In front of us were small steeples of ice, some of them proud and erect, standing out against the sky, others ravaged by the wind which gnaws the ice, looking like minarets ready for the muezzin. On the right a cascade was rushing down as noisily as on the other side, but the sun had commenced its descent towards the west, and everything was tinged with a rosy hue. The water splashed over us, and we were suddenly covered with small silvery waves which when shaken slightly stiffened against our mackintoshes. It was a shoal of very small fish which had had the misfortune to be driven into the current, and which had come to die in the dazzling brilliancy of the setting sun. On the other side there was a small block which looked like a rhinoceros entering the water.
“I should love to mount on that!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, but it is impossible,” replied one of my friends.
“Oh, as to that, nothing is impossible,” I said. “There is only the risk; the crevice to be covered is not a yard long.”
“No, but it is deep,” remarked an artiste who was with us.
“Well,” I said, “my dog is just dead. We will bet a dog—and if I win I am to choose my dog—that I go.”
Abbey was fetched immediately, but he only arrived in time to see me on the block. I came very near falling into the crevice, and when I was on the back of the rhinoceros I could not stand up. It was as smooth and transparent as artificial ice. I sat down on its back, holding on to the little hump, and I declared that if no one came to fetch me I should stay where I was, as I had not the courage to move a step on this slippery back; and then, too, it seemed to me as though it moved slightly. I began to lose my self-possession. I felt dizzy, but I had won my dog. My excitement was over, and I was seized with fright. Every one gazed at me in a bewildered way, and that increased my terror. My sister went into hysterics, and my dear Guérard groaned in a heartrending way, “Oh heavens, my dear Sarah, oh heavens!” An artist was making sketches; fortunately the members of our company had gone up again in order to go and see the Rapids. Abbey besought me to return; poor Jarrett besought me. But I felt dizzy, and I could not and would not cross again. Angelo then sprang across the crevice, and remaining there, called for a plank of wood and a hatchet.
“Bravo! bravo!” I exclaimed from the back of my rhinoceros.
The plank was brought. It was an old, black-looking piece of wood, and I glanced at it suspiciously. The hatchet cut into the tail of my rhinoceros, and the plank was fixed firmly by Angelo on my side and held by Abbey, Jarrett, and Claude on the other side. I let myself slide over the crupper of my rhinoceros, and I then started, not without terror, along the rotten plank of wood, which was so narrow that I was obliged to put one foot in front of the other, the heel over the toe. I returned in a very feverish state to the hotel, and the artist brought me the droll sketches he had taken.
After a light luncheon I was to start again by the train, which had been waiting for us twenty minutes. All the others had taken their seats some time before. I was leaving without having seen the rapids in which my poor Pittsburg friend met his death.