I closed my readings with a fearful adventure which Mr. Whymper once had on the Matterhorn when he was prowling around alone, five thousand feet above the town of Breil.  He was edging his way gingerly around the corner of a precipice where the upper edge of a sharp declivity of ice-glazed snow joined it.  This declivity swept down a couple of hundred feet, into a gully which curved around and ended at a precipice eight hundred feet high, overlooking a glacier.  His foot slipped, and he fell.

He says: 

“My knapsack brought my head down first, and I pitched into some rocks about a dozen feet below; they caught something, and tumbled me off the edge, head over heels, into the gully; the baton was dashed from my hands, and I whirled downward in a series of bounds, each longer than the last; now over ice, now into rocks, striking my head four or five times, each time with increased force.  The last bound sent me spinning through the air in a leap of fifty or sixty feet, from one side of the gully to the other, and I struck the rocks, luckily, with the whole of my left side.  They caught my clothes for a moment, and I fell back on to the snow with motion arrested.  My head fortunately came the right side up, and a few frantic catches brought me to a halt, in the neck of the gully and on the verge of the precipice.  Baton, hat, and veil skimmed by and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks—­which I had started—­as they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow had been the escape from utter destruction.  As it was, I fell nearly two hundred feet in seven or eight bounds.  Ten feet more would have taken me in one gigantic leaps of eight hundred feet on to the glacier below.

“The situation was sufficiently serious.  The rocks could not be let go for a moment, and the blood was spurting out of more than twenty cuts.  The most serious ones were in the head, and I vainly tried to close them with one hand, while holding on with the other.  It was useless; the blood gushed out in blinding jets at each pulsation.  At last, in a moment of inspiration, I kicked out a big lump of snow and struck it as plaster on my head.  The idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood diminished.  Then, scrambling up, I got, not a moment too soon, to a place of safety, and fainted away.  The sun was setting when consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before the Great Staircase was descended; but by a combination of luck and care, the whole four thousand seven hundred feet of descent to Breil was accomplished without a slip, or once missing the way.”

His wounds kept him abed some days.  Then he got up and climbed that mountain again.  That is the way with a true Alp-climber; the more fun he has, the more he wants.

CHAPTER XXXVII [Our Imposing Column Starts Upward]

After I had finished my readings, I was no longer myself; I was tranced, uplifted, intoxicated, by the almost incredible perils and adventures I had been following my authors through, and the triumphs I had been sharing with them.  I sat silent some time, then turned to Harris and said: