Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/221

180 managed to reach a place where Collie on the other side of a crevasse, armed with an abnormally long ice-axe, could just manage to skewer me with its point, and in this painful and undignified way I was landed, in a snowy and damp condition, on a small ridge of ice between two deep crevasses.

Slingsby meanwhile had once more started off into the darkness along a narrow edge of ice with profound chasms on either hand. After we had followed and made a few more dodges round various obstructions, a short glissade put us on the more level glacier, and we began to rejoice in the sure and certain hope of sleeping bags and hot soup.

The combined memories of Slingsby and Collie took us off the open glacier on to the little moraine at exactly the right spot, and we avoided all the difficulties we had encountered about here in the morning. Feeling our work was nearly over, we halted a few minutes and tried to make out where we were to go next. To our right we could see great looming séracs, to the left was an ice slope plunging precipitously into utter night. By the process of exclusion we decided, therefore, that our way must be straight ahead, and, as we remembered that the ice tongue had been very steep, even by daylight, we utilised our halt by putting some long spikes into our boots.

On attempting to descend we found the ice rapidly steepened, and some of the party protested