Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/254

Rh Burgener emitted ejaculations of horror. Despite these shocks to our nerves, we reached the base of a detached sérac, the top of which was connected by a fantastic imitation of a flying buttress with the firm ice beyond the Schrund. After cutting a few steps, and aided by a shove from Burgener, I scrambled on to the sérac and hauled at the rope as the sheet anchor of the party followed. We then wormed our way like caterpillars along the flying buttress, distributing our weight as far as possible and expecting at every moment that the brittle structure would collapse. Happily, after the invariable habit of ice early in the morning, it proved as rigid as iron, and we tramped steadily up to the second Bergschrund, which we passed without difficulty. The third turned out to be even worse than the first. Its lower lip overhung in the most provoking manner and necessitated the utmost caution in even approaching it, whilst the upper lip rose in a clean, precipitous cliff of blue ice some seventy feet above our heads.

We unroped, and Burgener went to the right to prospect for a possible line, whilst I went to the left. After a while Burgener shouted that it would not go on his side, but by great good fortune I had caught sight of a spot on my side that looked as if it might be forced. After crawling along a sharp knife-edge dividing the Bergschrund from a wide crevasse, we reached this desirable spot. The extremely steep slope above had been cut into a