I hewed sixty steps upon this slope, and each step had cost a minute, by Hirst’s watch.  The Mur de la Cote was still before us, and on this the guide-books informed us two or three hundred steps were sometimes found necessary.  If sixty steps cost an hour, what would be the cost of two hundred?  The question was disheartening in the extreme, for the time at which we had calculated on reaching the summit was already passed, while the chief difficulties remained unconquered.  Having hewn our way along the harder ice we reached snow.  I again resorted to stamping to secure a footing, and while thus engaged became, for the first time, aware of the drain of force to which I was subjecting myself.  The thought of being absolutely exhausted had never occurred to me, and from first to last I had taken no care to husband my strength.  I always calculated that the “will” would serve me even should the muscles fail, but I now found that mechanical laws rule man in the long run; that no effort of will, no power of spirit, can draw beyond a certain limit upon muscular force.  The soul, it is true, can stir the body to action, but its function is to excite and apply force, and not to create it.

While stamping forward through the frozen crust I was compelled to pause at short intervals; then would set out again apparently fresh, to find, however, in a few minutes, that my strength was gone, and that I required to rest once more.  In this way I gained the summit of the Corridor, when Hirst came to the front, and I felt some relief in stepping slowly after him, making use of the holes into which his feet had sunk.  He thus led the way to the base of the Mur de la Cote, the thought of which had so long cast a gloom upon us; here we left our rope behind us, and while pausing I asked Simond whether he did not feel a desire to go to the summit.  “Surely,” was his reply, “but!—­” Our guide’s mind was so constituted that the “but” seemed essential to its peace.  I stretched my hands toward him, and said:  “Simond, we must do it.”  One thing alone I felt could defeat us:  the usual time of the ascent had been more than doubled, the day was already far spent, and if the ascent would throw our subsequent descent into night it could not be contemplated.

We now faced the Mur, which was by no means so bad as we had expected.  Driving the iron claws of our boots into the scars made by the ax, and the spikes of our batons into the slope above our feet, we ascended steadily until the summit was attained, and the top of the mountain rose clearly above us.  We congratulated ourselves upon this; but Simond, probably fearing that our joy might become too full, remarked:  “But the summit is still far off!” It was, alas! too true.  The snow became soft again, and our weary limbs sank in it as before.  Our guide went on in front, audibly muttering his doubts as to our ability to reach the top, and at length he threw himself upon the snow, and exclaimed, “I give up!”