Seated upon the rank grass which carpeted the windswept summit of the narrow pinnacle, Alma was making Wentworth tell her the names of the sea of peaks, far and near, which lay around them. This he was well qualified to do, knowing them as he did by heart, and for nearly an hour the object lesson went on. Fordham lay on the grass, smoking a pipe, in an attitude of the most perfect repose, and the irrepressible Gedge was bearing his part in a bawled colloquy between himself and those they had left to await their return. Neither heard what the other said, but this was a secondary consideration. The great thing was to be saying something—anyhow as far as the volatile Gedge was concerned.
“It isn’t the snow mountains that are responsible for the greatest number of smashes,” said Wentworth, having pointed out two or three peaks which, like the one they were on, were responsible for having killed somebody. “The grass peaks like this are far the worst. It’s this way. A fellow makes up his mind to do a regular climb—say the Matterhorn or the Jungfrau. All right. He makes up his mind that he’s going to do a big thing, and from start to finish he’s keenly on the look out. Besides, he has guides, who won’t allow him to take any risk. Now, on a thing like this, that you can just hop up and down again between the two table d’hôtes, why he thinks he is going to do it on one leg, like friend Gedge there.”
“Well, but—Wentworth—you don’t call this a small thing?” struck in he named. “The confounded—what d’you call ’em?—arêtes require a pretty strong head.”
“Yes, that’s so. This is, perhaps, a little more difficult than some of the other climbs that break fellows’ necks. Take the old Jaman, for instance. You could almost ride a mule up and down it. Anyhow, the path, with ordinary care, is as safe as a church. But some day the know-everything Briton spots a rather fine gentian growing just off the path. Quite easy, of course. But he soon finds all the difference in the world between the path and the mountain-side. The grass is as slippery as ice, especially if it is a little wet. His feet slide from under him and away he goes. A toboggan’s nothing to it. He shoots down the grass slope like a streak of lightning, then over the inevitable cliff—and—a sack of bones is brought back to the hotel, and a paragraph goes the round of the English papers, headed ‘Another Alpine Accident.’ Thus a mountain gets the name of being a dangerous one, whereas really it is a mere idiot-trap, sensible people being perfectly safe on it—in ordinarily decent weather, that is.”
“Horrible!” said Alma, with a little shiver. “And at this height it all seems to come home to one so.”
“I say, Wentworth,” said Phil, “you’d better keep those bogey disquisitions of yours until we get down. You will spoil Miss Wyatt’s nerve for the arêtes going back.”
“Not at all,” said Alma. “I am very much interested. Tell me, Mr Wentworth, don’t people often come to grief by climbing down places that look easier than they are?”
“Of course they do. You notice, from below, a bit of rock that looks as if you could sit on it and then have your feet on the ground, but when you get to it it’s a cliff fifty or sixty feet high. But I’ve taken the trouble to go into the cases, and in nine instances out of ten it is the little grass fiend that does for its victim, not the eternal snow-capped giant.”
“Ever come up here in the snow, Wentworth?” said Gedge.
“Yes. It’s dangerous, though—very dangerous indeed. I don’t care about doing it again—in winter, I mean, not when there’s a mere temporary powdering of it. Of course, you understand, the whole aspect of the mountain is changed, every feature as unfamiliar as if it was a new thing. And snow is apt to slide away in great masses, taking you with it. It’s bad in wind, too. I’ve crossed those arêtes when I’ve had to lie flat and grab the rock rather harder than we saw friend Scott doing just now. You have no idea of the force of the wind on a place like that.”