Page:My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908).djvu/285

Rh 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 contemptuous disregard of the great lump of ice, and putting his back against it, squeezed round the corner with great facility. Being thus at a higher level, he was able to step on to the axes that Collie