The wind continued bitterly cold, and the shadow of the precipices in the moonlight seemed to fill the head of the valley with gloom. Some lines of Shelley’s seemed to fit the situation—
“The cold ice slept below,
Above, the cold sky shone,
And all around
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.”
Towards the bottom, the couloir broadened out somewhat, and the work was easier. We progressed a little more quickly, and at last reached the bergschrund. This schrund, in ordinary seasons a very formidable one, had been often in our minds during the past few weeks, and gave us some concern from the commencement of the descent; but we reckoned that we could cross it somehow, even if we had to sacrifice an ice-axe and one of the lengths of Alpine rope. The first attempt to find a bridge failed; but Graham, with a pretty bit of snow-craft in the uncertain light, found a comparatively safe snow bridge, over which we crossed one by one, while the others anchored with their ice-axes and held the rope taut in case the man on the bridge at the time should show an unpraiseworthy inclination, by reason of his weight or the rottenness of the snow under him, to explore the unknown depths of the schrund. In a few minutes we were all across in safety, and, just after midnight—on Thursday morning—we stepped on to the upper slopes of the Hooker Glacier, and the first crossing of Mount Cook had been safely accomplished.