Everything seemed to favor it, and they set out on a fine morning in high spirits, leaving me tormented with envy and all uncharitableness. If they succeeded, they carried off the prize for which I had been so long struggling; and if they failed, there was no time to make another attempt, for I was due in a few days more in London. When this came home clearly to me, I resolved to leave Breuil at once, but when packing up found that some necessaries had been left behind in the tent. So I went off about mid-day to recover them, caught the army of the professor before it reached the col, as they were going very slowly, left them there (stopping to take food) and went on to the tent. I was near to it when all at once I heard a noise aloft, and on looking up perceived a stone of at least a foot cube flying straight at my head. I ducked and scrambled under the lee side of a friendly rock, while the stone went by with a loud buzz. It was the advanced guard of a perfect storm of stones, which descended with infernal clatter down the very edge of the ridge, leaving a trail of dust behind, with a strong smell of sulphur that told who had sent them. The men below were on the look-out, but the stones did not come near them, and breaking away on one side went down to the glacier.
I waited at the tent to welcome the professor, and when he arrived went down to Breuil. Early next morning some one ran to me saying that a flag was seen on the summit of the Matterhorn. It was not so, however, although I saw that they had passed the place where we had turned back on the 26th. I had now no doubt of their final success, for they had got beyond the point which Carrel, not less than myself, had always considered to be the most questionable place on the whole mountain. Up to it there was no choice of route—I suppose that at no one point between it and the col was it possible to diverge a dozen paces to the right or left—but beyond it it was otherwise, and we had always agreed in our debates that if it could be passed success was certain.
The accompanying outline from a sketch taken from the door of the inn at Breuil will help to explain. The letter A indicates the position of the Great Tower; C, the “cravate” (the strongly-marked streak of snow referred to in [note 11], and which we just failed to arrive at on the 26th); B, the place where we now saw something that looked like a flag. Behind the point B a nearly level ridge leads up to the foot of the final peak, which will be understood by a reference to the outline on [page 83], on which the same letters indicate the same places. It was just now said, we considered that if the point C could be passed, success was certain. Tyndall was at B very early in the morning, and I did not doubt that he would reach the summit, although it yet remained problematical whether he would be able to stand on the very highest point. The summit was evidently formed of a long ridge, on which there were two points nearly equally elevated—so equally that one could not say which was the highest—and between the two there seemed to be a deep notch, marked D on the outlines, which might defeat one at the very last moment.
My knapsack was packed, and I had drunk a parting glass of wine with Favre, who was jubilant at the success which was to make the fortune of his inn, but I could not bring myself to leave until the result was heard, and lingered about, as a foolish lover hovers round the object of his affections even after he has been contemptuously rejected. The sun had set before the men were descried coming over the pastures. There was no spring in their steps: they too were defeated. The Carrels hid their heads, but the others said, as men will do when they have been beaten, that the mountain was horrible, impossible, and so forth.—Professor Tyndall told me they had arrived within a stone’s throw of the summit, and admonished me to have nothing more to do with the mountain. I understood him to say that he should not try again, and ran down to the village of Val Tournanche, almost inclined to believe that the mountain was inaccessible, leaving the tent, ropes and other matters in the hands of Favre, to be placed at the disposal of any person who wished to ascend it—more, I am afraid, out of irony than generosity. There may have been those who believed that the Matterhorn could be ascended, but anyhow their faith did not bring forth works. No one tried again in 1862.
“BUT WHAT IS THIS?”