Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/123

Rh then we heard the joyful, "Kommen sie nur, Alexander." The sheet anchor of the party having got over, I had to follow, and great was my elation to find that I could accomplish without help a mauvais pas that had for a minute or two seemed impassable to the stronger and more daring members of the party.

Looking back, the crag we had just left was weird in the extreme ; though at the top it was twenty feet or more in breadth, it narrowed down at the bottom of the cleft to less than two feet, and the whole mass looked as if a good blow from an ice-axe would send it bodily on to the Weingarten glacier. Indeed, as the mist whirled and eddied through the cleft, it seemed to totter as in the very act of falling. But it was already 4 p.m., and we were far from the wished-for snow; so, whilst Andenmatten was being coached across, my husband unroped and went to work, crawling up a steep "step" in the arête. The rope was then thrown up to him, and Alexander, scrambling up by its aid, was ready to help the rest of the party. This procedure was then repeated. Still crag followed crag, here loose rocks that rolled away at a touch, there precipitous buttresses, access to which could only be gained by using Burgener's broad shoulders as a ladder. All at once, however, difficulties seemed to cease, our leader again put on the rope, and we rattled along the arête till it broadened out into a great snow ridge.