"We shall all die here." Garratt Skinner sat down again and waited.

The sun rose over the rocks of Mont Maudit, but weak, and yellow as a guinea.

Garratt Skinner then tied his coat to his ice-ax, and standing out upon a rock waved it this way and that.
"No one will see it," whimpered Pierre; and indeed Garratt Skinner would never have waved that signal had he not thought the same.
"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.