Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/90

56 only that its mystic beauty was intensified by the soft glow of evening as the sun sank lower and lower, at last dipping behind a bank of crimson clouds hanging over a saddle to the westward.

I seemed spellbound and almost riveted to the spot, and could only tear myself away when I realised the awkward position of the photographer and myself, trapped, as it were, by the fast-closing darkness, 4,000 feet above our camp, with all sorts of climbing difficulties below. Clambering down the rocks and jumping the bergschrund, away I sped over the névé slopes, and reaching Cooper after an hour's absence, found him just packing up his camera.

It is too long a story to tell of all our troubles and adventures in getting down the mountain in the dark; letting ourselves down on to the rocks, scraping our hands on sharp edges, plunging knee-deep in soft snow, following false ridges terminating in precipices down to the Ball Glacier below, retracing our erring steps, and at last coming to vegetation again; then going down off the ridge towards the Tasman, trying to hit the head of a long shingle slip I was acquainted with, hearing 2,000 feet above the camp the first 'cooee' from our anxious mates below, and getting down eventually at half-past ten, ravenous, and almost torn to pieces by the sharp rocks, Spaniards, and scrub.

Johnson—always self-denying and considerate for others—was out photographer-hunting again, having gone on to the Ball Glacier and shouted himself hoarse; he arrived back in camp at 1 (having been guided home by a fire which I had kept going on the