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Bower had fully ten feet of the rearmost section of rope in hand. His head was thrown well back. Standing with his face to the ice, he was striving to look over the lip of the schrund. Stampa, feeling a steady tension, must be expecting the announcement momentarily that Barth was crossing the narrow crevice at the bottom.
Therefore, the passage of a schrund, or large, shallow crevasse was child's play to him. This departure from all the canons of the craft as imparted by Stampa during their first week on the hills together, struck Spencer as exceedingly dangerous. He reflected that were it not for the words he had overheard, he would never have known of this curious proceeding.
If, madam," Zimmermann went on with all the satisfaction attendant on the enunciation of a scientific truth, "we take a body and drop it in the schrund of this gletscher; and the ice-stream moves so slower at its base than on the upper part, and the ice will cover it; efen if we could reach the base, which is a mile in depth. Then, see you, it is all caused by the motion of the ice "
There is really only five minutes of interest on the Schwartzberg-Weissthor. We came to that in the arête, for after following it for a few minutes we turned off it to the left and came to the bergschrund, the big crevasse which separates the highest snows or ice from the glacier. By now I was quite anxious that the guides should find the schrund difficult.
The uppermost crevasse, or "bergschrund," where the névé was attached to the mountain, was from 12 to 14 feet wide, and was bridged in a few places by the remains of snow avalanches. Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was beautifully revealed.
Here was a nice point submitted to his judgment, whether to follow the line of the recently formed schrund yawning at his feet, or endeavor to cross it, or go back to the scene of the landslip? That was where Barth was lacking. In that instant he resigned his pride of place without further effort to retain it. He was in the van, but did not lead. Thenceforth Stampa was master.
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