Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/205

Rh them up, sending back the rope with strict injunctions to be sure I tied myself on properly. Having reassured him on this point I succeeded in scrambling up with considerable help from the rope. Three times we had to repeat these manœuvres, but finally we landed in a place where even they were of no avail. By this time the only reason we continued the attempt was the fact that it seemed possible that we might get up above, but to go down again was more than either of us cared to tackle. We decided that if the worst came we could sit on the cliff all night, till some one lowered us a 200-foot rope from the shoulder, and hauled us up. However, we had not got to the giving-up point yet. We took the only possible route left us, and succeeded in making an ugly traverse to the right beneath a steep grass slope. This we thought should be tolerably easy. It wasn't; it was so steep it overhung in places. The only way we could do anything with it was to dig in our ice-axes above us and crawl up inch by inch. It was a horrible place, and any kind of rock seemed preferable after we had battled with it for half an hour. At last we were able to cross back to the cliff and the worst of our woes were over; one more nasty traverse, and we crept into safety on the shoulder. We had climbed 1,600 feet and taken four hours in the doing of it; add to this the fact that we are reckoned the fastest climbers the Hermitage has ever known, and it may give some idea of the problem we had been up against. In those four hours we had never rested except while one waited for the other to move. I dare say it was rather a foolhardy affair (that certainly was the Hermitage opinion when they came down to view the route taken), but we managed the whole of it without one slip. Of course the main credit of it is Graham's; he did some most extraordinary feats absolutely unaided, feats that proved beyond doubting that he is capable of rock-climbing of the highest order.