“Ha! _vaï_, a note-book!.. If you think I am going to let myself die
like that American!.. Quick, let’s get on! come out of this.”
“Impossible... At the first step we should be blown like straws and
pitched into some abyss.”
“Well then, we had better shout; the Grands-Mulets is not far off...”
And Bompard, on his knees, in the attitude of a cow at pasture, lowing,
roared out, “Help! help! help!..”
“To arms!” shouted Tartarin, in his most sonorous chest voice, which the
grotto repercussioned in thunder.
Bompard seized his arm: “Horrors! the _sérac!_”.. Positively the whole
block was trembling; another shout and that mass of accumulated icicles
would be down upon their heads. They stopped, rigid, motionless, wrapped
in a horrid silence, presently broken by a distant rolling sound, coming
nearer, increasing, spreading to the horizon, and dying at last far
down, from gulf to gulf.
“Poor souls!” murmured Tartarin, thinking of the Swede and his guides
caught, no doubt, and swept away by the avalanche.
Bompard shook his head: “We are scarcely better off than they,” he said.
And truly, their situation was alarming; but they did not dare to stir
from their icy grotto, nor to risk even their heads outside in the
squall.
To complete the oppression of their hearts, from the depths of the
valley rose the howling of a dog, baying at death. Suddenly Tartarin,
with swollen eyes, his lips quivering, grasped the hands of his
companion, and looking at him gently, said:--
“Forgive me, Gonzague, yes, yes, forgive me. I was rough to you just
now; I treated you as a liar...”
“Ah! _vaï_. What harm did that do me?”
“I had less right than any man to do so, for I have lied a great deal
myself, and at this supreme moment I feel the need to open my heart, to
free my bosom, to publicly confess my imposture...”
“Imposture, you?”
“Listen to me, my friend... In the first place, I never killed a lion.”
“I am not surprised at that,” said Bompard, composedly. “But why do you
worry yourself for such a trifle?.. It is our sun that does it... we are
born to lies... _Vé!_ look at me... Did I ever tell the truth since I
came into the world? As soon as I open my mouth my South gets up into my
head like a fit. The people I talk about I never knew; the countries,
I ‘ve never set foot in them; and all that makes such a tissue of
inventions that I can’t unravel it myself any longer.”
“That’s imagination, _péchère!_” sighed Tartarin; “we are liars of
imagination.”
“And such lies never do any harm to any one; whereas a malicious,
envious man, like Coste-calde...”
“Don’t ever speak to me of that wretch,” interrupted the P. C. A.; then,
seized with a sudden attack of wrath, he shouted: “_Coquin de bon
sorti_ it is, all the same, rather vexing...” He stopped, at a terrified
gesture from Bompard, “Ah! yes, true... the _sérac_;” and, forced
to lower his tone and mutter his rage, poor Tartarin continued his
imprecations in a whisper, with a comical and amazing dislocation of the
mouth,--“yes, vexing to die in the flower of one’s age through the
fault of a scoundrel who at this very moment is taking his coffee on the
Promenade!..”
But while he thus fulminated, a clear spot began to show itself, little
by little, in the sky. It snowed no more, it blew no more; and blue
dashes tore away the gray of the sky. Quick, quick, _en route_; and once
more fastened to the same rope, Tartarin, who took the lead as before,
turned round, put a finger on his lips, and said:--
“You know, Gonzague, that all we have just been saying is between
ourselves.”
“_Té! pardi_...”
Full of ardour, they started, plunging to their knees in the fresh snow,
which had buried in its immaculate cotton-wool all the traces of the
caravan; consequently Tartarin was forced to consult his compass
every five minutes. But that Taras-conese compass, accustomed to warm
climates, had been numb with cold ever since its arrival in Switzerland.
The needle whirled to all four quarters, agitated, hesitating; therefore
they determined to march straight before them, expecting to see the
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: “_Aïe_, my foot!.. _aïe_, 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 _névés_ 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, _qué!_..”
“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, before he could
utter other words than these--choked with tears, and his hands raised to
heaven: “Tartarin... lost!.. broken rope...” At last, however, they were
able to make out the great misfortune which had happened.
While the old hut-man was lamenting and adding another chapter to the
horrors of the mountain, hoping for fresh ossuary relics for his charnel
glass-case, the Swedish youth and his guides, who had returned from
their expedition, set off in search of the hapless Tartarin with ropes,
ladders, in short a whole life-saving outfit, alas! unavailing...
Bompard, rendered half idiotic, could give no precise indications as
to the drama, nor as to the spot where it happened. They found nothing
except, on the Dôme du Goûter, one piece of rope which was caught in a
cleft of the ice. But that piece of rope, very singular thing! was cut
at both ends, as with some sharp instrument; the Chambéry newspapers
gave a facsimile of it, which proved the fact.
Finally, after eight days of the most conscientious search, and when the
conviction became irresistible that the poor president would never be
found, that he was lost beyond recall, the despairing delegates started
for Tarascon, taking with them the unhappy Bompard, whose shaken brain
was a visible result of the terrible shock.
“Do not talk to me about it,” he replied when questioned as to the
accident, “never speak to me about it again!”
Undoubtedly the White Mountain could reckon one victim the more--and
what a victim!