I saw it was necessary to yield, and down we went. Hunger was beginning to tell, and we made haste. Where the slopes were not seamed with open crevasses we "glissaded," which is a very expeditious and exhilarating method of getting down a mountain, although unsafe unless one is certain of his ground. Sometimes we slid on our feet, steadying ourselves with our batons or ice-axes, and sometimes I sat on the hard snow and glided like a Turk on a toboggan slide, the tassel of my woollen cap fluttering behind in the wind. We took the unbridged crevasses with flying leaps, and so plunged rapidly downward, with frequent keen regrets on my part, because the weather seemed mending again. But it would not do to turn back now in our half-famished condition, and we were glad when the Grands Mulets hove in sight below, a black squadron in a sea of snow. [Illustration: M. JANSSEN'S OBSERVATORY ON TOP OF MONT BLANC.] In Chamonix I took a day or two to thaw out and mend bruises, and then ran over to Martigny, crossed the Grand St. Bernard, the St. Gotthard, and the Grimsel passes, spent a week in William Tell's country, prowling about the ruins of old castles and the sites of legendary battles, and finally settled down in Milan to feast my eyes on the pinnacles of its wondrous cathedral. But my failure to reach the top of Mont Blanc cast a perceptible shadow over everything I saw. One day, the 27th of August, as I stood on the cathedral spire, the sun lay warm upon the Alps, and Mont Blanc shone in the distance. "It is time to go," I said to myself; and descending, I hurried to my hotel and packed a gripsack. The night express via Mont Cenis placed me in Geneva the next morning in time to catch the first train for Cluses. The same evening the diligence landed me in Chamonix. I sent for Couttet. "Mont Blanc in the morning," I said. "Delighted, monsieur; we'll do it this time." "Storm or no storm?" "Yes." It so happened that I was to hear one more story of disaster before getting to the top of Mont Blanc. While I watched the distant mountain from the Milan cathedral spire the closing scene of a new tragedy was being enacted amid its merciless crevasses. Dr. Robert Schnurdreher, an advocate of Prague, accompanied by Michael Savoye, guide, and Laurent Brou, porter, ascended Mont Blanc from the Italian side on August 17th, and passed the night in the hut on the Bosses du Dromadaire where, six days before, I had had a stormy experience. But now the weather was superb, and when, on the morning of the 18th, they started to descend to Chamonix, no thought of impending evil could have oppressed their minds. They passed the Grand Plateau and the Petit Plateau in safety, and reached the labyrinth of crevasses between the cliffs of the Dome du Gouter and the Grands Mulets. Just what happened then no one will ever know, but there they disappeared from the world of the living.