Then he heard voices, and saw faces looking at him as through a mist, also he felt something in his mouth and throat, which seemed to burn them. One of the voices, it was that of the guide, said: "Good, good! He finds himself, this young English hero. See, his eyes open; more cognac, it will make him happy, and prevent the shock. Never mind the other one; he is all right, the stupid."
Godfrey sat up and tried to lift his arm to thrust away the flask which he saw approaching him, but he could not.
"Take that burning stuff away, Karl, confound you," he said.
Then Karl, a good honest fellow, who was on his knees beside him, threw his arms about him, and embraced him in a way that Godfrey thought theatrical and unpleasant, while all the others, except the rescued man, who lay semi-comatose, set up a kind of pæan of praise, like a Greek chorus.
"Oh! shut up!" said Godfrey, "if we waste so much time we shall never get to the top," a remark at which they all burst out laughing.
"They talk of Providence on the Alps," shouted Karl in stentorian tones, while he performed a kind of war-dance, "but that's the kind of providence for me," and he pointed to Godfrey. "Many things have I seen in my trade as guide, but never one like this. What? To cut the rope for the sake of Monsieur there," and he pointed to number two, whose share in the great adventure was being overlooked, "before giving himself to almost certain death for the sake of Monsieur with the weak heart, who had no business on a mountain; to stretch over the precipice as the line parted, and hold Monsieur with the weak heart for all that while, till I could get a noose round him--yes, to go on holding him after he himself was almost dead--without a mind! Good God! never has there been such a story in my lifetime on these Alps, or in that of my father before me."
Then came the descent, Godfrey supported on the shoulder of the stalwart Karl, who, full of delight at this great escape from tragedy, and at having a tale to tell which would last him for the rest of his life, "jodelled" spontaneously at intervals in his best "large-tip" voice, and occasionally skipped about like a young camel, while "Monsieur with the weak heart" was carried in a chair provided to bear elderly ladies up the lower slopes of the Alps.
Some swift-footed mountaineer had sped down to the village ahead of them and told all the story, with the result that when they reached the outskirts of the place, an excited crowd was waiting to greet them, including two local reporters for Swiss journals.