“What is the height, Melchior?”
“How high, herr?—how tall? Eleven thousand English feet.”
“Why it does not look much higher than Saint Paul’s.”
“You must remember that you are amongst the great peaks,” said Dale, “and that it takes time to educate your eyes to the size of everything about you.”
“But it looks as if you could get to the top in an hour,” said Saxe.
“Does it?” said Dale, smiling. “Then what do you say to this?” And he pointed up at the huge mass of rock, streaked with ravines full of snow, which formed one side of the valley in which they stood.
“Lenstock,” said the guide.
“How long would it take us to get up to the top, Melchior?”
“Too late to-day, herr. Start at three o’clock with lanthorn while the schnee-snow is hard. Ten hours to go up, seven to come down.”
Richard Dale looked at his young companion, whose forehead was wrinkled, as he stared up at the huge mass of rock from its lower green alps or pastures, up over the grey lichened stone, to where the streakings of white snow began, and then higher and higher to the region of everlasting ice.