And now, the sun being well up, climbing was resumed.
Only about two thousand feet more remained to be discussed, but this formed the toughest climb of all. For not only was the breeze now high and the gradient steep, but the cold was intense, while breathing was far from easy.
Indeed, although an ascent of ten to twelve thousand feet may not be considered a tall record for accomplished club-men in the Alpine regions of Europe, it would be a terrible undertaking for even those among the perpetual snows of the Antarctic.
It needed not only all the strength, but even all the courage that our heroes were possessed of, to finally succeed. For in many parts a single slip might have precipitated three of them at least into chasms or over precipices that were too fearful even to think of.
Indeed, several such slips did occur, but luckily the ropes held, and the foremost men, planting their feet firmly against the mountain-side, succeeded in preventing an accident.
The danger was quite as great, when steps had to be hewn on the sides of ice-rocks, and the labour in such cases five times as fatiguing, and happy they felt, on every such occasion, when they found themselves on a plateau.
"Whatever a man dares he can do!"
The grand old motto of, I believe, the clan Cameron; but many a man of a different clan has felt the force and the truth of these brave words. Both Duncan and his brother seemed to do so, when they stood at long last with their comrades on the very summit of Mount Terror, and on the brink of its terrible, though partially extinct, crater.
Who would venture to peep over into the awful gulf, which, by the way, Ted Noolan believed to be really an opening into the nether regions--the regions of despair?
Duncan was the first to volunteer. The others followed suit with one exception.