Part 28 (1/2)
Only about two thousand feet more remained to be discussed, but this formed the toughest climb of all. For not only was the breeze now high and the gradient steep, but the cold was intense, while breathing was far from easy.
Indeed, although an ascent of ten to twelve thousand feet may not be considered a tall record for accomplished club-men in the Alpine regions of Europe, it would be a terrible undertaking for even those among the perpetual snows of the Antarctic.
It needed not only all the strength, but even all the courage that our heroes were possessed of, to finally succeed. For in many parts a single slip might have precipitated three of them at least into chasms or over precipices that were too fearful even to think of.
Indeed, several such slips did occur, but luckily the ropes held, and the foremost men, planting their feet firmly against the mountain-side, succeeded in preventing an accident.
The danger was quite as great, when steps had to be hewn on the sides of ice-rocks, and the labour in such cases five times as fatiguing, and happy they felt, on every such occasion, when they found themselves on a plateau.
”Whatever a man dares he can do!”
The grand old motto of, I believe, the clan Cameron; but many a man of a different clan has felt the force and the truth of these brave words.
Both Duncan and his brother seemed to do so, when they stood at long last with their comrades on the very summit of Mount Terror, and on the brink of its terrible, though partially extinct, crater.
Who would venture to peep over into the awful gulf, which, by the way, Ted Noolan believed to be really an opening into the nether regions--the regions of despair?
Duncan was the first to volunteer. The others followed suit with one exception.
What a gulf! It must have been acres in extent, and fully one thousand feet in depth. The precipices that formed its sides were at times even black and sheer; in some places overhanging, and in others sloping so that one might have tobogganed down into the regions of perpetual fire.
Not everywhere down yonder, however, were flames visible. It was more a collection of boiling, bubbling cauldrons, emitting jets of sulphurous smoke, the surface of the molten lava being continually crossed by flickering tongues of flame, transcendently beautiful.
Right in the centre was an irregular gaping mouth, and from this smoke now and then arose, accompanied by hurtling horrible thunders that made our strong-hearted heroes quiver. Not with fear, I shall not go so far as that, but no one could tell at what moment an eruption might take place.
To Duncan's waist the rope had been made fast, else he never would have ventured to lean over that awful crater.
It was the captain's turn next. Then came Conal's and the men's.
All but Ted.
”Is it me myself?” he said, drawing back, when asked to do as the others had done. ”Fegs! no. It is faint I would entoirely, and faint and fall over. Bedad! I've no raison to go to such a place as that before my time.”
Captain Talbot now proceeded to take his observations. His aneroid told him, to begin with, that the mountain was more nearly twelve than eleven thousand feet above the sea-level. Piercingly cold though it was, he took time to make a note of everything. But I should not have used the word ”cold”. This is far from descriptive of the lowness of temperature experienced, for the spirit thermometer stood at 40 below zero.
It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, and all hands were almost exhausted from fatigue. But Talbot was not so foolish as to give them stimulants. This would only have resulted in a sleepy or partially comatose state of the brain, and an accident would a.s.suredly have followed.
”Now, men, we have seen all there is to see, and I've taken my observations, so it is time we were getting down again to our sheltering cave, in which we shall pa.s.s one night more. But we can say that we have been the first to ascend this mighty mountain, and human feet have never before traversed the ground on which you now are standing.
”See here,” he continued, suiting the action to the word, ”I place this little flag--the British ensign--and though storms may rend it, this mountain, and all the land and country around, shall evermore belong to us.”
He handed the still-extended telescope to Duncan as he spoke and pointed to the south.
No open sea there! But the roughest, wildest kind of snow-clad country anyone could well imagine. Yet, far far away, the jagged peaks of many a mountain rose high on the horizon.
And now ”G.o.d save the Queen”, was sung, and the very crater itself seemed to echo back the wild cheers that rose high on the evening air.
Solemn and serious all must be now however, for although the descent would not occupy so much time, it was quite as fraught with peril as the coming up had been, and even more so.