He had a glimpse of what he was--a poor, weak, inefficient thing.
Above them the slopes stretched upward to a great line of towering ice-cliffs.

Through and up those ice-cliffs a way had to be found.

And at any moment, loosened by the sun, huge blocks and pinnacles might break from them and come thundering down.

As it was, upon their right hand where the snow-fields fell steeply in a huge ice gully, between a line of rocks and the cliffs of Mont Maudit, the avalanches plunged and reverberated down to the Brenva glacier.

Pierre Delouvain took the lead again, and keeping by the line of rocks the party ascended the steep snow-slopes straight toward the wall of cliffs.