Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/84

Rh hour and three-quarters including halts, from the Col.

My second guide, Venetz, had been sent across the Théodule, partly because the knapsack was too heavy for the Col du Lion, but mainly because Burgener thought that two were a better party than three on ground of that sort. We had strictly enjoined hini not to give way to his prevailing weakness, a love of sleep, but to watch for our arrival in the Col. So soon as he saw us we had bidden him to pursue and slay sundry of the bony fowls which, in those remote days, constituted the only form of nutriment attainable at the head of Val Tournanche. We arrived, therefore, with the fond anticipation of. a hot lunch. But on reaching the inn we found the silence of death reigning. We battered at the door with our axes, or more correctly with my axe, and such parts of Burgener's as still survived; we even attempted to force the window-shutters off their hinges. But all was of no avail; the Val Tournanche carpenters had done their work too well, and I was just on the point of tracking down the valley when Burgener emerged from the cow-shed, dragging a sleepy native from its pestilential interior. So soon as this native, by dint of much shaking on Burgener's part, and much rubbing of eyes, coughing, and other sleep-destroying processes on his own, had fairly recovered consciousness, he directed us to one particular window, and,