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Updated: May 31, 2025
Mont Blanc, as they say in its neighbourhood, "put on its cap and began to smoke its pipe," which, to speak more plainly, means that it is covered with clouds, and that the snow, driven upon it by a south-west wind, formed a long crest on its summit in the direction of the unfathomable precipices of the Brenva glaciers.
There was some one, a stranger, going about the world with the key to his secret, even if he had not guessed the secret. "It was I who whistled. I who shouted." "You!" cried Garratt Skinner. "You!" "Yes. Sylvia was with me. You thought to do that night what you thought to do a few days ago above the Brenva ridge. Both times together we were able to hinder you. But once Sylvia hindered you alone.
And at any moment, loosened by the sun, huge blocks and pinnacles might break from them and come thundering down. As it was, upon their right hand where the snow-fields fell steeply in a huge ice gully, between a line of rocks and the cliffs of Mont Maudit, the avalanches plunged and reverberated down to the Brenva glacier.
Garratt Skinner himself would run great risk upon this hazardous expedition that was true. But Chayne knew enough of the man to be assured that he would not hesitate on that account. The very audacity of the exploit marked it out as Gabriel Strood's. Moreover, there would be no other party on the Brenva ridge to spy upon his actions.
Over Gabriel Strood's signature there were just these words written in his hand and nothing more: "Mont Blanc by the Brenva route. July, 1868." Yet it was just that sentence which had so startled Hilary.
Men like Gabriel Strood always come back to the Alps. They sleep too restlessly at nights, they needs must come. And yet this man had stayed away. There must have been some great impediment. He fell into another train of thought. Sylvia was eighteen, nearly nineteen. Had Gabriel Strood married just after that last season when he climbed from the Brenva Glacier to the Calotte.
"I think there may be wind to-morrow," he replied, raising his face and judging by signs unappreciable to other than the trained eyes of a guide. "But we will try, eh, monsieur?" he cried, recovering his spirits. "We will try. We will be the first on the Brenva ridge for two years." But there Chayne knew him to be wrong. There was another party somewhere on the great ridge at this moment.
To-morrow he would ascend the buttress, traverse the ice-ridge with Walter Hine perhaps yes, only perhaps and at that thought Chayne's heart stood still. And even if he did, there were the hanging ice-cliffs above, and yet another day would pass before any alarm at his absence would be felt. Surely, it would be the Brenva route!
And beyond yes, beyond, to the Jardin." Chayne broke in upon his bitter humor. "I want the best guide in Chamonix. I want him at once. I must start by daylight." Michel glanced up in surprise. But what he saw in Chayne's face stopped all remonstrance. "For what ascent, monsieur?" he asked. "The Brenva route." "Madame will not go!" "No, I go alone. I must go quickly. There is very much at stake.
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