“Yes, and it was stupid of me. It must be twice as high.”
“Perry Campion, you are a greenhorn. I say: no offence meant; but my dear, fresh, innocent, young friend, that snow is three miles high.”
“Well, I know that, of course. It must be much more to where it is.”
“Sixty or seventy,” said Cyril, whose drowsiness had departed, and who was now all life and eagerness. “The air’s so clear here that it’s horribly deceiving. But I didn’t mean that: I meant that the snow’s quite three miles straight up perpendicular in the air.”
“Nonsense!”
“But I tell you it is. If you were to rise straight up in a balloon from here, you’d have to go up three miles to get on a level with the snow.”
Perry Campion looked fixedly at his companion, but there was no flinching.
“I’m not gammoning you,” said Cyril earnestly. “Things are so much bigger out here than they look.”
“Then how big—how high is that mountain?” said Perry.
“Nearly four miles.”