failed to work in those men's
hearts, had been wrought by a laugh. The ram was set free and my life
was spared.

We lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon as he had
placed a half-mile between himself and us. To avert suspicion, he had
judged it best that the line should continue to move; so he caught that
ram, and at the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast to
it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon, overcome by fatigue
and distress. When he allowed the ram to get up it fell to plunging
around, trying to rid itself of the rope, and this was the signal which
we had risen up with glad shouts to obey. We had followed this ram round
and round in a circle all day--a thing which was proven by the discovery
that we had watered the Expedition seven times at one and same spring in
seven hours. As expert a woodman as I am, I had somehow failed to notice
this until my attention was called to it by a hog. This hog was always
wallowing there, and as he was the only hog we saw, his frequent
repetition, together with his unvarying similarity to himself, finally
caused me to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led me to
the deduction that this must be the same spring, also--which indeed it
was.

I made a note of this curious thing, as showing in a striking manner the
relative difference between glacial action and the action of the hog.
It is now a well-established fact that glaciers move; I consider that
my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness, that a hog in a
spring does not move. I shall be glad to receive the opinions of other
observers upon this point.

To return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide, and then I shall be
done with him. After leaving the ram tied to the rope, he had wandered
at large a while, and then happened to run across a cow. Judging that a
cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took her by the tail,
and the result justified his judgment. She nibbled her leisurely way
downhill till it was near milking-time, then she struck for home and
towed him into Zermatt.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

[I Conquer the Gorner Grat]

We went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram had brought us.
The men were greatly fatigued. Their conviction that we were lost was
forgotten in the cheer of a good supper, and before the reaction had a
chance to set in, I loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed.

Next morning I was considering in