Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/163

Rh little cleft overhanging the Mer de Glace, and cleverly protected at the top by a projecting rock. Above this we found ourselves in a sort of granite crevasse, and as this, so far as we could discover, had no bottom, we had to hotch ourselves along with our knees against one side, and our backs against the other. Burgener at this point exhibited most painful anxiety, and his "Herr Gott! geben Sie Acht!" had the very ring of tears in its earnest entreaty. On my emergence into daylight his anxiety was explained. Was not the knapsack on my shoulders, and were not sundry half-bottles of Bouvier in the knapsack?

We now boldly struck out on to the Nantillon face, where a huge slice of rock had been rent some sixteen inches from the mass of the mountain, leaving a sharp, knife-like edge, destructive of fingers, trousers, and epidermis, but affording a safe and certain grip. This led us on to a spacious platform, whence a scramble of some twenty feet brought us to the sharply-pointed northern summit. Burgener self-denyingly volunteered to go down and send me up a stone wherewith to knock off the extreme point of the mountain, but the pleasing delusion that I was to occupy the convenient seat thus afforded was quickly dispelled. Stones were hauled up by Venetz in considerable quantities, and the construction of a stone man—or, having regard to its age and size, I ought, perhaps,