Thus Mont Blanc is responsible for the loss of no fewer than twenty-four lives; but it is when we compare him with other mountains that we realise how much more fatal he has been than any of his fellows. The following table, compiled from the Alpine Journal, will best bring home this fact:
| Accidents. | Lives lost. | |
| Mont Blanc | 7 | 24 |
| Matterhorn | 3 | 6 |
| Lyskamm | 2 | 6 |
| Monte Rosa | 2 | 4 |
| Monte Cevedale | 1 | 4 |
| Dent Blanche | 1 | 3 |
| Haut de Cri | 1 | 2 |
| Titlis | 1 | 2 |
| Jungfrau | 1 | 2 |
| Wetterhorn | 1 | 2 |
| Aiguille Blanche | 1 | 2 |
Single lives have been lost upon each of the following mountains: Riffelhorn, Gross Venedeger, Schreckhorn, Piz Tschierva, Diablerets, Blumlis Alp, Piz Bernina, Grandes Jorasses, Meije.
Of accidents which may fairly come under the head of Alpine accidents, such as accidents upon glaciers and subsidiary peaks, there appear to have been thirty-five—making a total loss since 1859, when climbing became a recognised form of amusement, of ninety-eight lives, or, inclusive of Dr Hamel’s accident, one hundred and one. When we come to consider that Mont Blanc is responsible for nearly one-fourth of the whole, we may well question whether the depreciation of the mountain is quite justified. Is it not rather a case of underrating the enemy?
No reasonable person can deny that there is at times danger on Mont Blanc, and when we consider from what a variety of causes it may arise—from weather, from the state of the snow, from the unfitness of many of those who attempt the ascent, and last, but not least, from the guide system of Chamouni—we feel inclined to wonder not, indeed, that the loss of life has been great, but rather that the death-roll is not much greater.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XL.
Even as Delgado stood there still on the steps of the piazza at Orange Grove, waving his blood-stained cutlass fiercely about his head, and setting his foot contemptuously on Mr Dupuy’s prostrate and bleeding body, Harry Noel tore up the path that led from Dick Castello’s house at Savannah Garden, and halted suddenly in blank amazement in front of the doorway—Harry Noel, in evening dress, hatless and spurless; just as he had risen in horror from his dinner, and riding his new mare without even a saddle, in his hot haste to see the cause of the unexpected tumult at the Dupuys’ estate. The fierce red glare of the burning cane-houses had roused him unawares at Savannah Garden in the midst of his coffee; and the cries of the negroes and the sound of pistol-shots had cast him into a frantic fever of anxiety for Nora’s safety. ‘The niggers have risen, by Jove!’ Dick Castello cried aloud, as the flames rose higher and higher above the blazing cane-houses. ‘They must be attacking old Dupuy; and if once their blood’s up, you may depend upon it, Noel, they won’t leave him until they’ve fairly murdered him.’
Harry Noel didn’t wait a moment to hear any further conjectures of his host’s on the subject, but darting round to the stables bareheaded, clapped a bit forthwith into his mare’s mouth, jumped on her back just as she stood, in a perfect frenzy of fear and excitement, and tore along the narrow winding road that led by tortuous stretches to Orange Grove as fast as his frightened horse’s legs could possibly carry him.
As he leaped eagerly from his mount to the ground in the midst of all that hideous din and uproar and mingled confusion, Delgado was just calling on his fellow-blacks to follow him boldly into the house and to ‘kill de missy;’ and the Orange Grove negroes, cowed and terrified now that their master had fallen bodily before them, were beginning to drop back, trembling, into the rooms behind, and allow the frantic and triumphant rioters to have their own way unmolested. In a moment, Harry took in the full terror of the scene—saw Mr Dupuy’s body lying, a mass of hacked and bleeding wounds, upon the wooden floor of the front piazza; saw the infuriated negroes pressing on eagerly with their cutlasses lifted aloft, now fairly drunk with the first taste of buckra blood; and Delgado in front of them all, leaping wildly, and gesticulating in frantic rage with arms and hands and fingers, as he drove back the terrified servants through the heavy old mahogany doorway of the great drawing-room into the room that opened out behind toward Nora’s own little sacred boudoir.