I
had committed myself I would not back down; I would
ascend Mont Blanc if it cost me my life. I told the man
to slant his machine in the proper direction and let us be off.

Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I heartened
him up and said I would hold his hand all the way; so he
gave his consent, though he trembled a little at first.
I took a last pathetic look upon the pleasant summer scene
about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass and prepared
to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows.

We took our way carefully and cautiously across the great
Glacier des Bossons, over yawning and terrific crevices
and among imposing crags and buttresses of ice which were
fringed with icicles of gigantic proportions. The desert
of ice that stretched far and wide about us was wild and
desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us
were so great that at times I was minded to turn back.
But I pulled my pluck together and pushed on.

We passed the glacier safely and began to mount
the steeps beyond, with great alacrity. When we
were seven minutes out from the starting-point, we
reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect;
an apparently limitless continent of gleaming snow was
tilted heavenward before our faces. As my eye followed
that awful acclivity far away up into the remote skies,
it seemed to me that all I had ever seen before of sublimity
and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this.

We rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed.
Within three minutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us,
and stopped to observe them. They were toiling up a long,
slanting ridge of snow--twelve persons, roped together some
fifteen feet apart, marching in single file, and strongly
marked against the clear blue sky. One was a woman.
We could see them lift their feet and put them down;
we saw them swing their alpenstocks forward in unison,
like so many pendulums, and then bear their weight
upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief.
They dragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way,
for they had been climbing steadily from the Grand Mulets,
on the Glacier des Dossons, since three in the morning,
and it was eleven, now. We saw them sink down in the
snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle.
After a while they moved on, and as they approached the final
short dash of the home-stretch we closed up on them and
joined them.

Presently we all st