Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/74

48 Thick mists covered the peaks and seemed to hang over us like a pall. Here and there a shaft of sunlight penetrated to the ice-field at our feet. Only now and then would the rude screech of a kea remind us that we were not really dreaming in some enchanted land.

We had often talked of attempting the ascent of Mount De la Bêche when we should have polished off Aorangi; but as Aorangi seemed to require so much 'polishing off,' and we were now camped so close to De la Bêche, we thought we might as well try our hand at the mountain and see what we could do in a one-day's trip from this point, while we left the artist to his own devices for the time being.

De la Bêche, then, it was to be. So off we started after a breakfast of sheep's tongues and Liebig, putting our oilskins on our backs and taking our axes, and striking due north for the foot of the long arête which descends from the mountain and separates the Rudolf from the Tasman Glacier. Halfway to our ridge we had to put on the rope, for legs began to go through the now snow-covered crevasses in a promiscuous and unpleasant fashion.

It was indeed like an enchanted land, for the atmospheric effects were extraordinary. High up, shadowed in the mist, were reproduced the forms of the highest peaks of Mounts Malte Brun and Darwin. There was no mistaking their familiar outline, which was thrown out in the mist thousands of feet above, like the spectre on the Brocken.

Then the atmospheric effect of the mist hanging over the Rudolf Glacier was most wonderful. Looking