awled down the slabs, dropped from shelf to shelf, wound themselves
down the gullies of ice. Somehow without injury the snow-slopes at the
foot of the rocks were reached. The snow still held off; only now and
then a few flakes fell. But over the mountain the wind was rising, it
swept down in fierce swift eddies, and drew back with a roar like the sea
upon shingle.

"We must get off the glacier before night comes," cried Chayne, and led
by Simond the rescue party went down into the ice-fall. They stopped at
the first glacier pool and made Hine wash his hands and feet in the
water, to save himself from frost-bite; and thereafter for a little time
they rested. They went on again, but they were tired men, and before the
rocks were reached upon which two nights before Garratt Skinner had
bivouacked, darkness had come. Then Simond justified the praise of Michel
Revailloud. With the help of a folding lantern which Chayne had carried
in his pocket, he led the way through that bewildering labyrinth with
unerring judgment. Great seracs loomed up through the darkness, magnified
in size and distorted in shape. Simond went over and round them and under
them, steadily, and the rescue party followed. Now he disappeared over
the edge of a cliff into space, and in a few seconds his voice rang
upward cheerily.

"Follow! It is safe."

And his ice-ax rang with no less cheeriness. He led them boldly to the
brink of abysses which were merely channels in the ice, and amid towering
pinnacles which seen, close at hand, were mere blocks shoulder high. And
at last the guide at the tail of the rope heard from far away ahead
Simond's voice raised in a triumphant shout.

"The rocks! The rocks!"

With one accord they flung themselves, tired and panting, on the
sheltered level of the bivouac. Some sticks were found, a fire was
lighted, tea was once more made. Walter Hine began to take heart; and as
the flames blazed up, the six men gathered about it, crouching, kneeling,
sitting, and the rocks resounded with their laughter.

"Only a little further, Wallie!" said Garratt Skinner, still true
to his part.

They descended from the rocks, crossed a level field of ice and struck
the rock path along the slope of the Mont de la Brenva.

"Keep on the rope," said Garratt Skinner. "Hine slipped at a corner as we
came up"; and Chayne glanced quickly at him. There were one or two
awkward corners above the lower glacier where rough footsteps had been
hewn