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Pierre Delouvain took the lead again, and keeping by the line of rocks the party ascended the steep snow-slopes straight toward the wall of cliffs. But in a while the snow thinned, and the ax was brought into play again. Through the thin crust of snow, steps had to be cut into the ice beneath, and since there were still many hundreds of feet to be ascended, the steps were cut wide apart.
But if he climbed down the ice-arête, the snow-slopes, and the rocks below, if the snow-bridges held upon the glacier, there would be life for one of the three. Pierre Delouvain had little in common with that loyal race of Alpine guides who hold it as their most sacred tradition not to return home without their patrons.
'I already foresaw how much there was to be learnt if we were to do good sledding work in the spring, and to miss such an opportunity of gaining experience was terribly trying; however, there was nothing to be done but to nurse my wounded limb and to determine that never again would I be so rash as to run hard snow-slopes on ski. By March 4 the preparation of the sledge party was completed.
Exhaustion, cold and hunger were telling their tale upon him. He was not so young as he had been twenty years before. But to make sure he rose to his knees and peered down the slope. He had been mistaken. The steep snow-slopes stretched downward, wild and empty. Here and there black rocks jutted from them; a long way down four black stones were spaced; there was no living thing in that solitude.
Being rather nervous about descending some long snow-slopes which still intervened between us and the head of the valley, I offered more pay, and he went on a little way. Presently there were some cliffs, down which we had to scramble. He called to me to stop, then shouted that he would go back, and beckoned to me to come up.
She turned her face again to the rock-wall and in a little more than an hour after leaving the foot of the gully she stepped out on to a patch of snow on the shoulder of the mountain. She stood in sunlight, and all the country to the east was suddenly unrolled before her eyes. A moment before and her face was to the rock, now at her feet the steep snow-slopes dropped to the Glacier of Saleinaz.
Oh, the delight of that repast! there never was so tender a fowl, never wine so good. While thus engaged in refreshing exhausted nature, I even forgot that the terrible glacier had to be recrossed, and the steep snow-slopes to be descended. The day continued faithful to its early morning promise.
'We gazed idly enough at them till someone remarked that he did not believe they were clouds; then all glasses were leveled; assertions and contradictions were numerous, until the small black patches gradually assumed more and more definite shape, and all agreed that at last we were looking at real live rock, the actual substance of our newly discovered land.... It is curious to reflect now on the steps which led us to the discovery of King Edward's Land, and the chain of evidence which came to us before the actual land itself was seen: at first there had been the shallow soundings, and the sight of gently rising snow-slopes, of which, in the nature of things, one is obliged to retain a doubt; then the steeper broken slopes of snow, giving a contrast to convey a surer evidence to the eye; and, finally the indubitable land itself, but even then surrounded with such mystery as to leave us far from complete satisfaction with our discovery.
High peaks, impassable cliffs, steep snow-slopes, and sharply descending glaciers were prominent features in all directions, with stretches of snow-plain over laying the ice-sheet of the interior. The slope we were ascending mounted to a ridge and our course lay direct to the top.
But to return: Mrs Stoutley and party are now in the very heart of scenery the most magnificent; they have penetrated to a great fountain-head of European waters; they are surrounded by the cliffs, the gorges, the moraines, and are not far from the snow-slopes and ice-fields, the couloirs, the seracs, the crevasses, and the ice-precipices and pinnacles of a great glacial world; but not one of the party betrays the smallest amount of interest, or expresses the faintest emotion of surprise, owing to the melancholy fact that all is shrouded in an impenetrable veil of mist through which a thick fine rain percolates as if the mountain monarch himself were bewailing their misfortunes.
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