-joint were
dislocated, also that his left arm was slipping. He would die like a
brave man--like a brave man. Surely this was death! He was
gone--everything passed away.

Godfrey woke again to find himself lying upon a flat piece of snow.
Recollection came back to him with a pang, and he thought that he must
have fallen.

Then he heard voices, and saw faces looking at him as through a mist,
also he felt something in his mouth and throat, which seemed to burn
them. One of the voices, it was that of the guide, said:

"Good, good! He finds himself, this young English hero. See, his eyes
open; more cognac, it will make him happy, and prevent the shock. Never
mind the other one; he is all right, the stupid."

Godfrey sat up and tried to lift his arm to thrust away the flask which
he saw approaching him, but he could not.

"Take that burning stuff away, Karl, confound you," he said.

Then Karl, a good honest fellow, who was on his knees beside him, threw
his arms about him, and embraced him in a way that Godfrey thought
theatrical and unpleasant, while all the others, except the rescued
man, who lay semi-comatose, set up a kind of paean of praise, like a
Greek chorus.

"Oh! shut up!" said Godfrey, "if we waste so much time we shall never
get to the top," a remark at which they all burst out laughing.

"They talk of Providence on the Alps," shouted Karl in stentorian
tones, while he performed a kind of war-dance, "but that's the kind of
providence for me," and he pointed to Godfrey. "Many things have I seen
in my trade as guide, but never one like this. What? To cut the rope
for the sake of Monsieur there," and he pointed to number two, whose
share in the great adventure was being overlooked, "before giving
himself to almost certain death for the sake of Monsieur with the weak
heart, who had no business on a mountain; to stretch over the precipice
as the line parted, and hold Monsieur with the weak heart for all that
while, till I could get a noose round him--yes, to go on holding him
after he himself was almost dead--without a mind! Good God! never has
there been such a story in my lifetime on these Alps, or in that of my
father before me."

Then came the descent, Godfrey supported on the shoulder of the
stalwart Karl, who, full of delight at this great escape from tragedy,
and at having a tale to tell which would last him for the rest of his
life, "jodelled" spontaneously at intervals in his best "large-tip"