h precision at
sea, found it not very difficult to apply his powers on land.

"There's a good land-mark, Professor," he said, pointing towards a
sharply-cut rock, "as like the Dook of Wellington's nose as two peas."

"I see it," said the Professor, whose solid and masculine countenance
was just the smallest possible degree flushed by the strong
under-current of enthusiasm with which he prosecuted his experiments.

"You couldn't have a better object than the pint o' that," observed the
Captain, whose enthusiasm was quite as great as, and his excitement much
greater than, that of the Professor.

Having carefully directed the telescope to the extreme point of the
"Dook's" nose, the Professor now ordered one of his assistants to go on
the glacier with a stake. Lawrence descended with him, and thus planted
his foot on glacier-ice for the first time, as Lewis afterwards
remarked, in the pursuit scientific knowledge.

While they were clambering slowly down among the loose boulders and
_debris_ which had been left by the glacier in previous years, the
Professor carefully sketched the Duke of Wellington's nose with the
rocks, etcetera, immediately around it, in his notebook, so that it
might be easily recognised again on returning to the spot on a future
day.

The assistant who had been sent out with the first stake proved to be
rather stupid, so that it was fortunate he had been accompanied by
Lawrence, and by the guide, Antoine Grennon, who stirred up his
perceptions. By rough signalling he was made to stand near the place
where the first stake was to be driven in. The telescope was then
lowered, and the man was made, by signals, to move about and plant his
stake here and there in an upright position until the point of
intersection of the spider's threads fell exactly on the bottom of the
stake. A pre-arranged signal was then made, and at that point an auger
hole was bored deep into the ice and the stake driven home.

"So much for number one," said Captain Wopper, with a look of
satisfaction.

"They won't fix the other ones so easily," observed the Professor,
re-examining the stake through the telescope with great care.

He was right in this. The first stake had been planted not far from the
shore, but now Lawrence and his party had to proceed in a straight line
over the glacier, which, at this steep portion of its descent into the
Vale of Chamouni, was rent, dislocated, and tortured, to such an extent
that it