of despair.

"It's no use," he cried. "We can never get up," and he flung himself upon
the snow and buried his face in his arms. Garratt Skinner stood over him.

"We must," he said. "Come! Look!"

Walter Hine looked up and saw his companion dangling the face of his
watch before his eyes.

"We are late. It is now twelve o'clock. We should have left this spot two
hours ago and more," he said, very gravely; and Pierre Delouvain
exclaimed excitedly:

"Certainly, monsieur, we must go on. It will not do to loiter now," and
stooping down, he dragged rather than helped Walter Hine to his feet. The
quiet gravity of Garratt Skinner and the excitement of Delouvain
frightened Walter Hine equally. Some sense of his own insufficiency broke
in at last upon him. His vanity peeled off from him, just at the moment
when it would most have been of use. He had a glimpse of what he was--a
poor, weak, inefficient thing.

Above them the slopes stretched upward to a great line of towering
ice-cliffs. Through and up those ice-cliffs a way had to be found. And at
any moment, loosened by the sun, huge blocks and pinnacles might break
from them and come thundering down. As it was, upon their right hand
where the snow-fields fell steeply in a huge ice gully, between a line of
rocks and the cliffs of Mont Maudit, the avalanches plunged and
reverberated down to the Brenva glacier. Pierre Delouvain took the lead
again, and keeping by the line of rocks the party ascended the steep
snow-slopes straight toward the wall of cliffs. But in a while the snow
thinned, and the ax was brought into play again. Through the thin crust
of snow, steps had to be cut into the ice beneath, and since there were
still many hundreds of feet to be ascended, the steps were cut wide
apart. With the sun burning upon his face, and his feet freezing in the
ice-steps, Walter Hine stood and moved, and stood again all through that
afternoon. Fatigue gained upon him, and fear did not let him go. "If only
I get off this mountain," he said to himself with heartfelt longing,
"never again!" When near to the cliffs Pierre Delouvain stopped. In front
of him the wall was plainly inaccessible. Far away to the left there was
a depression up which possibly a way might be forced.

"I think, monsieur, that must be the way," said Pierre.

"But you should _know_" said Garratt Skinner.

"It is some time since I was here. I have forgotten;" and Pierre began to
traverse the ice-slope to th