Here, round the little one-storeyed restaurant, with its tables spread in the open air, some beneath an awning, round a kiosk, where post cards and little souvenirs of the Morteratsch were on sale, a whole squad of silent people were contemplating the glacier. Before it lay a stretch of ground, covered with big and little rocks brought there by the winter avalanches; amid the boulders ran a meandering torrent, while to the right was a faintly traced little path among the rocks which higher up, as it approached the great black wall of the glacier, disappeared; and nothing but stones and water proceeded from the glacier, where a gloomy grotto was hollowed out, which seemed like a speck in the distance.
"Why is the glacier so black in front?" Gertrude asked Annie, in a low voice.
"It is covered with rocks and earth," was the reply.
"Dommage," murmured Gertrude in French.
For some minutes the enchantment of the glacier remained over the crowd that was admiring it, silent and astonished. Then figures began to separate, attracted as by a magnet, and set out for the small path, while other figures more in advance were already there, small and diminishing, flitting from rock to rock—little black specks of beings who were at the grotto or coming from it. The coming and going was continuous; the men gave their hands to the ladies to make them walk more safely, or preceded them to point out the best way, while the lofty wall, all white in front, all black above, and finally at the horizon white with reflections of metallic blue and gold, in altitudes and precipices which seemed the monstrous waves of a sea petrified for ages, caused the crowd of visitors to seem even more tiny and miserable.
"We will stay here," said Annie Clarke to the party.
"We will stay," approved Gertrude Milner.
"Au revoir, mama," cried Mabel to her mother from afar, as she approached the glacier, accompanied by Vittorio.
"Au revoir, au revoir," exclaimed the young people of the party as they left.