pick-and-axe

Updated: May 8, 2025

Headlights, extinguished momentarily, were thrown on again, lighting up the dirty, ragged edges of the snow walls, with their black marks of engine soot; throwing into sharp relief the smudge-faced figures of the pick-and-axe crews just emerging from the black maw of the tunnel; playing upon the smooth, white outlines of the forbidding mountains yet beyond, mountains which still must be conquered ere the top of the world was reached.

Courtney Ryley Cooper - The White Desert