Yet those brave men did succeed.  They reached the Grands Mulets in safety.  Even the fearful shock which their nerves had sustained was not sufficient to overcome their coolness and courage.  It would appear from the official account that they were threading their way down through those dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o’clock in the morning, or later, because the rescuing party from Chamonix reached the Grand Mulets about three in the morning and moved thence toward the scene of the disaster under the leadership of Sir George Young, “who had only just arrived.”

After having been on his feet twenty-four hours, in the exhausting work of mountain-climbing, Sir George began the reascent at the head of the relief party of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother.  This was considered a new imprudence, as the number was too few for the service required.  Another relief party presently arrived at the cabin on the Grands Mulets and quartered themselves there to await events.  Ten hours after Sir George’s departure toward the summit, this new relief were still scanning the snowy altitudes above them from their own high perch among the ice deserts ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any living thing appearing up there.

This was alarming.  Half a dozen of their number set out, then early in the afternoon, to seek and succor Sir George and his guides.  The persons remaining at the cabin saw these disappear, and then ensued another distressing wait.  Four hours passed, without tidings.  Then at five o’clock another relief, consisting of three guides, set forward from the cabin.  They carried food and cordials for the refreshment of their predecessors; they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on, and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun to fall.

At the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent, the official Guide-in-Chief of the Mont Blanc region undertook the dangerous descent to Chamonix, all alone, to get reinforcements.  However, a couple of hours later, at 7 P.M., the anxious solicitude came to an end, and happily.  A bugle note was heard, and a cluster of black specks was distinguishable against the snows of the upper heights.  The watchers counted these specks eagerly—­fourteen—­nobody was missing.  An hour and a half later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin.  They had brought the corpse with them.  Sir George Young tarried there but a few minutes, and then began the long and troublesome descent from the cabin to Chamonix.  He probably reached there about two or three o’clock in the morning, after having been afoot among the rocks and glaciers during two days and two nights.  His endurance was equal to his daring.

The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and the relief parties among the heights where the disaster had happened was a thick fog—­or, partly that and partly the slow and difficult work of conveying the dead body down the perilous steeps.