The great ice-triangle of the Aiguille Verte flashed and sparkled.

The slopes of the Les Droites and Mont Dolent were hung with jewels; even the black precipices of the Tour Noir grew warm and friendly.

But at the head of the glacier a sheer unbroken wall of rock swept round in the segment of a circle, and this remained still dead black and the glacier at its foot dead white.

At one point in the knife-like edge of this wall there was a depression, and from the depression a riband of ice ran, as it seemed from where they sat, perpendicularly down to the Glacier d'Argentiere.
"That is the Col Dolent," said Chayne.

"Very little sunlight ever creeps down there." Sylvia shivered as she looked.