Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/55

34 See chapel, and, dashing past me, they rushed, wild with panic fear, towards this tiny oasis of safety.

A second time the apparition stood before us, but now we could see that our mysterious foe was naught else than the door-post of the sacred edifice itself. A candle left in the chapel by Taugwalder throwing a fitful light on the timbered porch, as the unlatched door swung to and fro in the light breeze.

The men entered for devotional purposes, whilst I proceeded slowly on my way. Reaching the Furggen glacier, I sat down on a stone and waited. Half an hour past, and I began to wonder whether a fresh troop of ghosts had driven them incontinently back to Zermatt. Happily, just as the first grey light of dawn began to show in the east, my shouts were answered, and, once more united, we tramped rapidly up the glacier. As the sun rose, its earliest beams fell on long wisps of snow torn from the crest of the Matterhorn, and though of fairy-like beauty, suggestive of more wind than we quite cared for.

We had by now reached the base of the steep glacier that clings to the eastern face of the Matterhorn, and as our ghostly adventures had most unduly delayed us, we determined to try a short cut and ascend transversely over the distorted ice to a rock couloir that obviously gave access to the broken cliff immediately under