’Then we must make a circuit by the hillside and dodge the guards.  It’s no use making difficulties, Wake.  We’re fairly up against it, but we’ve got to go on trying till we drop.  Otherwise I’ll take your advice and go mad.’

’And supposing you get back to St Anton, you’ll find the house shut up and the travellers gone hours before by the Underground Railway.’

’Very likely.  But, man, there’s always the glimmering of a chance.  It’s no good chucking in your hand till the game’s out.’

’Drop your proverbial philosophy, Mr Martin Tupper, and look up there.’

He had one foot on the wall and was staring at a cleft in the snow-line across the valley.  The shoulder of a high peak dropped sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of snow.  All below the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the configuration of the slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran from it to the main glacier at the river head.

‘That’s the Colle delle Rondini,’ he said, ’the Col of the Swallows.  It leads straight to the Staubthal near Grunewald.  On a good day I have done it in seven hours, but it’s not a pass for winter-time.  It has been done of course, but not often. . . .  Yet, if the weather held, it might go even now, and that would bring us to St Anton by the evening.  I wonder’—­and he looked me over with an appraising eye—­’I wonder if you’re up to it.’

My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness to physical toil.

‘If you can do it, I can,’ I said.

’No.  There you’re wrong.  You’re a hefty fellow, but you’re no mountaineer, and the ice of the Colle delle Rondini needs knowledge.  It would be insane to risk it with a novice, if there were any other way.  But I’m damned if I see any, and I’m going to chance it.  We can get a rope and axes in the inn.  Are you game?’

‘Right you are.  Seven hours, you say.  We’ve got to do it in six.’

‘You will be humbler when you get on the ice,’ he said grimly.  ’We’d better breakfast, for the Lord knows when we shall see food again.’

We left the inn at five minutes to nine, with the sky cloudless and a stiff wind from the north-west, which we felt even in the deep-cut valley.  Wake walked with a long, slow stride that tried my patience.  I wanted to hustle, but he bade me keep in step.  ’You take your orders from me, for I’ve been at this job before.  Discipline in the ranks, remember.’

We crossed the river gorge by a plank bridge, and worked our way up the right bank, past the moraine, to the snout of the glacier.  It was bad going, for the snow concealed the boulders, and I often floundered in holes.  Wake never relaxed his stride, but now and then he stopped to sniff the air.

I observed that the weather looked good, and he differed.  ’It’s too clear.  There’ll be a full-blown gale on the Col and most likely snow in the afternoon.’  He pointed to a fat yellow cloud that was beginning to bulge over the nearest peak.  After that I thought he lengthened his stride.