I did not throw away the books till we
were within a few feet of the water, and clung to my manuscripts to the
very last. Hope there seemed none whatever--yet, strangely enough we
were neither of us utterly hopeless, and even when the evil that we
dreaded was upon us, and that which we greatly feared had come, we sat in
the car of the balloon with the waters up to our middle, and still smiled
with a ghastly hopefulness to one another.
* * *
He who has crossed the St. Gothard will remember that below Andermatt
there is one of those Alpine gorges which reach the very utmost limits of
the sublime and terrible. The feelings of the traveller have become more
and more highly wrought at every step, until at last the naked and
overhanging precipices seem to close above his head, as he crosses a
bridge hung in mid-air over a roaring waterfall, and enters on the
darkness of a tunnel, hewn out of the rock.
What can be in store for him on emerging? Surely something even wilder
and more desolate than that which he has seen already; yet his
imagination is paralysed, and can suggest no fancy or vision of anything
to surpass the reality which he had just witnessed. Awed and breathless
he advances; when lo! the light of the afternoon sun welcomes him as he
leaves the tunnel, and behold a smiling valley--a babbling brook, a
village with tall belfries, and meadows of brilliant green--these are the
things which greet him, and he smiles to himself as the terror passes
away and in another moment is forgotten.
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