Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/304

Rh what should be done next. The flake was becoming very thin, indeed the difference of light and shade in the distant landscape could be clearly detected through its mass: the texture of its substance also left much to be desired, and it was evident that extreme care would have to be taken in dealing with it. Besides all this, a most objectionable lump of ice, weighing several hundredweights, was suspended by a curious and apparently most insufficient stalk of the same fragile material, exactly in the place where I wished to pass. To send the lump thundering down into the crevasse with a single blow of my axe would have been easy, but the very delicate health of the flake seemed unequal to the strain of so drastic a remedy.

I decided, at length, to pass below this "impendent horror," and to wholly avoid touching it. After several ineffective attempts, and not till the patience of those above had been sorely tried, did I succeed, by wedging my axe across the chasm, in swinging round the corner of the flake in such sort that I could grasp the edge of a second and lower flake that formed a sort of extension of our first acquaintance and friend. A moment or two later I scrambled on to its rotten and decaying surface and picked my way across a good and solid bridge to the firm glacier beyond.

The knapsack was lowered and Collie soon followed. Hastings, descending last, showed a