At three in the afternoon we were nearly dead with exhaustion—­and still the rope was slowly gliding out.  The murmurs against the guide had been growing steadily, and at last they were become loud and savage.  A mutiny ensued.  The men refused to proceed.  They declared that we had been traveling over and over the same ground all day, in a kind of circle.  They demanded that our end of the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to halt the guide until we could overtake him and kill him.  This was not an unreasonable requirement, so I gave the order.

As soon as the rope was tied, the Expedition moved forward with that alacrity which the thirst for vengeance usually inspires.  But after a tiresome march of almost half a mile, we came to a hill covered thick with a crumbly rubbish of stones, and so steep that no man of us all was now in a condition to climb it.  Every attempt failed, and ended in crippling somebody.  Within twenty minutes I had five men on crutches.  Whenever a climber tried to assist himself by the rope, it yielded and let him tumble backward.  The frequency of this result suggested an idea to me.  I ordered the caravan to ’bout face and form in marching order; I then made the tow-rope fast to the rear mule, and gave the command: 

“Mark time—­by the right flank—­forward—­march!”

The procession began to move, to the impressive strains of a battle-chant, and I said to myself, “Now, if the rope don’t break I judge this will fetch that guide into the camp.”  I watched the rope gliding down the hill, and presently when I was all fixed for triumph I was confronted by a bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied to the rope, it was only a very indignant old black ram.  The fury of the baffled Expedition exceeded all bounds.  They even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this innocent dumb brute.  But I stood between them and their prey, menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks, and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder, and it was directly over my corpse.  Even as I spoke I saw that my doom was sealed, except a miracle supervened to divert these madmen from their fell purpose.  I see the sickening wall of weapons now; I see that advancing host as I saw it then, I see the hate in those cruel eyes; I remember how I drooped my head upon my breast, I feel again the sudden earthquake shock in my rear, administered by the very ram I was sacrificing myself to save; I hear once more the typhoon of laughter that burst from the assaulting column as I clove it from van to rear like a Sepoy shot from a Rodman gun.

I was saved.  Yes, I was saved, and by the merciful instinct of ingratitude which nature had planted in the breast of that treacherous beast.  The grace which eloquence had failed to work in those men’s hearts, had been wrought by a laugh.  The ram was set free and my life was spared.