For I was at the edge of a sheer precipice of 600 or 700 feet in depth, its face of horrible, smooth, slippery-looking granite, with scarce a crack or crevice in it to offer foothold for a cat, and with but a few huge rounded boulders clinging to its face as by a miracle.
It was almost dark, but in the depths below I could see the sand-river we were bound for, and could have almost dropped a stone into it—but to attempt to get down to it—even without the horses—looked sheer madness!
Ransson and the two guides came up, and the latter shook their heads and clucked and said we must go back—and go round—which would mean two days to reach the spot below us! Ransson merely grunted and, getting off his horse, he rummaged in his saddle-bags and produced a small book.
Now, I had seen this volume before, and its title was Rambles among the Alps, by Whymper, the great Alpine and Himalayan climber. This pernicious volume had had a most demoralising effect upon Ransson. I had frequently noticed that whenever we came to a particularly bad place, where there was a choice of climbing or going round, he would climb for preference; whilst I meandered round the base of the peak, he would carefully pick out the most precipitous part of it, where I would look up at him and see him apparently hanging on by one eyebrow and flourishing that infernal book. He talked of “crevasses” and “couloirs” and “glaciers” and other weird things in his sleep, and once, when I caught him tobogganing down a sand-slope on his only pants, and reproached him, he had said disdainfully, “My dear chap, I’m simply practising ‘glissading.’”
So when he now got out that book, and got under a rock and lit a bit of candle and began to peruse it, I knew what to expect.
I said, “Look here, Ransson, I’m going back.”
He said, “I’m going down.”
I said, “Right! I’ll bury you when I get there in three days’ time.”
“Rot,” he said; “you’ll never make a mountaineer. Why, look what Whymper says——”
“Damn Whymper!” I said. “We don’t want Whymper, we want Paulham and Santos Dumont, and aeroplanes and a balloon or two, and a thousand yards of rope. I’m going back!”