“Perhaps—­one never knows,” he said.  “We must take all precautions, for the day looks bad.”

The sunlight, indeed, only stayed upon the mountain-side long enough to tantalize them with vain hopes of warmth.  Gray clouds swept up low over the crest of Mont Blanc and blotted it out.  The wind moaned wildly along the slopes.  The day frowned upon them sullen and cold with a sky full of snow.

“We will wait a little longer,” said Garratt Skinner, “then we must move.”

He looked at the sky.  It seemed to him now very probable that he would lose the desperate game which he had been playing.  He had staked his life upon it.  Let the snow come and the mists, he would surely lose his stake.  Nevertheless he set himself to the task of rousing Walter Hine.

“Leave me alone,” moaned Walter Hine, and he struck feebly at his companions as they lifted him on to his feet.

“Stamp your feet, Wallie,” said Garratt Skinner.  “You will feel better in a few moments.”

They held him up, but he repeated his cry.  “Leave me alone!” and the moment they let him go he sank down again upon the ledge.  He was overcome with drowsiness, the slightest movement tortured him.

Garratt Skinner looked up at the leaden sky.

“We must wait till help comes,” he said,

Delouvain shook his head.

“It will not come to-day.  We shall all die here.  It was wrong, monsieur, to try the Brenva ridge.  Yes, we shall die here”; and he fell to blubbering like a child.

“Could you go down alone?” Garratt Skinner asked.

“There is the glacier to cross, monsieur.”

“I know.  That is the risk.  But it is cold and there is no sun.  The snow-bridges may hold.”

Pierre Delouvain hesitated.  Here it seemed to him was certain death.  But if he climbed down the ice-arete, the snow-slopes, and the rocks below, if the snow-bridges held upon the glacier, there would be life for one of the three.  Pierre Delouvain had little in common with that loyal race of Alpine guides who hold it as their most sacred tradition not to return home without their patrons.

“Yes, it is our one hope,” he said; and untying himself with awkward fumbling fingers from the kinked rope, and coiling the spare rope about his shoulders, he went down the slope.  During the night the steps had frozen and in many places it was necessary to recut them.  He too was stiff with the long vigil.  He moved slowly, with numbed and frozen limbs.  But as his ax rose and fell, the blood began to burn in the tips of his fingers, to flow within his veins; he went more and more firmly.  For a long way Garratt Skinner held him in sight.  Then he turned back to Walter Hine upon the ledge, and sat beside him.  Garratt Skinner’s strength had stood him in good stead.  He filled his pipe and lit it, and watched beside his victim.  The day wore on slowly.  At times Garratt Skinner rubbed Hine’s limbs and stamped about the ledge to keep some warmth within himself.  Walter Hine grew weaker and weaker.  At times he was delirious; at times he came to his senses.