black rocks of the Grands-Mulets rise suddenly from the uniform silent
whiteness of the slope, the peaks, the turrets, and _aiguilles_
that surrounded, dazzled, and also terrified them, for who knew what
dangerous crevasses it concealed beneath their feet?

"Keep cool, Gonzague, keep cool!"

"That 's just what I can't do," responded Bom-pard, in a lamentable
voice. And he moaned: "_Aie_, my foot!.. _aie_, my leg!.. we are lost;
never shall we get there..."

They had walked for over two hours when, about the middle of a field of
snow very difficult to climb, Bompard called out, quite terrified:--

"Tartarin, we are going _up!_"

"Eh! _parbleu!_ I know that well enough," returned the P. C. A., almost
losing his serenity.

"But according to my ideas, we ought to be going down."

"_Be!_ yes! but how can I help it? Let's go on to the top, at any rate;
it may go down on the other side."

It went down certainly--and terribly, by a succession of _neves_ and
glaciers, and quite at the end of this dazzling scene of dangerous
whiteness a little hut was seen upon a rock at a depth which seemed to
them unattainable. It was a haven that they must reach before nightfall,
inasmuch as they had evidently lost the way to the Grands-Mulets, but at
what cost! what efforts! what dangers, perhaps!

"Above all, don't let go of me, Gonzague, _que!_.."

"Nor you either, Tartarin."

They exchanged these requests without seeing each other, being separated
by a ridge behind which Tartarin disappeared, being in advance and
beginning to descend, while the other was going up, slowly and in
terror. They spoke no more, concentrating all their forces, fearful of a
false step, a slip. Suddenly, when Bompard was within three feet of
the crest, he heard a dreadful cry from his companion, and at the same
instant, the rope tightened with a violent, irregular jerk... He tried
to resist, to hold fast himself and save his friend from the abyss. But
the rope was old, no doubt, for it parted, suddenly, under his efforts.

"_Outre!_"

"_Boufre!_"

The two cries crossed each other, awful, heartrending, echoing through
the silence and solitude, then a frightful stillness, the stillness of
death that nothing more could trouble in that waste of eternal snows.

Towards evening a man who vaguely resembled Bompard, a spectre with its
hair on end, muddy, soaked, arrived at the inn of the Grands-Mulets,
where they rubbed him, warmed him, and put him to bed