"Steady there! Stop! Hold hard!"
"What's the matter, Mr Dale?"
"Matter, Saxe, my boy? Well, this. I undertook to take you back to
your father and mother some day, sound in wind and limb; but if you
begin like that, the trip's over, and we shall have to start back for
England in less than a week--at least, I shall, with my luggage
increased by a case containing broken boy."
There was a loud burst of hearty laughter from the manly-looking lad
addressed, as he stood, with his hands clinging and his head twisted
round, to look back: for he had spread-eagled himself against a nearly
perpendicular scarp of rock which he had begun to climb, so as to reach
a patch of wild rhododendrons.
There was another personage present, in the shape of a sturdy,
muscular-looking man, whose swarthy face was sheltered by a wide-brimmed
soft felt hat, very much turned up at the sides, and in whose broad band
was stuck a tuft of the pale grey, starry-looking, downy plant known as
the Edelweiss. His jacket was of dark, exceedingly threadbare velvet;
breeches of the same; and he wore gaiters and heavily nailed lace-up
boots; his whole aspect having evoked the remarks, when he presented
himself at the door of the chalet:
"I say, Mr Dale, look here! Where is his organ and his monkey? This
chap has been asking for you--for Herr Richard Dale, of London."
"Yes, I sent for him. It is the man I am anxious to engage for our
guide."
For Melchior Staffeln certainly did look a good deal like one of the
"musicians" who infest London streets with "kists o' whustles," as the
Scottish gentleman dubbed them--or much noisier but less penetrating
instruments on wheels.
He was now standing wearing a kind of baldric across his chest, in the
shape of a coil of new soft rope, from which he rarely parted, whatever
the journey he was about to make, and leaning on what, at first sight,
seemed to be a stout walking-stick with a crutch handle, but a second
glance revealed as an ice-axe, with, a strong spike at one end, and a
head of sharp-edged and finely pointed steel, which Saxe said made it
look like a young pick-axe.
This individual had wrinkled his face up so much that his eyes were
nearly closed, and his shoulders were shaking as he leaned upon the
ice-axe, and indulged in a long, hearty, nearly silent laugh.
"Ah! it's no laughing matter, Melchior," said the broad-shouldered,
bluff, sturdy-looking Englishman. "I don't want to begin with an
accident."
"No, no," said the guide, whose English seemed to grow clearer as they
became more intimate. "No accidents. It is the Swiss mountain air
getting into his young blood. In another week he will bound along the
matt, or dash over the green alp like a goat, and in a fortnight be
ready to climb a spitz like a chamois."
"Yes, that's all very well, my man; but I prefer a steady walk. Look
here, Saxe!"
"I'm listening, Mr Dale," said the lad.
"Then just get it into your brain, if you can, that we are not out on a
schoolboy trip, but upon the borders of new, almost untried ground, and
we shall soon be mounting places that are either dangerous or safe as
you conduct yourself."
"All right, Mr Dale; I'll be careful," said the lad.
"Never fear, herr," cried the guide; "I will not take you anywhere
dangerous--only to places where your fellow-countrymen have well marked
the way."
"Thank you," was the reply, in so peculiar a tone that the guide looked
at the speaker curiously.
"Yes," continued the latter; "I'll have a chat with you presently."
"I am ready, herr," said the man, rather distantly now. "You have seen
my book of testimonials, written by many English and German voyagers who
love the mountains!"
"Yes," said Richard Dale quietly; "and I want this boy to know what he
has to do."
"All right, Mr Dale," said the lad; "you may trust me."
"That's understood, then. You must obey me without question instantly,
just as I shall have to obey Melchior Staffeln. I have been out here a
dozen times before, and know a great deal; but he has been here all his
life, and has inherited the existence of his father and grandfather,
both guides. Now, is this understood!"
"Yes, of course, Mr Dale," said the boy, who had been impatiently
throwing stones into the middle of the little river flowing through the
valley; "but you are not going to take me for a walk every day, and make
us hold one another's hands?"
"I'm going to make you do exactly what Melchior thinks best," said his
companion, firmly. "And let me tell you, young fellow, there will be
times, if you care to go with me, when we shall be very glad to hold
each other's hands: up yonder, for instance, along that shelf, where you
can see the sheep."
He pointed toward where, high up the side of the narrow valley, a group
of white-woolled sheep could be seen browsing.
"What, those?" said the lad. "That's nothing. I thought these
mountains and places would be ever so high."
"Ah! I suppose so," said Dale dryly. "Why, you young ignoramus--you
young puppy, with your eyes not yet half opened--do you know how high
those sheep are above where we stand?"
"Those?" said the lad, who had been looking rather contemptuously at
everything he had seen since he had been on the Continent. "Perhaps a
couple of hundred feet--say three."
"Three hundred, Saxe? Why, my lad, they are a thousand feet if they are
an inch."
"Two thousand," said the guide quietly.
"What!" cried the boy. "Then how high is that point just peeping over
the hills there, right up the valley?"
He pointed to a dazzling snowy peak which ran up like a roughly shaped,
blunted spear head glistening in the morning air.
"Das Dusselhorn," said the guide. "Hochte spitze? Nein."
"What is the height, Melchior?"
"How high, herr?--how tall? Eleven thousand English feet."
"Why it does not look much higher than Saint Paul's."
"You must remember that you are amongst the great peaks," said Dale,
"and that it takes time to educate your eyes to the size of everything
about you."
"But it looks as if you could get to the top in an hour," said Saxe.
"Does it?" said Dale, smiling. "Then what do you say to this?" And he
pointed up at the huge mass of rock, streaked with ravines full of snow,
which formed one side of the valley in which they stood.
"Lenstock," said the guide.
"How long would it take us to get up to the top, Melchior?"
"Too late to-day, herr. Start at three o'clock with lanthorn while the
schnee-snow is hard. Ten hours to go up, seven to come down."
Richard Dale looked at his young companion, whose forehead was wrinkled,
as he stared up at the huge mass of rock from its lower green alps or
pastures, up over the grey lichened stone, to where the streakings of
white snow began, and then higher and higher to the region of
everlasting ice.
"Well," he said at last, as he lowered his eyes to the guide and the
strong, resolute-looking man beside him, "I--"
A quick change came over him, and with a laughing look he continued
quickly:
"Not travellers' tales, eh?"
"Travellers' tales?" said the guide slowly.
"He means, are you deceiving him?" said Dale.
The guide shook his head gravely.
"The great mountains are too solemn to speak anything but truth in their
shade."
"Well," said Saxe slowly, "then it's the mountains that deceive."
"Wait a bit, boy, and you'll soon learn how great they are. It takes
time. Now, understand this: I do not want to interfere with your
enjoyment; but if we are to carry out my plans, it must be work and not
play."
"Why not both?" said Saxe merrily.
"Because we must husband our strength, so as to always have a little
left to use in an emergency. Now, then, we understand each other, do we
not?"
"Yes, Mr Dale."
"Then forward."
The guide nodded his head good-humouredly; but he did not stir.
"Well?" said the Englishman.
"Let us understand each other," said the guide quietly. "Those who go
up into the mountains must be brothers. Now your life is in danger, and
I save you; next my life is in peril, and you save me. A guide is
something more than one who goes to show the way."
"Of course," said Richard Dale, eyeing the man curiously: "that is why I
have chosen you. Friends told me that Melchior Staffeln was a man whom
I might trust."
"I thank them," said the guide. "And the herr wishes me to be his guide
for days and weeks or months, and show him the way up the great
mountains as I have shown others?"
"No!" said Dale sharply. "I want you to take me right in among the
heights, passes and glaciers where the visitors do not go."
The guide looked at him fixedly.
"Why? what for?" he said. "You did not tell me this when you came up to
the chalet last night, and sent for me."
"No. I tell you now."
"Why do you wish to go? There may be danger."
"I'll tell you. I want to see the mountains and study them. I would
search for metals and specimens of the stones in the higher rocks."
"Crystals?"
"Yes."
"Hah!" said the guide. "To see if there is gold and silver and precious
stones?"
"Yes."
"If it is known you will be stopped by the magistrate of the commune."
"Why? I do not want to rob the country."
"But the gold--the silver."
"Let's find them first, man; and see what the chief magistrate says
then. Can you lead me to places where I can find these?"
"Perhaps."
"Will you?"
The man was silent for a few minutes. Then,--"Will the herr be
straightforward and honest to my country, and if he finds such treasures
in the mountains, will he go to the magistrates and get leave to work
them?"
"Of that you may be sure. Will you come?"
The man was silent and thoughtful again for a minute.
"If the people know, we shall be watched night and day."
"They must not know."
"No, they must not know."
"Then you will come?"
"Yes," said the man, "I will come."
"Then, once more, forward," said Dale. "Saxe, my lad, our search for
Nature's treasures has begun."