Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/234

180 steep snow slopes at the head of the Linda Glacier. The sun now began to beat down upon us with its full force, and as we waded desperately on in the soft snow Geoffrey Young's verse struck me as distinctly appropriate:

It about expressed all our feelings. We plodded on for an hour, with no one uttering a word. At last we climbed a particularly steep and sunny slope and reached the edge of the large crevasse which runs straight across the Linda about 600 feet from Green's Saddle. We crossed this without much difficulty, then traversed to the right and gained the rocks on the eastern face of Dampier. I thought it would be a great relief to do some rock-climbing after six hours' snow-plug, but found to my sorrow and surprise that, for the first time in my mountaineering experience, I was distinctly shaky. My knees seemed to give under me and my fingers fumbled for the grips. Fortunately the rocks were pretty good. Shortly we found a good snow-filled couloir, up which we climbed until we reached the ridge. Graham had a tin of Brand's essence in his pocket, which he had carried around all the season, but I had never needed it. Now, however, I was quite glad to drink it down, or rather half of it. It was so nasty I pressed the remainder on Graham, who took it without protest, while Milne had some lime-juice and an orange as his share of stimulant.

The ridge before us looked far from pleasant, being very steep and jagged and much covered with ice and