its
wrestle. So powerful was it that on our narrow ridge it had the
advantage of us, and we crouched behind a projecting point.

"It is too perilous," said Couttet, "and we must descend. I will not
take the risk."

I saw it was necessary to yield, and down we went. Hunger was beginning
to tell, and we made haste. Where the slopes were not seamed with open
crevasses we "glissaded," which is a very expeditious and exhilarating
method of getting down a mountain, although unsafe unless one is certain
of his ground. Sometimes we slid on our feet, steadying ourselves with
our batons or ice-axes, and sometimes I sat on the hard snow and glided
like a Turk on a toboggan slide, the tassel of my woollen cap fluttering
behind in the wind. We took the unbridged crevasses with flying leaps,
and so plunged rapidly downward, with frequent keen regrets on my part,
because the weather seemed mending again. But it would not do to turn
back now in our half-famished condition, and we were glad when the
Grands Mulets hove in sight below, a black squadron in a sea of snow.

[Illustration: M. JANSSEN'S OBSERVATORY ON TOP OF MONT BLANC.]

In Chamonix I took a day or two to thaw out and mend bruises, and then
ran over to Martigny, crossed the Grand St. Bernard, the St. Gotthard,
and the Grimsel passes, spent a week in William Tell's country, prowling
about the ruins of old castles and the sites of legendary battles, and
finally settled down in Milan to feast my eyes on the pinnacles of its
wondrous cathedral. But my failure to reach the top of Mont Blanc cast a
perceptible shadow over everything I saw.

One day, the 27th of August, as I stood on the cathedral spire, the sun
lay warm upon the Alps, and Mont Blanc shone in the distance. "It is
time to go," I said to myself; and descending, I hurried to my hotel and
packed a gripsack. The night express via Mont Cenis placed me in Geneva
the next morning in time to catch the first train for Cluses. The same
evening the diligence landed me in Chamonix. I sent for Couttet.

"Mont Blanc in the morning," I said.

"Delighted, monsieur; we'll do it this time."

"Storm or no storm?"

"Yes."

It so happened that I was to hear one more story of disaster before
getting to the top of Mont Blanc. While I watched the distant mountain
from the Milan cathedral spire the closing scene of a new tragedy was
being enacted amid its merciless crevasses. Dr. Robert Schnurdreher, an
advocate of Prague, accom