"No, no, Captain," I expostulated. "You might lose your foothold and perish."
"Not at all," rejoined he, with a laugh. "I am as sure-footed as a goat. But if you think it risky, Monsieur, I forbear. But the snow looks solid as adamant. I fear I shall not be able to erect this flag, unless I have a firm spot for my feet."
By this time our craft had reached a proper position,--her stern alongside and almost in contact with the jutting peak,--to answer the ambitious purpose of the Frenchman. Raising the flag of the Republic in his hand, he requested us all to do it proper honor,--to salute it with a "three times three,"--as he should succeed in securing it in its place. Cautiously extending the staff, he brought it in contact with the snow, and gave it several light blows, for the purpose of ascertaining its solidity. It seemed of almost icy texture, and emitted a half-sharp and half-muffled sound in reply. Then, elevating the standard aloft in both hands, he brought it down with force, as the farmer urges a stake into the ground; not doubting, as would seem, that a succession of such blows would be needed in order to achieve his purpose.
A single stroke of the shaft, however, proved more than enough. To the surprise and dismay of us all, the firm ringing surface turned out but a shell, and all beneath, a loose bed of sparkling snow-crystals, like white sand. The flag sunk down and disappeared, and De Aëry, losing his balance, plunged over and went with it.
We gazed after him in speechless horror. Before any one of us had sufficiently recovered himself to speak, we were startled by a dull sound, like a rushing wind, or distant, rumbling thunder; and an immense mass of snow, many hundred feet in depth, and covering a third of the cone, parted from its place, and, like a great, foaming wave, broken and shapeless, rushed down the mountain's side. For the moment, all eyes were fixed upon it. At first, it swept on without cohering, like a cataract of sand; but, on coming in contact with the moister snow below, it formed into a thousand balls and masses, some rolling and some sliding, but each gathering bulk and velocity as it went.
By the aid of our glasses we were able to sweep the rough slopes and precipitous descents below, to the distance of many miles; and, forgetting De Aëry, we watched the development of the phenomenon with terror. The larger slides gradually absorbed the smaller ones, as common fish are swallowed by sharks; but those which remained, fattened and expanded by what they fed on, assumed enormous dimensions. Choosing different paths, they pursued their course in smoking tracks of devastation. Rocks, precipices, forests, furnished no obstruction. Roaring, crashing onward, as though Mars or the Sun had opened its batteries upon us, those sliding, whirling worlds of snow swept through valleys large enough to have furnished sites for cities, without a check, and bore down or over-leaped all obstacles, as easily as a man would walk over an ant-hill, or some hollow where a toad had burrowed. Finally they were lost to sight, passing behind intervening spurs or ridges of the mountain, or becoming hidden in the cloud-mists which lay heavily about its base; but the sound continued to roll back upon us for some time, like the roar of distant artillery. I could no longer wonder at the terror with which the cry of an avalanche is said to fill the dwellers among the Alps.