Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus.djvu/82

Rh. It was soon evident that a direct assault would not be successful, so he made his way to the right, to a point where the outer fringes and icicles had torn a mass of the more solid cornice away with them in their fall. Once in this gap, he soon gets one hand on to the hard-frozen Col, the other waves his hat, and with a triumphant though breathless jodel, he draws himself over the edge of the grimmest wall it has ever been my luck to scale. Owing to the traverse Burgener had made, the rope did not afford that sense of security and comfort which is so pleasing to the amateur, and it was with no little delight that, on reaching the gap in the cornice, I saw a red hand appear, and a moment later was hauled bodily on to the pass.

I threw off the knapsack, and we set to work to thaw our fingers, or rather those portions of them that still remained. The process proved excessively painful, one or two of them having got badly frozen on the last rocks. Then Burgener's wrist, still suffering from the work on the great shelf traverse, had to be bound up in all the handkerchiefs we could muster. These various operations were, each and all, much delayed by the derisive jodels which it was necessary to hurl at intervals down the couloir. We next made ourselves comfortable, at the very edge of the great cliff, quaffing our wine, and warming ourselves in the glints of hot sunshine, which burst through wind-torn rents in the surging mists. Now and