dendrons and other flowers
on a ground of rich brown, green, and grey. Steadily upwards, over the
Glacier des Bossons, they went, with airy cloudlets floating around
them, with the summit at which they aimed, the Dome du Gouter, and the
Aiguille du Gouter in front, luring them on, and other giant Aiguilles
around watching them. Several hours of steady climbing brought them to
the Pierre l'Echelle, where they were furnished with woollen leggings to
protect their legs from the snow. Here also they procured a ladder and
began the tedious work of traversing the glaciers. Hitherto their route
had lain chiefly on solid ground--over grassy slopes and along rocky
paths. It was now to be confined almost entirely to the ice, which they
found to be cut up in all directions with fissures, so that great
caution was needed in crossing crevasses and creeping round slippery
ridges, and progress was for some time very slow.

Coming to one of the crevasses which was too wide to leap, the ladder
was put in requisition. The iron spikes with which one end of it was
shod were driven firmly into the ice at one side of the chasm and the
other end rested on the opposite side.

Antoine crossed first and then held out his hand to the Professor, who
followed, but the man of science was an expert ice-man, and in another
moment stood at the guide's side without having required assistance.
Not so Captain Wopper.

"I'm not exactly a feather," he said, looking with a doubtful expression
at the frail bridge.

"It bore me well enough, Captain," said the Professor with a smile.

"That's just what it didn't," replied the Captain, "it seemed to me to
bend too much under you; besides, although I'm bound to admit that
you're a good lump of a man, Professor, I suspect there's a couple of
stones more on me than on you. If it was only a rope, now, such as I've
bin used to, I'd go at it at once, but--"

"It is quite strong enough," said the guide confidently.

"Well, here goes," returned the mariner, "but if it gives way, Antoine,
I'll have you hanged for murder."

Uttering this threat he crossed in safety, the others followed, and the
party advanced over a part of the glacier which was rugged with mounds,
towers, obelisks, and pyramids of ice. For some time nothing serious
interrupted their progress until they came to another wide crevasse,
when it was found, to the guide's indignation, that the ladder had been
purposely left behind by the porte