“Still I hugged Fidele, and I could feel by her returning grasp that she lived.  The water was not unbearably cold as yet.  The air that came through cracks and crevasses had not force to overcome the under warmth.

“I felt something slide against me—­clutched and held on.  It was a brave pine log.  Could I recover it at this date I would convert it into a flagstaff for the tricolour.  It was our raft, our refuge; and it carried us to safety.

“I cannot give the extravagant processes of that long journey.  It was all a rushing, swirling dream—­a mad race of mystery and sublimity, to which the only conscious periods were wild, flitting glimpses of wonderful ice arabesques, caught momentarily as we passed under fissures that let the light of day through dimly.

“Gradually a ghostly radiance grew to encompass us; and by a like gradation the water waxed intensely cold.  Hope then was blazing in our hearts; but this new deathliness went nigh to quench it altogether.  Yet, had we guessed the reason, we could have foregone the despair.  For, in truth, we were approaching that shallower terrace of the glacier beyond the fall, through which the light could force some weak passage, and the air make itself felt, blowing upon the beds of ice.

“Well, we survived; and still we survive.  My faith, what a couple!  Sublimity would have none of us.  The glacier rejected souls so commonplace as not to be properly impressed by its inexorability.

“This, then, was the end.  We swept into a huge cavern of ice—­through it—­beyond it, into the green valley and the world that we love.  And there, where the torrent splits up into a score of insignificant streams, we grounded and crawled to dry land and sat down and laughed.

“Yes, we could do it—­we could laugh.  Is that not bathos?  But Fidele and I have a theory that laughter is the chief earnest of immortality.

“To dry land I have said. Mon Dieu! the torrent was no wetter.  It rains in the Chamounix valley.  We looked to see whence we had fallen, and not even the Chapeau was visible through the mist.

“But, as I turned, Fidele uttered a little cry.

“‘The flask, and the sandwich-box, and your poor coat!’

“‘Comment?’ I said; and in a moment was in my shirt-sleeves.

“I stared, and I wondered, and I clucked in my throat.

“Holy saints!  I was adorned with a breastplate on my back.  The friction of descent, first welding together these, the good ministers to our appetite, had worn the metal down in the end to a mere skin or badge, the heat generated from which had scorched and frizzled the cloth beneath it.

“I needed not to seek further explanation of the pain I had suffered—­was suffering then, indeed, as I had reason to know when ecstasy permitted a return of sensation.  My back bears the scars at this moment.

“‘It shall remain there for ever!’ I cried, ’like the badge of a cocher de fiacre, who has made the fastest journey on record.  ’Coachman! from the glacier to the valley.’ ’Mais oui, monsieur.  Down this crevasse, if you please.’