Full of ardour, they started, plunging to their knees in the fresh snow, which had buried in its immaculate cotton-wool all the traces of the caravan; consequently Tartarin was forced to consult his compass every five minutes. But that Taras-conese compass, accustomed to warm climates, had been numb with cold ever since its arrival in Switzerland. The needle whirled to all four quarters, agitated, hesitating; therefore they determined to march straight before them, expecting to see the black rocks of the Grands-Mulets rise suddenly from the uniform silent whiteness of the slope, the peaks, the turrets, and aiguilles that surrounded, dazzled, and also terrified them, for who knew what dangerous crevasses it concealed beneath their feet?
“Keep cool, Gonzague, keep cool!”
“That ‘s just what I can’t do,” responded Bom-pard, in a lamentable voice. And he moaned: “Aïe, my foot!.. aïe, my leg!.. we are lost; never shall we get there...”
They had walked for over two hours when, about the middle of a field of snow very difficult to climb, Bompard called out, quite terrified:—
“Tartarin, we are going up!”
“Eh! parbleu! I know that well enough,” returned the P. C. A., almost losing his serenity.
“But according to my ideas, we ought to be going down.”
“Be! yes! but how can I help it? Let’s go on to the top, at any rate; it may go down on the other side.”
It went down certainly—and terribly, by a succession of névés and glaciers, and quite at the end of this dazzling scene of dangerous whiteness a little hut was seen upon a rock at a depth which seemed to them unattainable. It was a haven that they must reach before nightfall, inasmuch as they had evidently lost the way to the Grands-Mulets, but at what cost! what efforts! what dangers, perhaps!
“Above all, don’t let go of me, Gonzague, qué!..”