HOW MR. HANS SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN RIVER, AND HOW HE
PROSPERED THEREIN
The King of the Golden River had hardly
made the extraordinary exit related in the last chapter,
before Hans and Schwartz came roaring into the house
very savagely drunk. The discovery of the total
loss of their last piece of plate had the effect of
sobering them just enough to enable them to stand
over Gluck, beating him very steadily for a quarter
of an hour; at the expiration of which period they
dropped into a couple of chairs and requested to know
what he had got to say for himself. Gluck told
them his story, of which, of course, they did not
believe a word. They beat him again, till their
arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the
morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered
to his story obtained him some degree of credence;
the immediate consequence of which was that the two
brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty
question, which of them should try his fortune first,
drew their swords and began fighting. The noise
of the fray alarmed the neighbors, who, finding they
could not pacify the combatants, sent for the constable.
Hans, on hearing this, contrived to
escape, and hid himself; but Schwartz was taken before
the magistrate, fined for breaking the peace, and,
having drunk out his last penny the evening before,
was thrown into prison till he should pay.
When Hans heard this, he was much
delighted, and determined to set out immediately for
the Golden River. How to get the holy water was
the question. He went to the priest, but the
priest could not give any holy water to so abandoned
a character. So Hans went to vespers in the
evening for the first time in his life and, under pretense
of crossing himself, stole a cupful and returned home
in triumph.
Next morning he got up before the
sun rose, put the holy water into a strong flask,
and two bottles of wine and some meat in a basket,
slung them over his back, took his alpine staff in
his hand, and set off for the mountains.
On his way out of the town he had
to pass the prison, and as he looked in at the windows,
whom should he see but Schwartz himself peeping out
of the bars and looking very disconsolate.
“Good morning, brother,”
said Hans; “have you any message for the King
of the Golden River?”
Schwartz gnashed his teeth with rage
and shook the bars with all his strength, but Hans
only laughed at him and, advising him to make himself
comfortable till he came back again, shouldered his
basket, shook the bottle of holy water in Schwartz’s
face till it frothed again, and marched off in the
highest spirits in the world.
It was indeed a morning that might
have made anyone happy, even with no Golden River
to seek for. Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched
along the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains,
their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable
from the floating vapor but gradually ascending till
they caught the sunlight, which ran in sharp touches
of ruddy color along the angular crags, and pierced,
in long, level rays, through their fringes of spearlike
pine. Far above shot up red, splintered masses
of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads
of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of
sunlit snow traced down their chasms like a line of
forked lightning; and far beyond and far above all
these, fainter than the morning cloud but purer and
changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the utmost peaks
of the eternal snow.
The Golden River, which sprang from
one of the lower and snowless elevations, was now
nearly in shadow all but the uppermost jets
of spray, which rose like slow smoke above the undulating
line of the cataract and floated away in feeble wreaths
upon the morning wind.
On this object, and on this alone,
Hans’s eyes and thoughts were fixed. Forgetting
the distance he had to traverse, he set off at an imprudent
rate of walking, which greatly exhausted him before
he had scaled the first range of the green and low
hills. He was, moreover, surprised, on surmounting
them, to find that a large glacier, of whose existence,
notwithstanding his previous knowledge of the mountains,
he had been absolutely ignorant, lay between him and
the source of the Golden River. He entered on
it with the boldness of a practiced mountaineer, yet
he thought he had never traversed so strange or so
dangerous a glacier in his life. The ice was
excessively slippery, and out of all its chasms came
wild sounds of gushing water not monotonous
or low, but changeful and loud, rising occasionally
into drifting passages of wild melody, then breaking
off into short, melancholy tones or sudden shrieks
resembling those of human voices in distress or pain.
The ice was broken into thousands of confused shapes,
but none, Hans thought, like the ordinary forms of
splintered ice. There seemed a curious expression
about all their outlines a perpetual resemblance
to living features, distorted and scornful.
Myriads of deceitful shadows and lurid lights played
and floated about and through the pale blue pinnacles,
dazzling and confusing the sight of the traveler, while
his ears grew dull and his head giddy with the constant
gush and roar of the concealed waters. These
painful circumstances increased upon him as he advanced;
the ice crashed and yawned into fresh chasms at his
feet, tottering spires nodded around him and fell thundering
across his path; and though he had repeatedly faced
these dangers on the most terrific glaciers and in
the wildest weather, it was with a new and oppressive
feeling of panic terror that he leaped the last chasm
and flung himself, exhausted and shuddering, on the
firm turf of the mountain.
He had been compelled to abandon his
basket of food, which became a perilous incumbrance
on the glacier, and had now no means of refreshing
himself but by breaking off and eating some of the
pieces of ice. This, however, relieved his thirst;
an hour’s repose recruited his hardy frame,
and with the indomitable spirit of avarice he resumed
his laborious journey.
His way now lay straight up a ridge
of bare red rocks, without a blade of grass to ease
the foot or a projecting angle to afford an inch of
shade from the south sun. It was past noon and
the rays beat intensely upon the steep path, while
the whole atmosphere was motionless and penetrated
with heat. Intense thirst was soon added to the
bodily fatigue with which Hans was now afflicted;
glance after glance he cast on the flask of water
which hung at his belt. “Three drops are
enough,” at last thought he; “I may, at
least, cool my lips with it.”
He opened the flask and was raising
it to his lips, when his eye fell on an object lying
on the rock beside him; he thought it moved.
It was a small dog, apparently in the last agony of
death from thirst. Its tongue was out, its jaws
dry, its limbs extended lifelessly, and a swarm of
black ants were crawling about its lips and throat.
Its eye moved to the bottle which Hans held in his
hand. He raised it, drank, spurned the animal
with his foot, and passed on. And he did not
know how it was, but he thought that a strange shadow
had suddenly come across the blue sky.
The path became steeper and more rugged
every moment, and the high hill air, instead of refreshing
him, seemed to throw his blood into a fever.
The noise of the hill cataracts sounded like mockery
in his ears; they were all distant, and his thirst
increased every moment. Another hour passed,
and he again looked down to the flask at his side;
it was half empty, but there was much more than three
drops in it. He stopped to open it, and again,
as he did so, something moved in the path above him.
It was a fair child, stretched nearly lifeless on
the rock, its breast heaving with thirst, its eyes
closed, and its lips parched and burning. Hans
eyed it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And
a dark gray cloud came over the sun, and long, snakelike
shadows crept up along the mountain sides. Hans
struggled on. The sun was sinking, but its descent
seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden height of the
dead air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the
goal was near. He saw the cataract of the Golden
River springing from the hillside scarcely five hundred
feet above him. He paused for a moment to breathe,
and sprang on to complete his task.
At this instant a faint cry fell on
his ear. He turned, and saw a gray-haired old
man extended on the rocks. His eyes were sunk,
his features deadly pale and gathered into an expression
of despair. “Water!” he stretched
his arms to Hans, and cried feebly, “Water!
I am dying.”
“I have none,” replied
Hans; “thou hast had thy share of life.”
He strode over the prostrate body and darted on.
And a flash of blue lightning rose out of the East,
shaped like a sword; it shook thrice over the whole
heaven and left it dark with one heavy, impenetrable
shade. The sun was setting; it plunged towards
the horizon like a redhot ball. The roar of the
Golden River rose on Hans’s ear. He stood
at the brink of the chasm through which it ran.
Its waves were filled with the red glory of the sunset;
they shook their crests like tongues of fire, and
flashes of bloody light gleamed along their foam.
Their sound came mightier and mightier on his senses;
his brain grew giddy with the prolonged thunder.
Shuddering he drew the flask from his girdle and
hurled it into the center of the torrent. As
he did so, an icy chill shot through his limbs; he
staggered, shrieked, and fell. The waters closed
over his cry, and the moaning of the river rose wildly
into the night as it gushed over
THE BLACK STONE