They went on for three or four hundred yards, over what seemed to be a level plain of snow, but which they knew from what they had seen below, hung in a curve from the dazzling snow peaks on either hand, and to be gracefully rounded south and north.

So gradual was the descent that nothing was visible of the valley for which they were making; and Saxe was just about to attack the guide about his declaration respecting the short time after reaching the top of the col before they would be at tea, when Melchior suddenly stopped, and as Saxe joined him where he stood, the snow ran down suddenly, steeply, and with a beautiful curve into a tiny valley, whose floor was green, with a silver rivulet winding through it, and several clumps of dwarfed pines turning it into quite a park.

"There is our resting-place, herr," he said, "with a perfect bit of snow for a glissade."

"What, slide down the snow!" cried Saxe. "To be sure! Shall I be able to stop myself! I don't want to go rolling down into that water like a ball."

"Come behind me," said Dale quietly; "I'll show you how. Stand up as I do, and hold your alpenstock behind you like this. Some people say it is wrong, but I always get on so."

He pressed his alpenstock into the snow behind him, holding it under his left arm with both hands; and leaning back upon it, he waited till Saxe had imitated him exactly.

"If you find you are going down too fast, lean back more, so as to drive your pike down into the snow. Try and keep your balance. If you go over, hold on to your alpenstock and try to stop yourself the best way you can. Ready?"

"Yes."

"Then off! Steady, slowly, as you can. There's no hurry."

"Well, I don't want to hurry," muttered Saxe, as he began to glide down the beautiful sloping curve, with the crisp large-grained snow hissing and flying down before him. It was glorious. He felt as if he were flying; then as if he were having a splendid skate without the slightest exertion. The bottom of the valley began to fly up to meet him, and he had some slight consciousness of Dale being close before or behind him, he could not tell which, for his mind was concentrated upon his descent, which grew more and more rapid and delightful. Every sense of weariness was gone, and he was just thinking of lammergeyers in their flight, when he heard his companions shouting to him, just as he lost his balance and came down on his side. Then, he lost his alpenstock and directly after his temper, as he found he was rolling down head first till he gave himself a tremendous wrench, and contrived to get his feet foremost, with his heels down in the snow, and by degrees rose into a sitting position, finishing his descent more deliberately, for fortunately the slope grew less and less, till he was brought up by the stones at the foot, and able to look up.

"Hurt?" cried Dale, who came down to him directly after.

"Haven't had time to see yet," said Saxe gruffly. "Here are my trousers got right up my legs."

"No skin off your knuckles?"

"I think not," said Saxe. "Are you all right? But what did it?"

"You."

"No. There must have been something sticking up out of the enow to upset me: a piece of rock, I think."

"You'll think differently after a few more tries," said Dale, laughing; and returned to see how Melchior was getting down with the mule.

They were coming far more gently, the mule having tucked its hind legs close beneath it, and slid steadily down, while by means of his ice-axe Melchior regulated his pace to that of the quadruped, till they, too, were at the bottom.

"Saxe thinks there was a piece of rock sticking out of the snow ready to upset him," cried Dale.

"Hush! Don't make him laugh at a fellow," said the boy hurriedly.

Melchior smiled.

"It was his first lesson," he said quietly. "Now, there is a clump of rocks between those two patches of pines, and water and wood in abundance. Will you have the fire there?"

Half an hour after they were all seated round a crackling fire, well sheltered on all sides, and with the rock projecting far over their heads in case of rain. The kettle was singing, the coffee ready, the rest of the provisions spread, and the mule cropping the gra.s.s close by, never once trying to leave the vicinity of his human companions.

An hour after the fire was out the stars shone brilliantly, and the little party slept beneath their rugs on a couch of pine boughs as soundly as in the most luxurious couch that had fallen to their lot.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

FIRST MOUNTAIN CLIMB.

The loud crack of something breaking awoke Saxe to the knowledge that a grey light was peering through the pines, and that, though he was comfortably warm, there was a crisp coldness in the air he breathed.

Then there was another sharp crack, and another, as of sticks being broken; and he raised himself up to begin looking cautiously round. For Melchior had said that there were bears about still in the mountains, and the first idea that occurred to him was that a savage beast was breaking his way through the thick pine-wood with inimical intent.

Another crack and another, very close at hand, and then a faint sighing sound--evidently the expiration of some living creature's breath.

Saxe felt a catching sensation at the breast, a tingling in the temples and cheeks, as if his veins were startled and his blood running wild; and he stole his hand softly out from under the rug, to try and reach his companions and rouse them to a sense of the impending danger--trying to recollect at the same moment where the ice-axes had been placed when they lay down overnight.

But at that moment there was a sharper crack than ever, and a faint odour of burning, followed by the quick crackling so familiar when a green pine bough is thrown upon the flames.

"Oh, what a coward I am!" thought Saxe, sinking back and placing his enlaced fingers beneath his head, as he gazed straight up at the dark branches above. "Just as if a bear would come and attack us, even if there was one anywhere near! He'd scuffle off as soon as he smelt man."

"Perhaps not if he was very hungry," he thought, after a few minutes.

"But I do wish I could feel brave, like men do, and not turn shaky and queer at the least thing. Here was I imagining all that rubbish just because I heard a stick broken by old Melchior to make the fire.

Yesterday all I had to do was to walk along a shelf of rock, with some water running down below me. If it had been out in the open sunshine I shouldn't have minded a bit; but because it was a little dark I fancied all sorts of stuff. Of course it was a bit startling to see a fellow go head over heels into a torrent along with a moke and be swept away; but I don't believe old Melk was half so much frightened as I was."

"It's very silly lying here," he said to himself again, as the scent of the burning pine-wood increased. "Bit cold outside the rug; but we left the door and the windows open last night, and that's healthy all the same. I do wish, though, I could get on without being scared so soon.

Perhaps it's all through being ill last year and feeling so weak. But I didn't seem weak yesterday. I was precious tired, but so was Mr Dale.

I'm afraid I'm a coward, and I suppose all I can do is to hide it and not let people see."

"They sha'n't see!" he muttered, after a few minutes; and then he lay still, thinking of home, his mother and father, and of their ready consent when Mr Dale offered to take him as his companion in an experimental trip to the high Alps.

"I wonder what they are all doing now?" he thought. "Asleep, of course.

I don't believe my mother would sleep comfortably, though, if she knew I was lying out here like this, with no bed-curtains and the snow just over us. It is rum, though--summer and winter all muddled up together so closely that you stand with your right leg in July, picking flowers and catching b.u.t.terflies, and the left leg in January, so that you can turn over and make a s...o...b..ll or pick icicles off the rocks."

A pleasant, drowsy sensation began to steal over him, and he was about to give way to it, when the idea came like a flash that it would be idle and cowardly; and this thought made him spring up, and fold the rug in which he had been rolled; and after a glance at where Mr Dale still slept, he went softly out of the clump of trees in the direction where he could hear the crackling, to find Melchior in the act of placing the tin kettle they had brought upon the fire.

"Good morning, herr. A fine day."

"Not much day about it," said Saxe, with a slight shiver. "What time is it?"

"I don't know, herr; but the sun will soon be up. Look!"

He pointed overhead to where, grim-looking and grey, one of the mountains towered up: and right away, at a great height, there was what looked like a broad streak of pale--very pale--red, apparently a piece of cloud just over the mountain top.

"What's that?"

"Snow, herr, beginning to be lit up by the sun. That is where we are going by-and-by--the mountain with the enow on one side but bare rock on the other."

Saxe stood gazing upward with a feeling of awe creeping over him. There was no mistake about height here. The line of snow, which ended as quickly as if it had been cut square at one end, seemed terribly far away; and Saxe was thinking that it seemed almost madness to try and reach such a spot, when Melchior drew his attention to first one and then another flake of ruddy light in the distance.

"Clouds?" asked Saxe; though he felt what the answer would be.

"No," replied the guide--"mountain peaks. Will you awaken Mr Dale, or shall I?"