‘I’m getting rather blown at starting,’ Harry called out at last to Herbert, some yards in front of him. ‘Do you think the despotic guide would let us sit down and rest a bit if we asked him very prettily?’
‘Offer him a cigar first,’ Herbert shouted back, ‘and then after a short and decent interval, prefer your request humbly in your politest French. The savage potentate always expects to be propitiated by gifts, as a preliminary to answering the petitions of his humble subjects.’
‘I see,’ Harry said, laughing. ‘Supply before grievances, not grievances before supply.’ And he halted a moment to light a cigar, and to offer one to each of the two guides who were helping him along on either side.
Thus mollified, the senior guide grudgingly allowed ten minutes’ halt and a drink of water at the bend by the corner of the glacier. They sat down upon the great translucent sea-green blocks and began talking with the taciturn chief guide.
‘Is this glacier dangerous?’ Harry asked.
‘Dangerous, monsieur? Oh no, not as one counts glaciers. It is very safe. There are seldom accidents.’
‘But there have been some?’
‘Some, naturally. You don’t climb mountains always without accidents. There was one the first time anyone ever made the ascent of the Piz Margatsch. That was fifty years ago. My uncle was killed in it.’
‘Killed in it?’ Harry echoed. ‘How did it all happen, and where?’
‘Yonder, monsieur, in a crevasse that was then situated near the bend at the corner, just where the great crevasse you see before you now stands. That was fifty years ago; since then the glacier has moved much. Its substance, in effect, has changed entirely.’