en tearing his hair like a madman, and crying that we should
all three be killed, which made the rest of the company very
comfortable, as you may suppose. But we had some wine in a basket, and
all swallowed a little of that and a great deal of sulphur before we
began to descend. The usual way, after the fiery part is past--you will
understand that to be all the flat top of the mountain, in the centre
of which, again, rises the little hill I have drawn--is to slide down
the ashes, which, slipping from under you, make a gradually increasing
ledge under your feet, and prevent your going too fast. But when we came
to this steep place last night, we found nothing there but one smooth
solid sheet of ice. The only way to get down was for the guides to make
a chain, holding by each other's hands, and beat a narrow track in it
into the snow below with their sticks. My two unfortunate ladies were
taken out of their litters again, with half-a-dozen men hanging on to
each, to prevent their falling forward; and we began to descend this
way. It was like a tremendous dream. It was impossible to stand, and the
only way to prevent oneself from going sheer down the precipice, every
time one fell, was to drive one's stick into one of the holes the guides
had made, and hold on by that. Nobody could pick one up, or stop one, or
render one the least assistance. Now, conceive my horror, when this Mr.
Le Gros I have mentioned, being on one side of Georgina and I on the
other, suddenly staggers away from the narrow path on to the smooth ice,
gives us a jerk, lets go, and plunges headforemost down the smooth ice
into the black night, five hundred feet below! Almost at the same
instant, a man far behind, carrying a light basket on his head with some
of our spare cloaks in it, misses his footing and rolls down in another
place; and after him, rolling over and over like a black bundle, goes a
boy, shrieking as nobody but an Italian can shriek, until the breath is
tumbled out of him.

The Englishman is in bed to-day, terribly bruised but without any broken
bones. He was insensible at first and a mere heap of rags; but we got
him before the fire, in a little hermitage there is halfway down, and he
so far recovered as to be able to take some supper, which was waiting
for us there. The boy was brought in with his head tied up in a bloody
cloth, about half an hour after the rest of us were assembled. And the
man who had had the basket was not found when