red, times when his heart within him had
swelled with a longing to cry out, "Let us go back!" But he had not
dared. He had been steadied across the narrow bridge with the rope,
hauled up the ice-walls and let down again on the other side. But he had
come through. He took some pride in the exploit as he gazed back from the
top of the snow-slope across the tumult of ice to the rocks on which he
had slipped. He had come through safely, and he was encouraged to go on.

"We won't stop here, I think," said Garratt Skinner. They had already
halted upon the glacier for a second breakfast. The sun was getting hot
upon the slopes above, and small showers of snow and crusts of ice were
beginning to shoot down the gullies of the buttress at the base of which
they stood. "We will have a third breakfast when we are out of range." He
called to Delouvain who was examining the face of the rock-buttress up
which they must ascend to its crest and said: "It looks as if we should
do well to work out to the right I think."

The rocks were difficult, but their difficulty was not fully appreciated
by Walter Hine. Nor did he understand the danger. There were gullies in
which new snow lay in a thin crust over hard ice. He noticed that in
those gullies the steps were cut deep into the ice below, that Garratt
Skinner bade him not loiter, and that Pierre Delouvain in front made
himself fast and drew in the rope with a particular care when it came to
his turn to move. But he did not know that all that surface snow might
peel off in a moment, and swish down the cliffs, sweeping the party from
their feet. There were rounded rocks and slabs with no hold for hand or
foot but roughness, roughness in the surface, and here and there a
wrinkle. But the guide went first, as often as not pushed up by Garratt
Skinner, and Walter Hine, like many another inefficient man before him,
came up, like a bundle, on the rope afterward. Thus they climbed for
three hours more. Walter Hine, nursed by gradually lengthening
expeditions, was not as yet tired. Moreover the exhilaration of the air,
and excitement, helped to keep fatigue aloof. They rested just below the
crest of the ridge and took another meal.

"Eat often and little. That's the golden rule," said Garratt Skinner. "No
brandy, Wallie. Keep that in your flask!"

Pierre Delouvain, however, followed a practice not unknown amongst
Chamonix guides.

"Absinthe is good on the mountains," said he.

When they rose,