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. Of course that was
the locomotive. We propped ourselves on our elbows at once,
to gaze, for we had never seen a mountain railway yet.
Presently we could make out the train. It seemed incredible
that that thing should creep straight up a sharp slant
like the roof of a house - but there it was, and it was doing
that very miracle.
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