Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/81

Rh Dixon and Johnson on the ledge below and myself on the ridge, ending in a decision to descend.

I never to this day can imagine how I came down that fifty feet of rocks without slipping into the crevasse below, but, by the aid of Dixon's directions, I managed to find chinks in the rock-face for the toes of my boots, and reached the ledge to breathe the air of relief once more.

Here we held a council of war. We might, by a traverse of the ice ridge below, gain the rocks again above this bad place; but the summit was yet 2,000 feet above us, the cold so intense that the steel of one's axe would adhere to the hand, the time was fast going, and the photographer and our men would be much concerned if we stayed out another night, besides which we were short of provisions, our original intention having been to stay out but one night. We decided to acknowledge ourselves beaten for the time being and to return to camp.

It goes against the grain with Dixon and me to turn back beaten from a peak. Indeed De la Bêche and Aorangi are the only ones to which we have lowered the colours of our grand old school—Christ's College Grammar School, of Christchurch, New Zealand—and the latter we have since revenged ourselves upon. The former will not run away, and we are nursing a vindictive feeling against this noble triple-topped summit.

Descending very rapidly, glissading now and then in safe places, we reached the foot and struck over the Tasman Glacier again for our camp on the Malte Brun.

Well for us that we had turned from De la Bêche,