"Only I won't let go!"
A sharp sound was beating through Biff's brain. It came, "Crack—crack—crack—" in deadly monotone. He imagined he heard a new voice too, Chandra's voice, saying, "I'll be there, Biff!" Then came the "Crack—crack—" and again, "I'll be there—" closer, it seemed, and just below. For the first time, Biff steeled his nerve and looked down.
Chandra was there! On the curving brink itself, hanging to the ice where it was steeper than the spot where Biff himself was stretched. In his hand, Chandra held his axe, which he had retrieved after hurling it at the bear. With it, he was chopping into the ice, making those "Crack—crack—" sounds. Chandra hadn't gone up the steps to join the boys above. Instead, he had hacked steps of his own into the fringe of the icefall!
He'd made enough to gain hand and toeholds for himself. Working up from those at an outward angle, he had literally chopped a slanted ladder, climbing it as he did. Now he was denting the ice beside Biff's right ankle. That done, he shoved Biff's right foot into place. Biff shifted his weight in that direction. Instantly the strain on Mike lessened just enough for him to open his half-closed eyes and stare downward in wonder.
Crack—crack—crack—
There was a toehold for Biff's left foot now. That really eased the strain, for Mike's body immediately moved up a bit, pulled by the boys above. Chandra kept hacking, more steps, higher; Biff kept climbing the new ones, leaving the old to Chandra, who promptly followed. Then suddenly, Mike was up to safety and they were hauling Biff up, too, when he gasped:
"Wait! I'm bringing Chandra, too!"
So Biff was, for by now Chandra was tiring. He clung to Biff's leg with one hand and kept chopping steps with the other, just enough to work himself up. Then hands from above gripped Chandra, and he and Biff were hauled up side by side.
Kamuka found a board from an old catwalk and used it to bridge the gap across the missing steppingstone. One by one, the boys crossed the frozen stream above the mammoth icefall. They found steps on the other side and descended for nearly half a mile before they overtook the party. Charles Keene, Barma Shah, Hurdu, and all the rest were waiting on a great, wide lookout platform, viewing a stupendously breathtaking scene.
There, set in a tremendous niche across the mile-deep gorge, was the Lost City of Chonsi. There were small stone huts in the foreground. These, if seen from straight above, would look like nothing more than rock heaps. But the pride of Chonsi, the palace of the Grand Lama, rose above a towering array of great stone steps and castellated walls forming tier after tier of magnificent buildings to a height of nearly five hundred feet, only to be dwarfed by the more tremendous mass of the cliff that overhung it.