into the solid substratum of ice. Cutting with one hand whilst clinging to an ice handhold with the other is slow work, but our blood was up; axes swung viciously, and a little later we were straddling the knife-edged parabola of snow forming the summit of the col.

The snow ridge above the Col Moore leading to the lowest rocks of the ordinary Brenva route is remarkably acute, and the interested spectator, had he been present, would have observed two ordinarily rational men take up the burden of the serpent on its unstable crest. To put it more bluntly, we were forced to worm our way, inch by inch, on our bellies.

At 2 P.M. we gained the friendly rocks and sat down to a well-earned meal. We now saw that the direct route to the "Red Sentinel " was impossible, and to reach it we must traverse across the face. This traverse, which lies over ground of unrelenting steepness, involves the passage of no less than four couloirs. Of these, three were constantly swept by falling stones, and one formed the chute for the enormous ice-avalanches that fall from a mass of tottering ice pinnacles, hundreds of feet high, at the edge of a small hanging glacier perched up on the side of the mountain. To attempt a crossing while the hot sun was shining on the face would be suicidal; we must wait for it to pass, and for frost to curb the activities of the stone and avalanche fiends.

wait, and we set to work to dry our clothes and stockings which had become sodden from our crawl along the snow ridge.

We were now confident and happy. "A very strange feeling of confidence," wrote Graham Brown in his account. I experienced the same feeling. The unknown lower part of the route, which we had feared most, was now known ; our early misgivings and fears had vanished. So we lazed a sunny hour away at the foot of the grandest mountain-side in the Alps, sometimes chatting, more often in silent contemplation of our surroundings, whilst the smoke from our pipes stole up the red granite crags in peaceoffering to the Mountain King whose inmost sanctuary we were about to invade.

Slowly the sun swung down behind Mont Blanc ; cold purple shadows welled up the precipices; the ice of the Brenva Glacier changed in colour to a daffodil yellow.

The previous evening when the sun had set, Mont Blanc had appalled us, but now the shadow armies were our allies and friends.

The sun left us at 3.52 P.M., but we waited for the snow to harden properly.

At 4.50 P.M. we knocked out our pipes, strapped on our heavy rucksacks, and set off for the Red Sentinel."

by the continual action of falling débris. Graham Brown drove in his axe to the head, and slowly paid out the rope, as I cut steps down the vertical side of the groove, then over its bed, and up the other side, keeping a careful look-out meanwhile for falling stones. But the whole mountain-side was now silent as the grave, and we did not see the smallest stone fall.

The third couloir was easy, but the last is the one that may be swept at any moment by thousands of tons of iceblocks. We raced across its slabby bed at the utmost speed, and flung ourselves panting down beneath the friendly protection of some overhanging rocks.

The "Red Sentinel " was now almost immediately above us, and we quickly climbed the steep slopes of rock, ice, and snow to its foot.

Our Guardian is perhaps two hundred feet high, and projects defiantly from the mountainside in a smooth buttress of warm red granite. So pronounced is the overhang, that however great the avalanche that may fall from the hanging glaciers above, the débris cannot possibly harm any one at the base of it. In addition to this, the summit of the Sentinel is connected to the mountain-side by a sharp horizontal ridge of snow, and anything that falls from above is divided and sweeps the couloirs on either side.

A large inward-tilted slab lay at the base of it, covered by

a cone of snow and ice. Twenty minutes chipping and scraping with our ice-axes sufficed to fashion an alcove in the ice about three feet wide and seven feet long, protected at both ends, which was large enough for our Zdarsky tentsack. To prevent any possibility of a nightmare roll from our narrow perch to the Brenva Glacier 1500 feet beneath, we drove our ice-axes in above and securely fastened the rope thereto.

We unpacked our rucksacks, made a hot soup over the spirit-cooker, and settled down to await the night. This was not long in coming. As the sun set, we saw the beautiful phenomenon described by Sir Leslie Stephen in his classic essay, 'Sunset from Mont Blanc the immense shadow of the Monarch sweeping the ranges and finally mounting the sky. Like Stephen, we were privileged to witness the other sun, whose rays are shafts of darkness, but which are actually the parallel shadows of Mont Blanc, apparently converging on the horizon.

Yet day lingered awhile and, long after the fires were quenched and the pageant passed on its way, a weird ashen glow steeped some stately cloud pillars brooding in the south. We expected to see them lightning lit later, but on this most perfect of late summer nights even the Thunder God slept in his couch of cumuli.

The air was very still. Not breath of wind whispered around the stern figure of the

a

Sentinel above. It seems absurd to invest a mere rock with the attributes of sympathy and understanding; but all that night a friendly presence encompassed us, watching over the two little things that were men, who shivered and kicked on that hitherto untrodden mountain-side.

On these occasions amid the sublimity of Nature's inmost sanctuaries, where no human being has stood before, the mind is capable of asserting itself above the discomforts of the body, and the most prosaic of men will find his thoughts wandering in realms of strange fancy. The forces of the World are vast, and sometimes inexorably cruel; they care little for weaklings; but to those who deliberately set themselves to wrest from them their secrets they are often kind.

We estimated our height at 12,300 feet, and the clear starlit night was bitterly cold. No comfort was to be found in our Zdarsky tent-sack. As a means of refined torture these tent-sacks are admirable. They are so designed that the two victims sit inside facing one another, and supporting the fabric with their heads. A few minutes of partial suffocation follow until at length, unable to gasp longer without fresh stimulus, the lower edge is raised, and a gush of cold fresh air forces its way into the carbon dioxidised interior. Meanwhile, the inside of the tent is saturated with condensed moisture, which drips unpleasantly down the neck. In fair

ness, however, it must be admitted that one of these tents might be of the greatest service to a party forced to bivouac high up in bad weather. All night long the growl of avalanches was almost continuous, chiefly from the direction of the Pétéret ridge and the crumbling rocks of the Tour Ronde; but between each growl of wrath there was complete and utter silence.

We were soon to learn the might of the "Red Sentinel." Suddenly there came a crash from above, the increasing roar of thousands of tons of falling ice bearing downwards upon us. Then happened as we had foretold. The mass of the avalanche was divided by the Sentinel, and its two streams poured down the couloirs on either side a few yards away. So secure were we in the knowledge of our complete safety that we could appreciate to the full this unique experience, and our only regret was in not witnessing the spectacle.

For a few moments the masses went thundering past; then the noise subsided to a mutter, and finally died as the ice, ground to fragments in its fall, came to rest on the Brenva Glacier beneath.

One other incident of that eventful night I remember vividly. To induce warmth we brewed several cups of tea, and during one brewing we were startled to hear three longdrawn moans come up from the Brenva Glacier. Each moan was several seconds in duration, and seemed expressive of the

utmost agony. They were inhuman in tone, and yet unlike any mechanical noise or syren that we had ever heard. I can offer no explanation. Glacier ice, under pressure, makes curious noises; it sometimes cracks, grates, and booms in the night, but I have never before heard a noise resembling those three extraordinary moans. The effect was weird in the extreme, and to us it seemed as though the very spirits of of the lost or the damned were abroad that night.

Apart from these two excitements, sleep was impossible owing to the intense cold. Graham Brown endured it more philosophically than I, but suffered slight frostbite in his toes as a consequence. I spent most of the night in kicking my feet together, and periodically crawling out of the tent-sack for indulgence in the excellent exercise favoured among cabdrivers.

The night seemed endless and the World given over to perpetual darkness and cold, but at long last grey dawn filtered up from far Tyrol. We welcomed it with tea, some chocolate, and painfully strapped on crampons over the boots we had not removed all night. The iron stuck to our fingers with cold.

ate

At 5.30 A.M. we passed out from beneath the "Red Sentinel" into the couloir on the west of it. With memories of the ice-avalanche that had swept it in the night, we climbed up and across this at

the greatest possible speed, and soon gained the rock ridge on the edge of the main couloir. There can be no finer couloir in the Alps than this 5000 feet chute. In the middle runs an enormous groove of ice 20 feet wide and 12 feet deep, writhing down like some evil serpent, and polished black by the passage of ice-avalanches and falling stones.

We descended into the couloir, and keeping close under the ridge, commenced the ascent. No falling material could touch us, for a friendly rock promontory projected ahead, and the hard snow at the side over which we mounted was smooth and unscored.

Our safety and the success of the expedition depended upon our crossing the branch couloir to the bending rock ridge before the sun obtained sufficient power to unleash the avalanches from the grip of the frost; and already the first glow of dawn was lighting the crest of Mont Blanc.

Gone now was the stiffness in our limbs engendered by our overnight chilling; the sweat poured from us as we laboured up the snow. To have met with hard ice here must have been fatal-the angle of the couloir is about 55°. But the good firm snow we had anticipated covered the ice, and our crampons ground well home into its frozen surface at every step.

Up and up we panted, until we were level with the lowest rocks of the bending ridge which splits the main couloir

into two branches. Without a pause we rushed across the right hand branch couloir towards them, finding with thankfulness that a deep avalanche channel in the centre could be crossed without difficulty.

At length we were on the bending ridge in perfect safety. Everything had worked out exactly to plan, and not a pebble had fallen.

Our previous examination through the telescope had shown that, once having attained the crest of the bending ridge, we were safe from avalanches for the remainder of the climb. We sat down on a slab of rock. Our exertions had been severe; for a few minutes we allowed mind and muscle to relax in infinite repose. Security is only worth while if one must fight and scheme to win it; it is moments like these that justify the motto, "Live dangerously."

We untied our rucksacks and ate the good things that we had been too numbed and stiff to assimilate beneath the "Red Sentinel."

The morning was brilliantly clear, save for a few vagabond cloudlets floating about the distant Grivola; 10,000 feet beneath the meadows of Courmayeur drowsed in the morning shadow. An hour passed like an idle thought, and we turned once more to the ascent. we did so we observed the first stones, loosened by the hot sun, whizzing down the couloirs on either side of the ridge. Our margin of safety had proved

As

substantial, and we were well content.

We thought that above the climbing would become progressively easier, but here the telescope had entirely misled us, and we found the exact opposite to be actually the case. "There was in fact," wrote Graham Brown, "only one short portion on which we were not moving one at a time. Such is the reality that perspective may clothe with fantasy on high mountains."

The rock was unexpectedly sound, a grey red granite affording delightful climbing; it was a joy to grip its clean-cut holds and crawl up the friendly sunwarmed slabs.

A wall of rock perhaps 150 feet high cuts across the ridge, separating the lower portion from the upper. We avoided it on the right, and gained the crest of the ridge above over very steep ice. An edge of snow followed, moulded by the wind to a thin blade of fairylike beauty. It seemed a sacrilege to flog it down with the axe and to leave it mutilated by our clumsy passage.

Once again we were forced off the ridge by its difficulty on to an exposed ice traverse under some rocks-ice so steep that we were forced to cut handholds as well as footholds. I have in mind an awkward corner, round which it was necessary to swing by gripping a leaf of rock with the hands into a little gully of pure ice. We regained the ridge, and continued along it over easier rocks to the point where it