Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/57

Rh length; slowly and gently at first, then faster and faster, at last taking great jumps in the air, striking a stream of fire at every touch, which shone out brightly as it entered the gloomy valley below, and long after it was out of sight we heard it bounding downwards, and then settle with a subdued crash on the glacier beneath. As we turned back from this curious sight, Reynaud asked if we had ever seen a torrent on fire, and told us that in the spring, the Durance, swollen by the melting of the snow, sometimes brings down so many rocks, that, where it passes through a narrow gorge at La Bessée, no water whatever is seen, but only boulders rolling over and over, grinding each other into powder, and striking so many sparks that the stream looks as if it were on fire.

We had another merry evening with nothing to mar it; the weather was perfect, and we lay backward in luxurious repose, looking at the sky spangled with its ten thousand brilliant lights.

Macdonald related his experiences over the café noir. He had travelled day and night for several days in order to join us, but had failed to find our first bivouac, and had camped a few hundred yards from us under another rock, higher up the mountain. The next morning he discerned us going along a ridge at a great height above him, and as it was useless to endeavour to overtake us, he lay down and watched with a heavy heart until we had turned the corner of a buttress, and vanished out of sight.