glad to receive the opinions of other
observers upon this point.
To return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide, and then I shall be
done with him. After leaving the ram tied to the rope, he had wandered
at large a while, and then happened to run across a cow. Judging that a
cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took her by the tail,
and the result justified his judgment. She nibbled her leisurely way
downhill till it was near milking-time, then she struck for home and
towed him into Zermatt.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
[I Conquer the Gorner Grat]
We went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram had brought us.
The men were greatly fatigued. Their conviction that we were lost was
forgotten in the cheer of a good supper, and before the reaction had a
chance to set in, I loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed.
Next morning I was considering in my mind our desperate situation and
trying to think of a remedy, when Harris came to me with a Baedeker
map which showed conclusively that the mountain we were on was still in
Switzerland--yes, every part of it was in Switzerland. So we were not
lost, after all. This was an immense relief; it lifted the weight of two
such mountains from my breast. I immediately had the news disseminated
and the map was exhibited. The effect was wonderful. As soon as the men
saw with their own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it
was only the summit that was lost and not themselves, they cheered up
instantly and said with one accord, let the summit take care of itself.
Our distresses being at an end, I now determined to rest the men in camp
and give the scientific department of the Expedition a chance. First,
I made a barometric observation, to get our altitude, but I could not
perceive that there was any result. I knew, by my scientific reading,
that either thermometers or barometers ought to be boiled, to make them
accurate; I did not know which it was, so I boiled them both. There was
still no result; so I examined these instruments and discovered that
they possessed radical blemishes: the barometer had no hand but the
brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was stuffed with tin-foil.
I might have boiled those things to rags, and never found out anything.
I hunted up another barometer; it was new and perfect. I boiled it half
an hour in a pot of bean soup which the cooks were making. The result
was unexpected: the instrument was not affecting at all, but there was
such a strong barometer taste to the soup that the head cook, who was
a most conscientious person, changed its name in the bill of fare.
The dish was so greatly liked by all, that I ordered the cook to have
barometer soup every day.
It was believed that the barometer might eventually be injured, but I
did not care for that. I had demonstrated to my satisfaction that it
could not tell how high a mountain was, therefore I had no real use for
it. Changes in the weather I could take care of without it; I did not
wish to know when the weather was going to be good, what I wanted to
know was when it was going to be bad, and this I could find out from
Harris's corns. Harris had had his corns tested and regulated at the
government observatory in Heidelberg, and one could depend upon them
with confidence. So I transferred the new barometer to the cooking
department, to be used for the official mess. It was found that even a