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"Yes it's from Lattery," he said, as he glanced first at the signature. Then he read the telegram and his face grew very grave. Lattery telegraphed from Courmayeur, the Italian village just across the chain of Mont Blanc: "Starting now by Col du Géant and Col des Nantillons." The Col du Géant is the most frequented pass across the chain, and no doubt the easiest.
"The blue blocks which span the sources of the Arveiron were once powdery snow upon the slopes of the Col du Géant." The varied and wonderful shapes assumed by snow and ice have been best portrayed, perhaps, by Dr. Kane in his two works; but their resources of color have been so explored by no one as by this same favored Professor Tyndall, among his Alps.
"You are illustrating your position by means of my poor oriental pearl," remonstrated Mabel, playfully, wresting the hand that was beating the life and whiteness out of the floweret upon the marble top of the beaufet. "Take this hardy geant de batailles, instead. My bouquet must have a cluster of pearls for a heart." "What a fierce crimson!"
"No," he explained eagerly, "I was not there, but you know my method; I have had the scene described by a thousand eye-witnesses, and at last I have reconstructed it for myself." He told me of the prospect for the defence and described the man upon whom the burden would mainly rest "un véritable géant," he told me with a voice to rally an army in retreat.
When I first came, it would happen once and again that a blunt German would clap me on the shoulder, and ask me to run a race; or a riotous Labassecourienne seize me by the arm and drag me towards the playground: urgent proposals to take a swing at the "Pas de Geant," or to join in a certain romping hide-and-seek game called "Un, deux, trois," were formerly also of hourly occurrence; but all these little attentions had ceased some time ago ceased, too, without my finding it necessary to be at the trouble of point-blank cutting them short.
It was to this climb Garratt Skinner's thoughts had perpetually recurred during that one summer afternoon in the garden in Dorsetshire, when he had forgotten his secrecy and spoken even with his enemy of the one passion they had in common. Chayne worked out the dates and they fitted in with his belief. Two days ago Garratt Skinner started to cross the Col du Géant.
And indeed he had, a better plan and a simpler one, a plan which not merely would give to any uttered suspicion the complexion of malignancy, but must even bring Mr. Garratt Skinner honor and great praise. But no idea of the plan occurred either to Sylvia or to Chayne as all through that long hot day they toiled up the ice-fall of the Col du Géant and over the passes.
Perched upon a knoll beside his little patch of vineyard, it commands perspective. From his upper window Rogers saw and remembered.... High up against the fading sky ridges of limestone cliff shine out here and there, and upon the vast slopes of Boudry l'immense geant de Boudry lies a flung cloak of forest that knows no single seam.
My companions are evidently agitated, and with good reason, too; for the lights which we could see a long way below us approach with terrible rapidity. We reached the earth rather quicker than we left it. "Suddenly we feel a dreadful shock, followed by ominous crackings. The car has grounded. The 'Geant' has made its descent. But in what part of the habitable globe, and under what zone? At Meaux!"
There would be too many parties abroad amongst its ice séracs on these days of summer for any deed which needed solitude and secrecy. "When do you expect them back?" "In five days, monsieur; not before." And at this reply Chayne's fears were all renewed. For clearly the expedition was not to end with the passage of the Col du Géant.
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