“Take care! take care!” he kept on saying to Saxe, who was in the middle. “There is no danger, but a slip would send you down, and you could not stop till you were at the bottom.”
“I’ll mind,” said Saxe, as he stole a glance now and then up at the steep white slope above him, or at that beneath, beyond which the pines among which they had slept the past night now looked like heather.
“Yes, it is all very big, Mr Dale,” he said suddenly.
“Wait a bit. You don’t half know yet. Say it’s bigger than you thought. Getting harder, isn’t it, Melchior?”
“Yes, herr. If it gets much harder, I shall have to cut steps; but only here and there, where it’s steepest.”
“Isn’t it steepest now?” said Saxe, who felt as if he could touch the surface by extending his right hand.
“Oh no, herr. You don’t mind?”
“Not a bit,” cried the lad: “I like it.”
“What’s the matter?” said Dale, as they still mounted the dazzling slope of snow, far now above the dip of the col over which they had come.
“Bad piece here, sir. We’ll have the rope. I’ll fasten my end and hand the rest to you, to secure yourselves while I begin cutting.”