He had crossed the sloping peak of the Matterhorn by this time, and could espy the precipices of the Weisshorn once more. The Valley of Zermatt running down to the pass was but a trench in a desolation from which the eyes must shrink. Knowing little of the place, he had few landmarks; but the Gorner Glacier was one of them, and he traced it with precision. There he perceived great tendrils of pure ice, bent and gnarled as the trunks of trees; black rocks upon which no snow could rest; fathomless depths of ice so blue that a magic river should lie beneath them. And there, as elsewhere, the stillness appalled him. He was glad that it was so, for wind was the enemy. Let the weather change, and he might still be defeated. He knew it, and his heart sank at the remembrance. A great endeavour is chiefly a story of great hopes. This man had dreamed of such an opportunity as this—he knew not in what phase of his calling—but he had dreamed that some day the world would hail him as a victor, and that his name would be known to men. Now it seemed that the moment was at hand. The immensity of his achievement was hardly present to his mind. Sometimes he was almost afraid for himself, saying, "I am jesting with my fellow-men; it is the machine and not the man which counts in the story of the sciences." At other times a great pride in what he had done ran like fire through his veins. The whole world must know his name to-morrow. If he fell dead then and there upon the black rocks of the Matterhorn, they must still say that he of all living men had first crossed the summit of Mont Blanc. He knew it, and flushed at the knowledge. He had not lived in vain; perchance, should the supreme prize be his, he was about to enter upon a new life whose rewards he would not dwell upon. Others had told him so; he was content to believe them.