“Yes,” said Dale, as he looked back out of the narrow opening of the gash in the mountain which the guide had chosen for their shelter; “I think this place will do.”
“Then the herr is satisfied?”
“Well, yes, for the present. Now, then, leave what you are doing, and we’ll descend to the glacier at once.”
“Yes, herr. One moment. I’ll hang up the lanthorn and the new English rope here. The glass may be kicked against and broken.”
He suspended the English-made stout glass lanthorn to the little ridge-pole; and then, resuming his jacket, he threw the coil of rope over his shoulder, took his ice-axe, Dale and Saxe taking theirs, all new and bright, almost as they had left the manufacturer’s, and started at once for the shelf from which the grand view of the snow-clad mountains had met their gaze. After proceeding along this a short distance, Melchior stopped, climbed out upon a projecting point, and examined the side of the precipice.
“We can get down here, herr,” he said; and, setting the example, he descended nimbly from ledge to ledge, pausing at any difficult place to lend a hand or point out foothold, till they were half-way down, when the ledges and crevices by which they had descended suddenly ceased, and they stood upon a shelf from which there seemed to be no further progression, till, as if guided by the formation, Melchior crept to the very end, peered round an angle of the rock, and then came back.
“No,” he said—“not that way: the other end.”
He passed his two companions, and, going to the farther part, climbed up a few feet, and then passed out of their sight.
“This way, gentlemen!” he shouted; and upon joining him they found that he had hit upon quite an easy descent to the ice.
This proved to be very different to the glacier they had first examined. It was far more precipitous in its descent, with the consequence that it was greatly broken up into blocks, needles and overhanging seracs. These were so eaten away beneath that it seemed as if a breath would send them thundering down.