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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." It so happened that I was to hear one more story of disaster before getting to the top of Mont Blanc.

In about an hour the storm lightened, and the Englishman and the porters started back to the Grands Mulets. I consulted Couttet about making a dash for the summit; but he thought it would be better to wait awhile, and better still to follow the others down the mountain.

In the snowy wastes near the summit they came upon five bodies, lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there, while exhausted with fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold, and never knew when death stole upon them. Couttet moved a few steps further and discovered five more bodies.

My guide was Ambroise Couttet, whose family name is famous in the mountaineering annals of Savoy. An earlier Ambroise Couttet lies in the icy bosom of Mont Blanc, fallen, years ago, down a crevasse so profound that his would-be rescuers were drawn, baffled, awe-struck, and with shaking nerves, from its horrible depths, whose bottom they could not find.

Such a race in such a place could only last a couple of minutes, and it was soon over, the American coming out ahead. Getting upon the Grand Plateau, we did not stop to rest, but broke into a dog trot. "Whatever happens, Couttet, we must be first at the top." "Very well, monsieur."

The waning moon, hanging over the Dome du Gouter, gave sufficient light to render a lantern unnecessary, and dawn was near at hand. Threatening bands of clouds attracted anxious glances from Couttet, and it was evident that a change of weather impended. But we clambered over the rocks to the crevassed slopes below the Gouter, and pushed upward.

They had talked confidently of making the ascent in extraordinarily quick time, and some good-natured chaffing now passed between Couttet and the rival guides. I had had no thought of a race; but I defy anybody, under the circumstances in which we were placed, not to experience a little spurring from the spirit of emulation.

Couttet shook and banged the door, making a noise that did not penetrate far through the whistling air, and, with cold fingers, began fumbling at the latch, when, to my surprise, the door opened and a muffled voice bade us enter. An Englishman who had started with his guides at midnight from the Grands Mulets, and three or four of Monsieur Janssen's porters, had already sought refuge in the hut.

When the gloom became so dense that even the window had disappeared, Couttet lit a tallow dip, but it would not remain upright in its improvised holder, and the freezing draughts that stole through the hut kept it flickering so that he finally put it out, and we remained in the dark, not "seein' things," like Eugene Field's youthful hero, but hearing things no less uncanny.

It was past the middle of the forenoon of the 10th of August when, with Couttet and the porter, I left Chamonix. Dismissing my tired mule at the Pierre Pointue, which hangs with its flag nearly seven thousand feet above sea level, and high over the séracs of the Glacier des Bossons, we began the ascent by way of the Pierre a l'Echelle and over the missile-scarred foot of the Aiguille du Midi.