[Illustration:  A BIRTHPLACE OF AVALANCHES, MONT BLANC.]

A SECOND ATTEMPT FOR THE SUMMIT.

We put on the rope and scrambled down, but when we got upon the neck below the Bosses the clouds whirled off and the burnished sun stood over the white peak, too splendid to be looked upon.

“Couttet, we must go up,” I exclaimed.

“As you say,” he replied; and we turned upon our track.

We had got back to the hut and started up the steep arete above it, when the sun disappeared, the air turned white, and the wind resumed its wrestle.  So powerful was it that on our narrow ridge it had the advantage of us, and we crouched behind a projecting point.

“It is too perilous,” said Couttet, “and we must descend.  I will not take the risk.”

I saw it was necessary to yield, and down we went.  Hunger was beginning to tell, and we made haste.  Where the slopes were not seamed with open crevasses we “glissaded,” which is a very expeditious and exhilarating method of getting down a mountain, although unsafe unless one is certain of his ground.  Sometimes we slid on our feet, steadying ourselves with our batons or ice-axes, and sometimes I sat on the hard snow and glided like a Turk on a toboggan slide, the tassel of my woollen cap fluttering behind in the wind.  We took the unbridged crevasses with flying leaps, and so plunged rapidly downward, with frequent keen regrets on my part, because the weather seemed mending again.  But it would not do to turn back now in our half-famished condition, and we were glad when the Grands Mulets hove in sight below, a black squadron in a sea of snow.

[Illustration:  M. JANSSEN’S OBSERVATORY ON TOP OF MONT BLANC.]

In Chamonix I took a day or two to thaw out and mend bruises, and then ran over to Martigny, crossed the Grand St. Bernard, the St. Gotthard, and the Grimsel passes, spent a week in William Tell’s country, prowling about the ruins of old castles and the sites of legendary battles, and finally settled down in Milan to feast my eyes on the pinnacles of its wondrous cathedral.  But my failure to reach the top of Mont Blanc cast a perceptible shadow over everything I saw.

One day, the 27th of August, as I stood on the cathedral spire, the sun lay warm upon the Alps, and Mont Blanc shone in the distance.  “It is time to go,” I said to myself; and descending, I hurried to my hotel and packed a gripsack.  The night express via Mont Cenis placed me in Geneva the next morning in time to catch the first train for Cluses.  The same evening the diligence landed me in Chamonix.  I sent for Couttet.

“Mont Blanc in the morning,” I said.

“Delighted, monsieur; we’ll do it this time.”

“Storm or no storm?”

“Yes.”