“We had now spent a couple of hours on the summit, and had succeeded in getting, bit by bit, a sight of most of the principal features of the very remarkable view, with the exception of Monte Viso, which persistently sulked; so at 1.15, as there seemed a probability of the weather becoming worse before it improved, we quitted our excellent shelter, and, after putting everything in order and carefully closing and bolting the door, sallied forth into the mist, which was again enshrouding the mountain, apparently as the advance guard of the fiercest storm in the neighbourhood, which we had for some time been watching as it swept solemnly towards us down the valley of the Dora.
“There is a sort of track, rather than well-defined path, down the bare, rocky, and débris-covered southern face of the mountain, but in the fog and momentarily increasing gloom of the coming tempest it was not always very easy to distinguish it. Still, we descended rapidly, and in less than half an hour had dropped down some 2000 feet to a point where, during an instant’s lift, we descried the outline of the Cà d’Asti five minutes below us, just as the edge of the coming hail smote us with a fury which it was hard at times to face. We dashed on—it was a regular sauve qui peut—blinded and staggering under the pitiless pelting and the fury of the blast, gained the door of the chapel, which faced the storm, deposited our axes outside, and darted in, thankful again to find ourselves under so good a roof just when it was most needed.
“For, if there had been at times wild goings on upon the summit during the morning, they were merely a faint prelude to the elemental strife which now raged around. The wind roared and the hail hissed in fiendish rivalry, and yet both seemed silenced when the awful crashes of thunder burst above and about us. We were in the very central track and focus of the storm, and, as we sat crouched upon the floor, the ground and the building seemed to reel beneath the roar of the detonations, and our heads almost to swim with the fierce glare of the lightning. I had carefully closed the door, not only to keep the wind and hail out, but also because lightning is apt to follow a current of air, and, to the right on entering, at about the height of a man, was a small unglazed window some 2 feet square. Opposite the door was the altar, on the step of which I seated myself. Imseng took a place by my side, between me and the window, whilst Christian perched himself on the coil of rope with his back to the wall, not far from the door, and between it and the window. A quarter of a hour may have gone by when a flash of intense vividness seemed almost to dart through the window, and so affected Imseng’s nerves that he hastily quitted his seat by me and coiled himself up near Christian, remarking that ‘that was rather too close to be pleasant.’ Then came four more really awful flashes, followed all but instantaneously by sharp, crackling thunder, which sounded like a volley of bullets against a metal target, and then a fifth with a slightly increased interval between it and the report. I was just remarking to Christian that I thought the worst was past, and that we should soon be liberated, adding, ‘How fortunate we are for the second time to-day to get such shelter just in the nick of time,’ when—crash! went everything, it seemed, all at once: