est slip would have sent me to the bottom; and from the height
to which I had at last climbed this might have meant a broken arm or
leg, for there was no water to fall into but a few inches trickling
among the stones.

"And so I cut on and on, herrs, till, as I looked up far above me, I
could see the gleam of the sun, and hope grew stronger and sent strength
into my arms as I swung my axe.

"Higher and higher, always getting up by making a notch for each foot,
till my arms began to grow heavy as lead. But still I worked on, every
step cut bringing me nearer to the surface, though at the end of each
hour's hard labour I seemed very little advanced; and at last, as I grew
more weary, my spirits began to sink again, for the slope grew more and
more steep, though I would not own to it myself. Still it was steeper
and steeper, and I cut desperately, and made deep notches into which I
forced my feet, while I cut again till the last part was nearly
perpendicular; and after cutting my last step I felt that my task was
done, for I had reached a ledge over which I was able to climb, till I
could lie half upon it, knowing that I had come to where the wall went
straight up, and that it would be impossible to hold on to that slippery
ice and cut my way higher.

"Still, I would not give up, herrs; but reached up and cut till I felt
that I was gliding off the narrow ledge, and then I had to rest, and use
my axe to cut notches for my feet to hold and others for my hands, for
the least slip would have sent me down like a stone in a couloir, and I
wanted rest before I had to get down again. I asked myself if I could;
and a cold feeling came over me, as I thought that all this work had
been for nothing, and that the end had now really come.

"And then I took my axe again as it lay beside me, and began cutting in
a madly foolish kind of way. There was no use in it. I could not help
myself by cutting; but I could hear the lumps of ice hissing down, and
it made me think, so that the work did me good. More, it did other
good, for, as I have thought over it since, it has made me try to pray
as a man should pray who has been delivered from a terrible fall. For
those last blows of my axe must have been the ones which you heard, Herr
Saxe--the blows which brought you to my help just when my arms were
ready to sink to my side, and I had fully determined in my own mind that
I could never get down from the ledge to the little river alive."