“Impossible... At the first step we should be blown like straws and pitched into some abyss.”
“Well then, we had better shout; the Grands-Mulets is not far off...” And Bompard, on his knees, in the attitude of a cow at pasture, lowing, roared out, “Help! help! help!..”
“To arms!” shouted Tartarin, in his most sonorous chest voice, which the grotto repercussioned in thunder.
Bompard seized his arm: “Horrors! the sérac!”.. Positively the whole block was trembling; another shout and that mass of accumulated icicles would be down upon their heads. They stopped, rigid, motionless, wrapped in a horrid silence, presently broken by a distant rolling sound, coming nearer, increasing, spreading to the horizon, and dying at last far down, from gulf to gulf.
“Poor souls!” murmured Tartarin, thinking of the Swede and his guides caught, no doubt, and swept away by the avalanche.
Bompard shook his head: “We are scarcely better off than they,” he said.
And truly, their situation was alarming; but they did not dare to stir from their icy grotto, nor to risk even their heads outside in the squall.
To complete the oppression of their hearts, from the depths of the valley rose the howling of a dog, baying at death. Suddenly Tartarin, with swollen eyes, his lips quivering, grasped the hands of his companion, and looking at him gently, said:—
“Forgive me, Gonzague, yes, yes, forgive me. I was rough to you just now; I treated you as a liar...”
“Ah! vaï. What harm did that do me?”