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The rope was put on; Pierre Delouvain led the way, Walter Hine as the weakest of the party was placed in the middle, Garratt Skinner came last; the three men mounted by a snow-slope and a gully to the top of the rocks which supported the upper Brenva glacier. "That's our road, Wallie," said Garratt Skinner.
Behind you the snow-slope sinks with perilous steepness towards the wilderness of glacier and rock through which the ascent has lain. But in front the ice sinks with even greater steepness for a few feet or yards. Then it curves over and disappears, and the next thing that the eye catches is the meadowland of Grindelwald, some 9,000 feet below.
The sunset rays striking the snow-slope of Higuerota from afar gave it an air of rosy youth, while the serrated mass of distant peaks remained black, as if calcined in the fiery radiance.
They turned over on to the eastern face of the mountain and traversed in a straight line across the great snow-slope which sweeps down in one white unbroken curtain toward the Glacier of Saleinaz. Their order had been changed. First Jean advanced. Chayne followed and after him came Sylvia. The leading guide kicked a step or two in the snow. Then he used the adz of his ax.
To go and find new ways on virgin mountains and glaciers was not easy work. During our rapid scouting journey we had a number of accidents. Going over a snow-slope one day I slipped and shot down a snow-slope with terrific speed for a distance of three hundred yards, just escaping getting smashed to pieces at the end of this involuntary toboganning.
The weather was stormy, and misinterpreting the dialect of some natives who in reality pointed out the right way I missed the track, and found myself under the cliffs of Monte Viso. A gap that was occasionally seen in the ridge connecting it with the mountains to the east tempted me up, and after a battle with a snow-slope of excessive steepness, I reached the summit.
On gaining each successive ledge of the terraced hill-side, they walked along it in the hope of reaching better ground, or another snow-slope; but each ledge ended in a precipice, so that there was no resource left but to scramble down to the ledge below to find a similar disappointment.
And she dropped lightly on to the snow-slope beaten by the wind into an icy buttress against the wall. A moment later he dropped beside her. "My father is at the bridge," he said, as they scrambled down to the narrow path that runs along the river bank beneath the walls. "He is waiting for us there with a carriage and a priest." Juanita stopped short. "Oh, I wish I had not come!" she exclaimed.
At the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet, and came down in the midst of a cloud of snow upon a snow-slope even steeper than the one above.
That morning we had all played football on the ice together, had slidden and tumbled down the snow-slope together, and now we were about to mess together in the hall. Still further, our company was to be increased, and our festive board to be graced, by the presence of Waboose and her mother.
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