Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/238

184 At 1.30 we began the descent. It took us the best part of three hours to reach the schrund on the Linda, as we had to return even more carefully than we had come. We attempted to follow the ridge down to Green's Saddle, thinking it might be quicker to descend the snow slope there, but we found the ridge so jagged and icy that we concluded it would be wiser to follow our old route down the couloir, which we did without any mishap, arriving at the schrund on the Linda at 4.30 p.m. As soon as we had crossed it and travelled down past all danger of avalanches, which were now coming down pretty frequently after the hot midday sun, we settled down for a rest and some tea, having taken thought on the summit to boil some water in the small "cooker" and refill our Thermos. Of this we were now exceedingly glad, as we needed something to stimulate us to our three hours' plug home. The only incident that beguiled the tedium of the way was the glimpse of a glorious afterglow. We were too shut in, the Linda being quite a narrow glacier, walled on either side by Mounts Cook and Tasman, to see the best of it, but directly in front of us the summit of Mount Malte Brun glowed like a burning coal above the snow ridge leading to Glacier Dome, making the most vivid spot of colour imaginable amongst the surrounding snow-clad peaks. The glow soon faded and the mountains changed to their usual cold blue-white in the evening dusk. About 6.30 the full moon rose grandly in front of us, lighting our weary footsteps over the great plateau and up the toilsome slope to Glacier Dome, only forsaking us for a few moments just as we neared the bivouac and traversed round the last snow slope under the shadow of the Haast Ridge. We arrived at 7.30 p.m., and crawled into our little tent, weary but well satisfied, and after a cheery meal forgot all our strenuous labour in sound and dreamless sleep.

Next morning the weather was still fine, so we decided