‘That’s bad advice,’ replied the others, of whom I was one, ‘that’s bad advice: the rain may last a long while; and, wet through as we are, we shall freeze on the spot at the first chill of night.’
My worthy friend Bernard Verlot, who had [[208]]come from the Paris Jardin des Plantes on purpose to climb the Ventoux in my company, displayed an imperturbable calmness, trusting to my good sense to get us out of our scrape. I drew him a little to one side, in order not to increase the panic of the others, and revealed my terrible fears to him. We held a council of two and tried to make up by the compass of reasoning for the absence of the magnetic needle.
‘When the clouds came,’ I asked him, ‘wasn’t it from the south?’
‘From the south, certainly.’
‘And, though one could hardly perceive the wind, the rain slanted slightly from south to north?’
‘Yes, I noticed that as long as I could see anything. Isn’t that enough to tell us the way? Let us go down on the side from which the rain comes.’
‘I thought of that, but I have my doubts. The wind is not strong enough to have a definite direction. It may be an eddying breeze, as happens on a mountain-top surrounded by clouds. There is nothing to tell me that the direction is still the same and that the wind is not now blowing from the north.’
‘I have my doubts also. Then what shall we do?’ [[209]]
‘What shall we do? That’s the difficulty! But look here: if the wind has not changed, we ought to be wetter on the left, because we got the rain on that side until we lost our bearings. If it has changed, we must be more or less equally wet all over. Let us feel ourselves and decide. Will that do?’
‘Yes.’