A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

The fury of the baffled Expedition exceeded all bounds.

They even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this

innocent dumb brute. But I stood between them and their prey,

menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks,

and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder,

and it was directly over my corpse. Even as I spoke I

saw that my doom was sealed, except a miracle supervened

to divert these madmen from their fell purpose. I see

the sickening wall of weapons now; I see that advancing

host as I saw it then, I see the hate in those cruel eyes;

I remember how I drooped my head upon my breast,

I feel again the sudden earthquake shock in my rear,

administered by the very ram I was sacrificing myself to save;

I hear once more the typhoon of laughter that burst from

the assaulting column as I clove it from van to rear

like a Sepoy shot from a Rodman gun.

I was saved. Yes, I was saved, and by the merciful instinct

of ingratitude which nature had planted in the breast

of that treacherous beast. The grace which eloquence

had failed to work in those men’s hearts, had been wrought

by a laugh. The ram was set free and my life was spared.

We lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon

as he had placed a half-mile between himself and us.

To avert suspicion, he had judged it best that the line

should continue to move; so he caught that ram, and at

the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast

to it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon,

overcome by fatigue and distress. When he allowed the ram

to get up it fell to plunging around, trying to rid itself

of the rope, and this was the signal which we had risen

up with glad shouts to obey. We had followed this ram

round and round in a circle all day–a thing which was

proven by the discovery that we had watered the Expedition

seven times at one and same spring in seven hours.

As expert a woodman as I am, I had somehow failed to notice

this until my attention was called to it by a hog.

This hog was always wallowing there, and as he was the

only hog we saw, his frequent repetition, together with

his unvarying similarity to himself, finally caused me

to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led

me to the deduction that this must be the same spring,

also–which indeed it was.

I made a note of this curious thing, as showing

in a striking manner the relative difference between

glacial action and the action of the hog. It is now

a well-established fact that glaciers move; I consider

that my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness,

that a hog in a spring does not move. I shall be glad

to receive the opinions of other observers upon this point.

To return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide,

and then I shall be done with him. After leaving the ram

tied to the rope, he had wandered at large a while,

and then happened to run across a cow. Judging that

a cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took

her by the tail, and the result justified his judgment.

She nibbled her leisurely way downhill till it was near

milking-time, then she struck for home and towed him

into Zermatt.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

[I Conquer the Gorner Grat]

We went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram

had brought us. The men were greatly fatigued.

Their conviction that we were lost was forgotten in the cheer

of a good supper, and before the reaction had a chance

to set in, I loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed.

Next morning I was considering in my mind our desperate

situation and trying to think of a remedy, when Harris

came to me with a Baedeker map which showed conclusively

that the mountain we were on was still in Switzerland–yes,

every part of it was in Switzerland. So we were not lost,