FullReads

One day they made up their minds to do Snowdon, and with a respectable basket of provender, and an alpenstock apiece (on which the name of the mountain–in fact, several mountains, had already been cut), they started off by the train to Llanberis.

Magnus minor, being an athlete, occupied most of the journey in training himself on cold boiled eggs and damsons; while Joe, being a poet, read somebody’s “Half Holiday” in a corner.

At the place where the train stopped they got out, and wondered whether they had not already had enough of it. It was a grilling hot day. They hadn’t an idea which was the way to Snowdon, and nobody seemed to know. A railway porter said “Second to the right”; but they could see he was humbugging. As if a mountain could be up a turning!

“Let’s jack it up,” said Magnus, who was feeling a little depressed after the damsons.

“Eh?” said Joe, “there’s no train back to what’s-his-name for two hours. What would it cost to cab it up?”

“Oh, pots,” said Magnus. “I tell you what–we might have a go of ginger-beer somewhere, and see how we feel after that.”

Whereupon in silence they found out the leading hotel or the place, and expended sixpence apiece on ginger-beer, at threepence a bottle.

Naturally they felt much refreshed after this, and, without condescending to further parley, decided to stroll on; only, as the porter had mentioned a turning to the right, they selected a turning to the left as decidedly more probable.

It may have been Snowdon, or it may not–in any case it was a hill, and a stiff one.

Magnus, the athlete, taking out his watch, said he meant to do it under twenty minutes, and begged Joe to time him.

Joe, the poet, agreed, and sat down on the shady side of a rock with the watch in one hand, the “Half Holiday” in the other, and his share of the damsons in his mouth.

“How long have I been?” shouted the athlete, after stumbling up the slippery grass slope for about five minutes.

“Time’s up!” shouted the poet.

Whereat Magnus, surprised at the rapid flight of the enemy, checked his upward career, and not only did that, but, assaying to take a seat on the grass, began to slide at a considerable pace, and in a sitting posture, downwards, until, in fact, he was providentially brought up short by the very rock under which his friend rested.

“Facilis descensus Averni,” observed Joe, making a brilliant sally in a foreign tongue.

The remark was followed by instant gloom. It was too painfully suggestive of the heathen deities. Besides, Magnus had nearly smashed himself against the rock, and had to be brought round with more cold boiled eggs and damsons.

After this the ascent was resumed in a more rational way. They accomplished a quarter of a mile in the phenomenal time of two hours, during which period they sat down fourteen times, drank at twenty-one streams, fell on their noses about eighty times, and wished a hundred times they had never heard the name of Snowdon.

“I thought you said there was a `thingamy’ all the way up?” said Joe.

“So there is–we’re on it,” said Magnus minor.

“Oh,” said Joe. He had previously had some misgivings that he was growing shortsighted, but he was convinced of it now.

At the rate at which they were going there was every prospect of getting to the top of the first ridge about three o’clock on the following afternoon. But Magnus minor and my brother Joe were fellows who preferred doing a thing thoroughly–even though speed had to be sacrificed to the thoroughness.

So they pegged on, detesting this mountain as if it had been Olympus itself, and making a material difference in the level of the lakes below by the number of tributary streams they tried to drink up by the way.

At last they actually began to get up a bit.