In a short time the clouds rose so as to clear the summit of the mountain; and then the whole mighty mass was seen revealed fully to view, glittering in the sunbeams and filling half the sky.
The other guests of the inn came out upon the platform while Rollo and Mr. George were there, having wrapped themselves previously in their coats and shawls, as the evening air was cool. Some other parties of travellers came, too, winding their way slowly up the same pathway where Mr. George and Rollo had come. Mr. George and Rollo paid very little attention to these new comers, their minds being wholly occupied by the mountain.
In a very short time after the face of the Jungfrau came fully into view, the attention of all the company that were looking at the scene was arrested by the commencement of another peal of the same thundering sound that Mr. George and Rollo had heard with so much wonder in coming up the mountain. A great many exclamations immediately broke out from the party.
"There! hark! look!" said they. "An avalanche! An avalanche!"
The sound was loud and almost precisely like thunder. Every one looked in the direction from which it proceeded. There they soon saw, half way up the mountain, a stream of snow, like a cataract, creeping slowly over the brink of a precipice, and falling in a continued torrent upon the rocks below. From this place they could see it slowly creeping down the long slope towards another precipice, and where, when it reached the brink, it fell over in another cataract, producing another long peal of thunder, which, being repeated by the echoes of the mountains and rocks around, filled the whole heavens with its rolling reverberations. In this manner the mass of ice and snow went down slope after slope and over precipice after precipice, till at length it made its final plunge into the great chasm at the foot of the mountain and disappeared from view.
In the course of an hour several other avalanches were heard and seen; and when at length it grew too dark to see them any longer, the thundering roar of them was heard from time to time all the night long.
Rollo, however, was so tired that, though he went to bed quite early, he did not hear the avalanches or any thing else until Mr. George called him the next morning.