Chapter 28 - Page 2

pretty high up in the air, and the view of lake and
mountains had greatly grown in breadth and interest. We halted awhile at
a little public house, where we had bread and cheese and a quart or
two of fresh milk, out on the porch, with the big panorama all before
us--and then moved on again.

Ten minutes afterward we met a hot, red-faced man plunging down the
mountain, making mighty strides, swinging his alpenstock ahead of him,
and taking a grip on the ground with its iron point to support these
big strides. He stopped, fanned himself with his hat, swabbed the
perspiration from his face and neck with a red handkerchief, panted
a moment or two, and asked how far to Waeggis. I said three hours. He
looked surprised, and said:

"Why, it seems as if I could toss a biscuit into the lake from here,
it's so close by. Is that an inn, there?"

I said it was.

"Well," said he, "I can't stand another three hours, I've had enough
today; I'll take a bed there."

I asked:

"Are we nearly to the top?"

"Nearly to the TOP? Why, bless your soul, you haven't really started,
yet."

I said we would put up at the inn, too. So we turned back and ordered a
hot supper, and had quite a jolly evening of it with this Englishman.

The German landlady gave us neat rooms and nice beds, and when I and my
agent turned in, it was with the resolution to be up early and make the
utmost of our first Alpine sunrise. But of course we were dead tired,
and slept like policemen; so when we awoke in the morning and ran to the
window it was already too late, because it was half past eleven. It
was a sharp disappointment. However, we ordered breakfast and told the
landlady to call the Englishman, but she said he was already up and off
at daybreak--and swearing like mad about something or other. We could
not find out what the matter was. He had asked the landlady the altitude
of her place above the level of the lake, and she told him fourteen
hundred and ninety-five feet. That was all that was said; then he lost
his temper. He said that between ------ fools and guide-books, a man
could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a country like
this to last him a year. Harris believed our boy had been loading him
up with misinformation; and this was probably the case, for his epithet
described that boy to a dot.

We got under way about the turn of noon, and pulled out for the summit
again, with a fresh and vigorous step. When we had gone about two
hundred yards, and stopped to rest, I glanced to the left while I was
lighting my pipe, and in the distance detected a long worm of black
smoke crawling lazily up the steep mountain. Of course that was