With the sun burning upon his face, and his feet freezing in the
ice-steps, Walter Hine stood and moved, and stood again all through that
afternoon. Fatigue gained upon him, and fear did not let him go. "If only
I get off this mountain," he said to himself with heartfelt longing,
"never again!" When near to the cliffs Pierre Delouvain stopped. In front
of him the wall was plainly inaccessible. Far away to the left there was
a depression up which possibly a way might be forced.
"I think, monsieur, that must be the way," said Pierre.
"But you should _know_" said Garratt Skinner.
"It is some time since I was here. I have forgotten;" and Pierre began to
traverse the ice-slope to the left. Garratt Skinner followed without a
word. But he knew that when he had ascended Mont Blanc by the Brenva
route twenty-three years before, he had kept to the right along the rocks
to a point where that ice-wall was crevassed, and through that crevasse
had found his path. They passed quickly beneath an overhanging rib of ice
which jutted out from the wall, and reached the angle then formed at four
o'clock in the afternoon.
"Our last difficulty, Wallie," said Garratt Skinner, as he cut a
large step in which Hine might stand. "Once up that wall, our
troubles are over."
Walter Hine looked at the wall. It was not smooth ice, it was true;
blocks had broken loose from it, and had left it bulging out here,
there, and in places fissured.
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