Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/258

 fingers round the hot cups that held our Thermos tea. Much revived by our meal, we cut our way up the final snow slope, reaching the summit and the sunlight at seven o'clock. Strictly speaking, there is no summit, but only a narrow ridge falling away sheer to the Tasman Glacier. It was so narrow that the party preferred straddling it to standing upright. So with a leg on either side we contemplated the view. It was indeed our lucky day. Not a breath of wind stirred, the sun shone warmly from a cloudless sky. The whole of New Zealand lay spread beneath our feet, limited only by the vision of the human eye. We gazed in silence on rolling plains, deep green forests, and far-away seas. But longest and most earnestly our eyes dwelt on the cruel ridge on which we sat. It stretched away before us, onward and upward in zigzag curves. From the summit on which we rested it dropped sharply to a jagged saddle, then up again steeply to the mighty ice face of the second peak. Always to the east the ridge falls away sheer for thousands of feet, while on its west side it slopes steeply for a few yards to a big outward bulge, which overhangs the Hooker Glacier. After studying our perilous way for ten minutes, we started down the steep ridge to the saddle. The rocks were jagged and much covered with loose snow. We made our way with the utmost care, the guides considering this would probably be the worst part of the traverse. More than once my knees shook under me as I followed Graham round the saw-like teeth of the arête, or let my eyes follow the flight of a dislodged stone, falling, falling, falling into the abyss beneath. It did not require much imagination to feel oneself sinking into those horrible depths. One little slip or false step and then—the end. At last we reached the saddle and started up the ridge leading to the middle peak.

We found to our joy it was frozen snow, and we chipped rapidly up, our spirits rising with every yard as we began to realize that if the weather held we might really accomplish