“Quick, Pierre.”

There was no time for Garratt Skinner to return; but he gathered himself together on the ridge, ready for a spring.  Had Walter Hine toppled over, and swung down the length of the rope, as at any moment he might have done, Garratt Skinner was prepared.  He would have jumped down the opposite side of the ice-arete, though how either he or Walter Hine could have regained the ridge he could not tell.  Would any one of the party live to return to Courmayeur and tell the tale?  But Garratt Skinner knew the risk he took, had counted it up long before ever he brought Walter Hine to Chamonix, and thought it worth while.  He did not falter now.  All through the morning, indeed, he had been taking risks, risks of which Walter Hine did not dream; with so firm and yet so delicate a step he had moved from crack to crack, from ice-step up to ice-step; with so obedient a response of his muscles, he had drawn himself up over the rounded rocks from ledge to ledge.  He shouted again to Pierre Delouvain, and at the same moment began carefully to work backward along the ice-arete.  Pierre, however, hurried; Walter Hine heard the guide’s voice behind him, felt himself steadied by his hands.  He stooped slowly down, knelt upon the wall, then bestrode it.

“Now, forward,” cried Skinner, and he pulled in the rope.  “Forward.  We cannot go back!”

Hine clung to the ridge; behind him Pierre Delouvain sat down and held him about the waist.  Slowly they worked themselves forward, while Garratt Skinner gathered in the rope in front.  The wall narrowed as they advanced, became the merest edge which cut their hands as they clasped it.  Hine closed his eyes, his head whirled, he was giddy, he felt sick.  He stopped gripping the slope on both sides with his knees, clutching the sharp edge with the palms of his hands.

“I can’t go on!  I can’t,” he cried, and he reeled like a novice on the back of a horse.

Garratt Skinner worked back to him.

“Put your arms about my waist, Wallie!  Keep your eyes shut!  You shan’t fall.”

Walter Hine clung to him convulsively, Pierre Delouvain steadied Hine from behind, and thus they went slowly forward for a long while.  Garratt Skinner gripped the edge with the palms of his hands—­so narrow was the ridge—­the fingers of one hand pointed down one slope, the fingers of the other down the opposite wall.  Their legs dangled.

At last Walter Hine felt Garratt Skinner loosening his clasped fingers from about his waist.  Garratt Skinner stood up, uncoiled the rope, chipped a step or two in the ice and went boldly forward.  For a yard or two further Walter Hine straddled on, and then Garratt Skinner cried to him: 

“Look up, Wallie.  It’s all over.”

Hine looked and saw Garratt Skinner standing upon a level space of snow in the side of the mountain.  A moment later he himself was lying in the sun upon the level space.  The famous ice-arete was behind them.  Walter Hine looked back along it and shuddered.  The thin edge of ice curving slightly downward, stretched away to the black rock-tower, in the bright sunlight a thing most beautiful, but most menacing and terrible.  He seemed cut off by it from the world.  They had a meal upon that level space, and while Hine rested, Pierre Delouvain cast off the rope and went ahead.  He came back in a little while with a serious face.