we found ourselves perched on a great tongue of rock round which the
snow blew like the froth in a whirlpool. As we stopped for breath, Wake
shouted in my ear that this was the Black Stone.

'The what?' I yelled.

'The Schwarzstein. The Swiss call the pass the Schwarzsteinthor. You
can see it from Grunewald.'

I suppose every man has a tinge of superstition in him. To hear that
name in that ferocious place gave me a sudden access of confidence. I
seemed to see all my doings as part of a great predestined plan. Surely
it was not for nothing that the word which had been the key of my first
adventure in the long tussle should appear in this last phase. I felt
new strength in my legs and more vigour in my lungs. 'A good omen,' I
shouted. 'Wake, old man, we're going to win out.'

'The worst is still to come,' he said.

He was right. To get down that tongue of rock to the lower snows of the
couloir was a job that fairly brought us to the end of our tether. I
can feel yet the sour, bleak smell of wet rock and ice and the hard
nerve pain that racked my forehead. The Kaffirs used to say that there
were devils in the high berg, and this place was assuredly given over
to the powers of the air who had no thought of human life. I seemed to
be in the world which had endured from the eternity before man was
dreamed of. There was no mercy in it, and the elements were pitting
their immortal strength against two pigmies who had profaned their
sanctuary. I yearned for warmth, for the glow of a fire, for a tree or
blade of grass or anything which meant the sheltered homeliness of
mortality. I knew then what the Greeks meant by panic, for I was scared
by the apathy of nature. But the terror gave me a kind of comfort, too.
Ivery and his doings seemed less formidable. Let me but get out of this
cold hell and I could meet him with a new confidence.

Wake led, for he knew the road and the road wanted knowing. Otherwise
he should have been last on the rope, for that is the place of the
better man in a descent. I had some horrible moments following on when
the rope grew taut, for I had no help from it. We zigzagged down the
rock, sometimes driven to the ice of the adjacent couloirs, sometimes
on the outer ridge of the Black Stone, sometimes wriggling down little
cracks and over evil boiler-plates. The snow did not lie on it, but the
rock crackled with thin ice or oozed ice water. Often it was only by
the grace of God that I did not fall he