Greatly grown in breadth and interest.
We halted awhile at a little public house, where we
had bread and cheese and a quart or two of fresh milk,
out on the porch, with the big panorama all before us - and
then moved on again.
Ten minutes afterward we met a hot, red-faced man plunging
down the mountain, making mighty strides, swinging his
alpenstock ahead of him, and taking a grip on the ground
with its iron point to support these big strides.
He stopped, fanned himself with his hat, swabbed the
perspiration from his face and neck with a red handkerchief,
panted a moment or two, and asked how far to Waeggis.
I said three hours. He looked surprised, and said:
"Why, it seems as if I could toss a biscuit into the lake
from here, it's so close by. Is that an inn, there?"
I said it was.
"Well," said he, "I can't stand another three hours,
I've had enough today; I'll take a bed there."
I asked:
"Are we nearly to the top?"
"Nearly to the TOP? Why, bless your soul, you haven't
really started, yet."
I said we would put up at the inn, too. So we turned
back and ordered a hot supper, and had quite a jolly
evening of it with this Englishman.
The German landlady gave us neat rooms and nice beds,
and when I and my agent turned in, it was with the resolution
to be up early and make the utmost of our first Alpine sunrise.
But of course we were dead tired, and slept like policemen;
so when we awoke in the morning and ran to the window it
was already too late, because it was half past eleven.
It was a sharp disappointment. However, we ordered
breakfast and told the landlady to call the Englishman,
but she said he was already up and off at daybreak - and
swearing like mad about something or other. We could not
find out what the matter was. He had asked the landlady
the altitude of her place above the level of the lake,
and she told him fourteen hundred and ninety-five feet.
That was all that was said; then he lost his temper.
He said that between - - - fools and guide-books, a man
could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a
country like this to last him a year. Harris believed
our boy had been loading him up with misinformation;
and this was probably the case, for his epithet described
that boy to a dot.
We got under way about the turn of noon, and pulled out
for the summit again, with a fresh and vigorous step.
When we had gone about two hundred yards, and stopped
to rest, I glanced to the left while I was lighting my pipe,
and in the distance detected a long worm of black smoke
crawling lazily up the steep mountain.
