Chapter Twenty One.
The Falling Stone.
“Peter,” said Fordham, interrupting a story over which the guides were guffawing among themselves, and which related to a certain rash tourist who had undertaken to cross the Gorner glacier alone, giving Herr Baedeker as his authority for dispensing with the services of their fraternity, and how the adventurous one being eventually missed was duly sought for, which search resulted in the discovery of him at the bottom of a small crevasse in company with a sprained ankle and a Baedeker, and how some of them in resentment of the fancied slur upon their craft had grimly suggested that, whereas Baedeker had got him into his present quandary, it was only fair that Baedeker should get him out. “Peter, how long shall we take to get down to Zermatt?”
The man thus addressed stared gravely at the sky, then down at the valley, then at the surrounding heights, then at his colleague. The latter went through precisely the same formula. Then he replied—
“If de gentleman”—with a look at Philip—“go down so well as he did come up, then we shall get there in about seven or eight hours.”
“Right you are, Peter. You may put it at that,” cried Phil, with alacrity. “I’ll go down like a chamois, my buck. We’ll be in easy time for table d’hôte.” But the other did not enter into this spirit of exuberance. There was a touch of grimness in his reply, given with characteristic deliberation.
“You had better be late for de table d’hôte than not get to de table d’hôte ever again,” he said.
“That’s a damper, anyway,” rejoined Phil.
“It’s a well earned one,” said Fordham. “He wants you to realise that you can no more afford to be careless going down than you could coming up. And you can’t. You’re a heavyish chap, Phil, and there are places where if you lose your footing we are extremely likely to be unable to hold you up. And although your return to the valley we have just left may be welcome enough, I doubt if it will be adequately so if effected in fragmentary form. So don’t imagine you can afford to skip down the Rothhorn on one leg, that’s all.”