“How so? Please explain. I don’t quite follow you,” said Miss Severn, briskly, fiercely elate that her challenge had been taken up.
“Well, we British are perennially grumbling at our abominably cold climate—winter all the year round, and so forth; and yet during the few weeks of summer vouchsafed to us away we rush to places like this, and stow ourselves as close to the snow and ice as we possibly can.”
“I—I really don’t see the connection,” said the would-be debater, in tart mystification. “Isn’t that rather a pointless remark—not to say irrelevant?”
“Oh, no. If anything, the reverse,” answered Fordham, tranquilly. “The idea was suggested by seeing several of us shiver, and it naturally occurred to me that we had probably sat as long as was safe if we wanted to avoid catching cold. For present purposes it may be taken to mean that we should be wise to think of going down, still wiser to go down and take the thinking as thought. What do you say, General?”
“I agree with you, Fordham. It doesn’t do to sit too long in this sharp air, after getting heated coming up, too.”
So the wisdom of the elders prevailed, and the party started upon the homeward way. Philip having found a long, steep snow-shoot, preferred the risky delights of a glissade to the more sober and gradual descent of a series of zig-zags. But the snow was soft, with the result that when half-way the adventurous one went head over heels, convulsing with mirth those who witnessed his frantic flounderings from the security of the zig-zag footpath aforesaid. Meanwhile the two erudite damsels were confiding to the parson their rooted conviction that Fordham was the most abominably disagreeable man they had ever met—which view, however, being that of the bulk of their sex on the same subject, was neither original nor striking.
And then as they gained the level of the glacier once more, again the wily Phil managed to pair off—to straggle indeed considerably from the main body—to straggle away almost to the base of the huge cliffs of the Grand Cornier. Here crevasses began to open in all directions—real ones, yawning black in the glistening surface.
“By Jove! look at that!” cried Phil, as a huge rift came into view right across the way they were following. It was overhung by a wreath of frozen snow, and the “lip” thus formed was fringed and festooned with gleaming icicles. It was a lovely and at the same time forbidding spectacle, as the sunlight fell upon the myriad smooth needles of ice—catching the star-like facets in gleaming scintillation—playing upon the translucent walls of the chasm in many a prismatic ray—roseate and gold, and richest azure. Then, below, the black, cold depths, as of the bottomless pit.
“It is splendid, but gruesome,” said Alma, peering tentatively into the silent depths—a process which needed a steadying, not to say supporting, hand. “I wonder how deep it is.”
“It’s a pity, in the interests of science—but on that ground alone—that we haven’t got our two learned friends along,” said Philip, proceeding to roll a big stone, of which there were several on the surface of the glacier, to the brink. “They could locate the depth by the time it takes to fall. Now, listen!”