“September 7, evening—­My dear Hessie:  We have been two days on Mont Blanc in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow; we have lost our way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet.  I have no longer any hope of descending.  Perhaps this notebook will be found and sent to you.  We have nothing to eat, my feet are already frozen, and I am exhausted.  I have strength to write only a few words more.  I have left means for C.’s education; I know you will employ them wisely.  I die with faith in God and with loving thoughts of you.  Farewell to all.  We shall meet again in heaven—­I think of you always.”

The bodies of five of these victims were found but a few feet aside from the proper route which in clear weather would have led to safety; the other six had disappeared.

While such cheerful recollections were running through my mind I noticed that we were no longer ascending, and that Couttet, whom I had not troubled with questions as long as he showed no hesitation, was bearing now this way and now that, and occasionally stopping and peering about with spread nostrils, like a dog seeking a trail.  Clearly we were on the top of the highest elevation in our neighborhood, for the wind now came point blank in our faces out of the white abyss of the atmosphere, and almost blew me off my feet.

“Have you lost the way?” I asked.

“I’ll find it,” Couttet replied.

“Where are we?”

“Near the Bosses.”

“Isn’t there a refuge hut on the Bosses?”

“Yes.”

“Can we reach it?”

Couttet did not immediately reply, but looked up and about, as if trying to pierce the driving snow with his gaze.  “If I could catch sight of the rocks,” at length he said.

Suddenly the gale seemed to split the clouds, and for an instant a vision opened of blue sky over our heads, and endless slopes of snow, falling one below another, under our feet.  I saw that we were standing on the rounded back of a snowy ridge.  Just in front the white surface dipped and disappeared in a vast gulf of air, where flying clouds were torn against the black jagged points of lower mountains.  Above our level, to the left, rocks appeared projecting through the covering of snow.  I knew that these must belong to the Bosses du Dromadaire, and that the hut we sought was perched on one of them.

All this the eye caught in a twinkling, for the storm curtain was lifted only to be as quickly dropped again, shutting out both the upper and the lower world, and leaving us isolated on the slippery roof ridge of Europe.  At the same time the wind increased its violence, and the cold became more penetrating.  I pulled my fingers out of the digits of my woollen gloves, and gripped my iron-shod baton between thumb and knuckles.  We now had our bearings, thanks to the momentary glance, and it behooved us not to lose them, for the storm was every instant growing worse.  At times it was not the simplest thing in the world to keep one’s feet in the face of the blasts.  I was too fresh from reading the history of Mont Blanc not to remember that a few years ago Count Villanova and two guides were blown from another nearby ridge into the very abyss whose jaws had just opened before us, where their bodies lie undiscovered to this day.