At this time our travellers, having only just been introduced to the
mountain, had a great deal to hear and see before they understood him.
They returned to the hotel with the feeling of disappointment still upon
them, but with excellent appetites for dinner.
In the _Salle a manger_ they met with a miscellaneous assortment of
tourists. These, of whom there were above thirty, varied not only as to
size and feature, but as to country and experience. There were veteran
Alpine men--steady, quiet, bronzed-looking fellows, some of them--who
looked as if they had often "attacked" and conquered the most dangerous
summits, and meant to do so again. There were men, and women too, from
England, America, Germany, France, and Russia. Some had been at
Chamouni before, and wore the self-possessed air of knowledge; others
had obviously never been there before, and were excited. Many were full
of interest and expectation, a few, chiefly very young men, wore a
_blase_, half-pitiful, half-patronising air, as though to say, "that's
right, good people, amuse yourselves with your day-dreams while you may.
_We_ have tried a few weeks of this sort of thing, and have done a
summit or two; in imagination we have also been up Mont Blanc and Monte
Rosa, and the Matterhorn, and a few of the Hymalaya peaks, and most of
the mountains in the moon, and several of the fixed stars, and--haw--are
now rather boa-ord with it all than otherwise!" There were men who had
done much and who said little, and men who had done little and who spoke
much. There were "ice-men" who had a desire to impart their knowledge,
and would-be ice-men who were glad to listen. Easy-going men and women
there were, who flung the cares of life behind them, and "went in," as
they said, for enjoyment; and who, with abounding animal spirits, a dash
of religious sentiment, much irrepressible humour and fun, were really
pleasant objects to look at, and entertaining companions to travel with.
Earnest men and women there were, too, who gathered plants and insects,
and made pencil-sketches and water-colour drawings during their rambles
among mountains and valleys, and not a few of whom chronicled faithfully
their experiences from day to day. There was a Polish Count, a tall,
handsome, middle-aged, care-worn, anxious-looking man, who came there,
apparently in search of health, and who was cared for and taken care of
by a dark-eyed little daughter. This daughter was so beautiful, that it
ought to have made the Count well--so thought most of the young men--
simply to look at her! There was a youthful British Lord, who had come
to "do" Mont Blanc and a few other peaks. He was under charge of a
young man of considerable experience in mountaineering, whose chief
delight seemed to be the leading of his charge to well-known summits by
any other and more difficult tracks than the obvious and right ones,
insomuch that Lewis Stoutley, who had a tendency to imprudent remark,
said in his hearing that he had heard of men who, in order to gain the
roof of a house, preferred to go up by the waterspout rather than the
staircase. There was an artist, whom Lewis--being, as already observed,
given to insolence--styled the mad artist because he was enthusiastic in
his art, galvanic in his actions, and had large, wild eyes, with long
hair, and a broad-brimmed conical hat. Besides these, there was a
Russian Professor, who had come there for purposes of scientific
investigation, and a couple of German students, and a Scotch man of
letters, whose aim was general observation, and several others, whose
end was simply seeing the world.
In the arrangements of the table, Captain Wopper found himself between
Emma Gray and the Polish Count, whose name was Horetzki. Directly
opposite to him sat Mrs Stoutley, having her son Lewis on her right,
and Dr Lawrence on her left. Beside the Count sat his lovely little
daughter Nita, and just opposite to her was the mad artist. This
arrangement was maintained throughout the sojourn of the various parties
during their stay at Chamouni. They did, indeed, shift their position
as regarded the table, according to the arrival or departure of
travellers, but not in regard to each other.
Now it is an interesting, but by no means surprising fact, that Cupid
planted himself in the midst of this party, and, with his fat little
legs, in imminent danger of capsizing the dishes, began to draw his bow
and let fly his arrows right and left. Being an airy sprite, though
fat, and not at any time particularly visible, a careless observer might
have missed seeing him; but to any one with moderate powers of
observation, he was there, straddling across a dish of salad as plain as
the salt-cellar before Captain Wopper's nose. His deadly shafts, too,
were visibly quivering in the breasts of Lewis Stoutley, George
Lawrence, and the mad artist. Particularly obvious were these shafts in
the case of the last, who was addicted to gazing somewhat presumptuously
on "lovely woman" in general, from what he styled an artistic point of
view--never from any other point of view; of course not.
Whether or not Cupid had discharged his artillery at the young ladies,
we cannot say, for they betrayed no evidence of having been wounded. In
their case, he must either have missed his aim, or driven his shafts
home with such vigour, that they were buried out of sight altogether in
their tender hearts. It is probable that not one member of that
miscellaneous company gave a thought at that time to the wounded men,
except the wounded men themselves, so absorbing is the love of food!
The wounded were, however, sharp-set in all respects. They at once
descried each other's condition, and, instead of manifesting sympathy
with each other, were, strange to say, filled with intense jealousy.
This at least is true of the younger men. Lawrence, being somewhat
older, was more secretive and self-possessed.
At first Captain Wopper, having declined a dish of cauliflower because
it was presented _alone_, and having afterwards accepted a mutton chop
_alone_, with feelings of poignant regret that he had let the
cauliflower go by, was too busy to observe what the heathen-mythological
youngster was doing. Indeed, at most times, the said youngster might
have discharged a whole quiver of arrows into the Captain's eyes without
his being aware of the attack; but, at the present time, the Captain, as
the reader is aware, was up to the eyes in a plot in which Cupid's aid
was necessary; he had, as it were, invoked the fat child's presence.
When, therefore, he had got over the regrets about the cauliflower, and
had swallowed the mutton-chop, he began to look about him--to note the
converse that passed between the young men, and the frequent glances
they cast at the young women.
It was not the first time that the Captain had, so to speak, kept his
weather-eye open in regard to the affection which he had made up his
mind must now have been awakened in the breasts of George Lawrence and
Emma Gray; but hitherto his hopes, although sanguine, had not received
encouragement. Though polite and respectful to each other, they were by
no means tender; altogether, they acted quite differently from what the
Captain felt that he would have done in similar circumstances. A
suspicion had even crossed the poor seaman's mind that Emma was in love
with her handsome and rattling cousin Lewis; but anxiety on this head
was somewhat allayed by other and conflicting circumstances, such as
occasional remarks by Lewis, to the effect that Emma was a goose, or a
pert little monkey, or that she knew nothing beyond house-keeping and
crochet, and similar compliments. Now, however, in a certain animated
conversation between Lawrence and Emma, the designing seaman thought he
saw the budding of his deep-laid plans, and fondly hoped ere long to
behold the bud developed into the flower of matrimony. Under this
conviction he secretly hugged himself, but in the salon, that evening,
he opened his arms and released himself on beholding the apparently
fickle Lawrence deeply engaged in converse with the Count Horetzki, to
whose pretty daughter, however, he addressed the most of his remarks.
The Captain, being a blunt honest, straightforward man, could not
understand this state of matters, and fell into a fit of abstracted
perplexity on the sofa beside Mrs Stoutley, who listened listlessly to
the Russian Professor as he attempted to explain to her and Emma the
nature of a glacier.
"Well, I don't understand it at all," said Mrs Stoutley, at the end of
one of the Professor's most lucid expositions.
We may remark, in passing, that the Professor, like many of his
countrymen, was a good linguist and spoke English well.
"Not understand it!" he exclaimed, with a slight elevation of his
eyebrows. "My dear madam, it is most plain, but I fear my want of good
English does render me not quite intelligible."
"Your English is excellent," replied Mrs Stoutley, with a smile, "but I
fear that my brain is not a sufficiently clear one on such matters, for
I confess that I cannot understand it. Can you, Captain Wopper?"
"Certainly not, ma'am," answered the Captain, thinking of the fickle
Lawrence; "it takes the wind out of my sails entirely."
"Indeed!" said the Professor. "Well, do permit me to try again. You
understand that all the mountain-tops and elevated plateaus, for many
miles around here, are covered with ice and snow."
"Oh!" exclaimed the Captain, awaking to the fact that his answer was not
relevant; "may I ax what is the particular pint that puzzles you,
ma'am?"
Emma laughed aloud at this, and coughed a little to conceal the fact.
She was rather easily taken by surprise with passing touches of the
ludicrous, and had not yet acquired the habit of effectually suppressing
little explosions of undertoned mirth.
"The thing that puzzles me," said Mrs Stoutley, "is, that glaciers
should _flow_, as I am told they do, and yet that they should be as hard
and brittle as glass."
"Ah, well, yes, just so, h'm!" said the Captain, looking very wise;
"that is exactly the pint that I want to know myself; for no man who
looks at the great tongue of that glacier day Bossung--"
"Des Bossons," said the Professor, with a bland smile.
"Day Bossong," repeated the Captain, "can deny that it is marked with
all the lines, and waves, an eddies of a rollin' river, an' yet as
little can they deny that it seems as hard-and-fast as the rock of
Gibraltar."
The Professor nodded approvingly.
"You are right, Captain Whipper--"
"Wopper," said the Captain, with a grave nod.
"Wopper," repeated the Professor, "the glacier des Bossons, like all the
other glaciers, seems to remain immovable, though in reality it flows--
ever flows--downward; but its motion is so slow, that it is not
perceptible to the naked eye. Similarly, the hour-hand of a watch is to
appearance motionless. Do you want proof? Mark it just now; look again
in quarter of an hour, and you see that it has moved. You are
convinced. It is so with the glacier. Mark him to-day, go back
to-morrow--the mark has changed. Some glaciers flow at the rate of two
and three feet in the twenty-four hours."
"Yes, but _how_ do they flow, being so brittle?" demanded Mrs Stoutley.
"Ay, that's the pint, Professor," said the Captain, nodding, "_how_ do
they flow, bein' made of hard and brittle ice?"
"Why, by rolling higgledy-piggledy over itself of course," said Lewis,
flippantly, as he came up and sat down on the end of the sofa, being out
of humour with himself and everybody in consequence of having utterly
failed to gain the attention of Nita Horetzki, although he had made
unusually earnest efforts to join in conversation with her father.
Owing to somewhat similar feelings, the artist had flung himself into a
chair, and sat glaring at the black fireplace with a degree of
concentration that ought to have lighted the firewood therein.
"The cause of a glacier flowing," said the Professor, "has long been a
disputed point. Some men of science have held that it is the pressure
of ice and snow behind it which causes it to flow. They do not think
that it flows like water, but say it is forced from behind, and crushed
through gorges and down valleys, as it were, unwillingly. They say
that, if left alone, as they now are, without additions, from this time
forward, glaciers would no longer move; they would rest, and slowly melt
away; that their motion is due to the fact that there are miles and
miles of snow-fields, thousands of feet deep, on the mountain-tops and
in the gorges, to which fresh snows are added every winter, so that the
weight of what is behind, slipping off the slopes and falling from the
cliffs, crushes down and forward that which is below; thus glaciers
cannot choose but advance."
"Ay, ay," said the Captain, "no doubt no doubt that may be so; but why
is it that, bein' as brittle as glass, a glacier don't come rumblin' and
clatterin' down the valleys in small hard bits, like ten thousand
millions of smashed-up chandeliers?"
"Ay, there's the rub," exclaimed Lewis; "what say you to that?"
"Ha!" exclaimed the Professor, again smiling blandly, "there you have
touched what once was, and, to some philosophers it seems, still is, the
great difficulty. By some great men it has been held that glacier ice
is always in a partially soft, viscid, or semi-fluid condition, somewhat
like pitch, so that, although _apparently_ a solid, brittle, and rigid
body, it flows sluggishly in reality. Other philosophers have denied
this theory, insisting that the ice of glaciers is _not_ like pitch, but
like glass, and that it cannot be squeezed without being broken, nor
drawn without being cracked. These philosophers have discovered that
when ice is subjected to great pressure it melts, and that, when the
pressure is removed, the part so melted immediately freezes again--hence
the name regelation, or re-freezing, is given to the process. Thus a
glacier, they say, is in many places being continually melted and
continually and instantaneously re-frozen, so that it is made to pass
through narrow gorges, and to open out again when the enormous pressure
has been removed. But this theory of regelation, although
unquestionably true, and although it exercises _some_ influence on
glacier motion, does not, in my opinion, alone account for it. The
opinion which seems to be most in favour among learned men--and that
which I myself hold firmly--is, the theory of the Scottish Professor
Forbes, namely, that a glacier is a semi-fluid body, it is largely
impregnated throughout its extent with water, its particles move round
and past each other--in other words, it flows in precisely the same
manner as water, the only difference being that it is not quite so
fluid; it is sluggish in its flow, but it certainly models itself to the
ground over which it is forced by its own gravity, and it is only rent
or broken into fragments when it is compelled to turn sharp angles, or
to pass over steep convex slopes. Forbes, by his careful measurements
and investigations, proved incontestably that in some glaciers the
central portion travelled down its valley at double or treble the rate
of its sides, without the continuity of the mass being broken. In small
masses, indeed, glacier-ice is to all appearance rigid, but on a large
scale it is unquestionably ductile."
"Has the theory of regelation been put to the proof?" asked Lewis, with
a degree of interest in glaciers which he had never before felt.
"It has," answered the Professor. "An experimentalist once cut a bar of
solid ice, like to a bar of soap in form and size, from a glacier. To
this an iron weight of several pounds was suspended by means of a very
fine wire, which was tied round the bar. The pressure of the wire
melted the ice under it; as the water escaped it instantly re-froze
above the wire; thus the wire went on cutting its way through the bar,
and the water went on freezing, until at last the weight fell to the
ground, and left the bar as solid and entire as if it had never been
cut."
"Well, now," said Captain Wopper, bringing his hand down on his thigh
with a slap that did more to arouse Mrs Stoutley out of her languor
than the Professor's lecture on glacier ice, "I've sailed round the
world, I have, an' seen many a strange sight, and what I've got to say
is that I'll believe that when I _see_ it."
"You shall see it soon then, I hope," said the Professor, more blandly
than ever, "for I intend to verify this experiment along with several
others. I go to the Mer de Glace, perhaps as far as the Jardin,
to-morrow. Will you come?"
"What may the Jardang be?" asked the Captain.
"Hallo! monkey, what's wrong?" said Lewis to Emma, referring to one of
the undertoned safety-valves before mentioned.
"Nothing," replied Emma, pursing her little lips till they resembled a
cherry.
"The Jardin, or garden," said the Professor, "is a little spot of
exquisite beauty in the midst of the glaciers, where a knoll of green
grass and flowers peeps up in the surrounding sterility. It is one of
the regular excursions from Chamouni."
"Can ladies go?" asked Lewis.
"Young and active ladies can," said the Professor, with his blandest
possible smile, as he bowed to Emma.
"Then, we'll all go together," cried Lewis, with energy.
"Not all," said Mrs Stoutley, with a sigh, "I am neither young nor
active."
"Nonsense, mother, you're quite young yet, you know, and as active as a
kitten when you've a mind to be. Come, we'll have a couple of porters
and a chair to have you carried when you knock up."
Notwithstanding the glowing prospects of ease and felicity thus opened
up to her, Mrs Stoutley resolutely refused to go on this excursion, but
she generously allowed Emma to go if so disposed. Emma, being disposed,
it was finally arranged that, on the following day, she, the Captain,
Lewis, and Lawrence, with Gillie White as her page, should proceed up
the sides of Mont Blanc with the man of science, and over the Mer de
Glace to the Jardin.