It was a relief to Ivor to find himself safe outside the Hut. Quietly he and Rob started on their dark upward tramp, lighted only by stars, and by the glimmering lantern which swayed to and fro in the leader's hand. An hour later, as they were crossing the hard frozen neve, he received a fresh shock. Some words passed about their return route, and Rob remarked that he had entered a note as to their intentions in the Visitor's Book at the Hut.
"You didn't write our names!" Ivor involuntarily exclaimed.
"Yes, of course—why not?"
Why not, indeed? Ivor could offer no reason. He said only—
"I meant to do it on our way back."
"Always better to leave word of one's plans in case of an accident."
This was true enough; and Ivor made no further protest. He recalled that Rob had stayed behind for a minute or two, when he had made his way out of the Hut in readiness to start. He was very much annoyed—not with Rob for doing what was quite reasonable, but with the fact. Beatrice Major would undoubtedly look at the book, and she could not fail to see his name. She would at once surmise, not that he had actually heard her friend's foolish words, but that he might have done so. Too late now to do anything; but the day was more or less spoilt for him.
Such thoughts had to be put on one side, as the difficulties of the way increased. They were still there, lying as a weight at the back of his mind, though he had resolutely to ignore them and to bend all his energies to the task in hand. The ascent of the Blümlisalphorn is not exactly playwork, even for experienced climbers.
For a good while there was easy going over the frozen snow, and only for a few hundred yards was their route shadowed by the possibility—a slight one at such an early hour—of a falling avalanche. Breakfast on a pure white table-cloth followed; and after this began the exciting part of their ascent.
At first they mounted snow in good condition, lying on a foundation of rock, which here and there cropped through. Then it steepened and hardened, and the cutting of steps became necessary, till they reached the col or narrow neck, from which one looks down on the little Oeschinen Lake and the Valley of Kandersteg.