Then at last they were all up--the men lying on the ground, the poor mules side by side, their heads all one way, their nostrils widely distended as they vainly sought more air, their legs shaking, and the sweat pouring in rivers from their heaving flanks--and Dyke stood there laughing, snapping his fingers, chaffing, “jollying” his too feeble crowd. He also praised them, swearing that they had done grandly, and that they might feel proud of themselves. But it would not do to linger, he added; for the afternoon was getting far advanced, and the lower they could get before pitching their camp the better it would be. A few more minutes, and then down we go.
For these minutes he sat beside his Emmie’s prostrate form, and “jollied” her in her turn.
“You angel, you have been magnificent. You have set us all an example.” And laughingly he confessed that, after her performance on board ship, he had dreaded lest she might be sick again in the mountains. He confessed, too, that until they were fairly started and “things began to come back” to him, he had forgotten that there was this little high bit to negotiate. “We are at an elevation of sixteen thousand feet. Do you realize it? We are well above the summit of Mont Blanc. In Europe people would say we had made a remarkable ascent.”--and he laughed. “Yes, quite an ascent--something to write about to the newspapers. It is only out here, in this glorious atmosphere, that it seems such a trifle. No, I oughtn’t to have said that. It was very wrong of me. For of course I know that it must have tired you. You dear girl, you are so splendid and brave that I forget. But all easy going now--as I promised you. And, Emmie, I want you to have a good look at the view. You’ll say it’s worth all the trouble. Sit up, dear.”
She obeyed him, and looked about her with dazed eyes at the incredibly superb panorama. Truly, if one had been able to breathe painlessly, if one’s head had not seemed to be bursting, if the murderous sun had not been melting one’s spine and battering at one’s shoulders, it was a view to compensate one for the trouble of attaining it.
One seemed to be lying on the roof of the world, and the nearer peaks, which still rose above them, were its towers and cupolas; across its parapet one gazed at a vast semi-circle of sunlit space. Looked at from here, the great brilliantly-coloured hills through which they had fought their way appeared smooth, gently curved and rounded, dull of tone; northward one saw, as if painted on a map in sepia, with streaks and patches untouched by the brush, a perspective of almost parallel ridges that one guessed were the outlines of unending valleys; while eastward beyond a range of lower summits, one had a glimpse of the plains themselves and a true horizon, a flat, faintly golden sea meeting the sky at a distance of eighty, a hundred, or perhaps more miles away. Closer to one’s eyes, if one looked directly downward, there were strong colours, forceful shapes. Spires of red rock glowed fiercely beside a profound gorge filled with purple shadow; and an immense unbroken cloak of snow that stretched from the crest to the base of one neighbouring hill gave off a white smoke in the sun’s rays and made rainbow shafts hover amidst the smoke. But the prevailing impression was of colourless distance, measureless space, and light so strong that it destroyed the substance and form of all that it shone upon.