Alma"s wish was destined to be fulfilled, for the morning broke clear and cloudless. Starting in the highest spirits, a couple of hours" easy walking brought the party to the foot of the steep and gra.s.sy slope which leads right up to the left _arete_ of the Cape au Moine.
Though the morning was yet young it was uncomfortably warm. The mighty gra.s.s slopes of the Rochers des Verreaux, of which the Cape au Moine is the princ.i.p.al summit, stood forth with the distinctness of a steel engraving, so clear was the air. A suspicious clearness which, taken in conjunction with certain light cloud streamers flecking the sky, and the unwonted heat of that early hour, betokened to the practised eye an impending change of weather.
"Wet jackets," remarked Wentworth, laconically, with a glance at these signs.
"Likely enough," a.s.sented Fordham. "Hallo! what"s the row down there?
They seem to be beginning already."
These two were leading the way up the steep, slippery path, and were a little distance ahead of the rest. The above remarks referred to a sudden halt at the tail of the party, caused by one of the Miss Ottleys finding her heart fail her: for the path at that point skirts the very brink of a precipice.
"Only what I expected," sneered Fordham. "Look at that, Wentworth.
What sort of figure will all these women cut when we get them up on the _arete_ yonder, if they can"t stand an easy, beaten track up a gra.s.s slope? We shall have them squalling and hystericking and fainting, and perhaps taking a header over. Eh?"
Wentworth merely shrugged his shoulders. "Who is that new specimen they"ve caught?" he said, as, the difficulty apparently overcome, the group behind was seen to resume its way.
"That?" said Fordham, glancing at the person indicated, a tallish, loosely-hung youth in knickerbockers, who seemed to be dividing his time between squiring the Miss Ottleys and arguing with Scott, the parson.
"Don"t know who he is--and don"t want to. Confound the fellow!--began "Fordham-ing" me after barely a quarter of an hour"s talk. Name"s Gedge, I believe. I suppose some of the women cut him into this trip."
"Most probably," replied Wentworth. "I haven"t exchanged any remarks with him myself. But he sits near me at table and talks nineteen to the dozen. It"s like having a full-sized cow-bell swinging in your ear just the time you are within his proximity."
"They say everything has its use," returned Fordham, meditatively. "I own to having discovered a use for friend Gedge--viz, to demonstrate that there can actually exist a more thoroughly self-sufficient and aggressive bore than even that fellow Scott."
The other laughed. And by this time they had gained the dip where the path--a mere thread of a track--crosses the high ridge of the Chaine des Verreaux at its extreme end, and sat down to await the arrival of the residue of the party.
The latter, broken up into twos and threes, was straggling up the slope.
The temporary impediment had apparently been successfully overcome, and the trepidation of the fearful fair one removed. Still, to those unaccustomed to heights it was nervous work, for the path was, as we have said, a mere thread, intersecting the long, slippery gra.s.s, more treacherous than ice, of the frightfully steep mountain-side--and lying below was more than one precipice, comparatively insignificant, but high enough to mean a broken limb if not a broken neck.
"Well, Miss Wyatt, do you feel like going the whole way?" said Wentworth, as Alma, with her uncle and Philip Orlebar, gained the ridge where they were halted.
"Of course I do," she answered gaily. "I always said I would get to the top if I got the chance--and I will."
"There are five _aretes_--three of them like knife-blades," pursued Wentworth, who rather shared Fordham"s opinions regarding the other s.e.x.
"What if you begin to feel giddy in the middle of one of them?"
"But I"m not going to feel anything of the kind," she answered, with defiant good-humour. "So don"t try and put me off, for it"s of no use."
"I say, Fordham," sung out a sort of hail-the-maintop voice, the property of the youth referred to as Gedge, as its owner climbed puffing up to where they sat, followed by the rest of the party. "I don"t think overmuch of this Cape au Moine of yours. Why one can dance up it on one leg."
"And one can dance down it on one head--and that in a surprisingly short s.p.a.ce of time--viz, a few seconds," said Wentworth, tranquilly.
"However, you"ll see directly."
"Well, who"s going up and who"s going to wait for us here?" said Philip, after a rest of ten minutes or so.
"I don"t think we are," said the elder Miss Ottley. "I more than half promised mamma we wouldn"t. And Monsieur Dufour says it"s such a dangerous mountain. We"ll stay here and take care of General Wyatt."
There was some demur to this on the part of the more inexperienced section of the males. The experienced ones said nothing.
"You"d better stay with us, Alma," said the General, with a shade of anxiety. "Remember there have been several people killed up there."
"Just why I particularly want to go, uncle. I want to be able to say I have been up a mountain on which several people have been killed."
"I think Miss Wyatt has a steady enough head, General," said Wentworth, who was an experienced Alpine climber. "At least, judging from the way in which she stood looking over that precipice down yonder, I should say so. If she will allow me I will take care of her."
"I"ll be hanged if you will though!" said Phil to himself. And then they started.
The mere climbing part of what followed was not hard. But what was apt to prove trying to the nerves of the uninitiated was when, after feeling their way carefully along the narrow ledge-like path which runs beneath the rocks near the crest of the ridge, they came right out upon the summit of the _arete_ itself. Here, indeed, it was a good deal like walking on the edge of a knife-blade even as Wentworth had defined it, and here it was that two, at any rate, of the party began to feel dubious. On the right was a precipitous fall of rocks, then the steep, slippery, gra.s.sy slope--broken here and there by a cliff--which const.i.tuted the whole of that side of the mountain; on the left an unbroken drop of seven or eight hundred feet. And on the apex of this rock ridge, in single file, poised, like Mohammed"s coffin, between the heavens and the earth, the aspiring party had to walk or crawl.
"Well, Miss Wyatt, how do you feel now?" said Wentworth, who was leading the way. Alma was immediately behind him, then came Philip Orlebar, then Fordham, Scott and Gedge bringing up the rear. "Not giddy at all, I hope?"
"Not in the very least," said Alma, brightly. "Quite sure? I can give you a hand if you like."
"Not for the world. I a.s.sure you I"m thoroughly enjoying it. And what a view!"
"Well, look carefully where you"re going," continued Wentworth. "Leave the view to take care of itself until you get to the top. It won"t run away."
That the warning was by no means superfluous was shown by a sudden stagger on the part of Philip. He reeled for a moment, then, with a great effort, recovered his balance. He had been so absorbed in watching Alma"s progress in front, that he had quite neglected the attention due to his own footing. Now this cannot be done with impunity upon the edge of a knife-like ridge about one thousand feet in mid-air-- as he learned when he found himself within an ace of plunging into s.p.a.ce. Fordham, for a moment, thought he had gone.
"You"ll add to the record of this much maligned climb, Phil, if you don"t mind," he said. "What"s the row? Feel heady?"
"Not a bit. Only made a slip. Sha"n"t do it again though. I say, Wentworth, how far would a fellow fall here--on this side?"
"Oh, about eight hundred feet. Then he"d go footballing two or three hundred more," was the nonchalant reply. "I wouldn"t try it, though, if I were you."
They were off the _arete_ now, and paused to rest under the rocks to allow the others time to come up.
"Hallo, Gedge!" continued Wentworth, as the addressed came crawling along on all-fours, and that very gingerly. "I thought you felt like doing this climb on one leg, and instead of that it seems to take you all four."
"You people go on at such a rate. Besides, I find I"m not up to much on a place like this. No, I"ll climb down from the "one-leg" position, absolutely and unreservedly."
"There"s another man who isn"t up to much on a place like this," said Fordham, with a dry chuckle.
Scott, to whom this remark referred, had nearly reached the middle of the _arete_. He, too, was creeping on hands and knees. But suddenly his heart seemed to fail him, for there he sat, straddling the ridge, one leg on each side of the mountain, the very picture of wild panic.
His hat had blown off, and hung by a string over his shoulder, and he dared not move a finger to replace it. His hands shook as he grasped the rock in a strained, terror-stricken grasp, and his eyes seemed to start from his deadly white face.
"Oh, help me off!" he cried piteously. "For Heaven"s sake, some of you help me off!"
In vain they called out to him that he was perfectly safe--that if Miss Wyatt could get along the place without any difficulty surely he could.
The poor man"s reasoning faculties seemed to have deserted him altogether.
"I suppose I must go back and salvage him!" said Wentworth, resignedly.
"You had better wait here for me, though." And in a moment he was beside the distressed chaplain.
"Hang it all, Mr Scott!" he said in an undertone, "do remember what an exhibition you are making of yourself before Miss Wyatt, and pull yourself together. You"re quite safe, I tell you. Now, turn round-- carefully as you like--and then crawl back again as you came."
When a man of Scott"s calibre is in a horrible funk, poised a thousand feet in mid-air, appeals to his reason or his sense of shame are apt to fall alike on deaf ears. To all Wentworth"s adjurations he only reiterated piteously, "I can"t move! What is to be done? I can"t move!"
What, indeed, was to be done? It was a position in which if a man will not help himself n.o.body can help him. Wentworth was in despair.
Suddenly a happy thought struck him. His flask!