[36] Through what is technically called an “ice-fall.”

Across this ice-slope Croz now proceeded to cut. It was executing a flank movement in the face of an enemy by whom we might be attacked at any moment. The peril was obvious. It was a monstrous folly. It was foolhardiness. A retreat should have been sounded.[[37]]

[37] The responsibility did not rest with Croz. His part was to advise, but not to direct.

“I am not ashamed to confess,” wrote Moore in his Journal, “that during the whole time we were crossing this slope my heart was in my mouth, and I never felt relieved from such a load of care as when, after, I suppose, a passage of about twenty minutes, we got on to the rocks and were in safety…I have never heard a positive oath come from Almer’s mouth, but the language in which he kept up a running commentary, more to himself than to me, as we went along, was stronger than I should have given him credit for using. His prominent feeling seemed to be one of indignation that we should be in such a position, and self-reproach at being a party to the proceeding; while the emphatic way in which, at intervals, he exclaimed, ‘Quick! be quick!’ sufficiently betokened his alarm.”

It was not necessary to admonish Croz to be quick. He was as fully alive to the risk as any of the others. He told me afterward that this place was not only the most dangerous he had ever crossed, but that no consideration whatever would tempt him to cross it again. Manfully did he exert himself to escape from the impending destruction. His head, bent down to his work, never turned to the right or to the left. One, two, three, went his axe, and then he stepped on to the spot where he had been cutting. How painfully insecure should we have considered those steps at any other time! But now we thought of nothing but the rocks in front, and of the hideous séracs, lurching over above us, apparently in the act of falling.

We got to the rocks in safety, and if they had been doubly as difficult as they were, we should still have been well content. We sat down and refreshed the inner man, keeping our eyes on the towering pinnacles of ice under which we had passed, but which now were almost beneath us. Without a preliminary warning sound one of the largest—as high as the Monument at London Bridge—fell upon the slope below. The stately mass heeled over as if upon a hinge (holding together until it bent thirty degrees forward), then it crushed out its base, and, rent into a thousand fragments, plunged vertically down upon the slope that we had crossed! Every atom of our track that was in its course was obliterated: all the new snow was swept away, and a broad sheet of smooth, glassy ice showed the resistless force with which it had fallen.

ICE-AVALANCHE ON THE MOMING PASS

It was inexcusable to follow such a perilous path, but it is easy to understand why it was taken. To have retreated from the place where Croz suggested a change of plan, to have descended below the reach of danger, and to have mounted again by the route which Almer suggested, would have been equivalent to abandoning the excursion, for no one would have passed another night in the châlet on the Arpitetta Alp. “Many,” says Thucydides, “though seeing well the perils ahead, are forced along by fear of dishonor, as the world calls it, so that, vanquished by a mere word, they fall into irremediable calamities.” Such was nearly the case here. No one could say a word in justification of the course which was adopted; all were alive to the danger that was being encountered; yet a grave risk was deliberately, although unwillingly incurred, in preference to admitting, by withdrawal from an untenable position, that an error of judgment had been committed.