98
[1861
pick our way, winding round the towers or scalingthem amain. The work was heavy from the first,the bending, twisting, reaching, and drawing upcalling upon all the muscles of the frame. Aftertwo hours of this work we halted, and, looking back,saw two moving objects on the glacier below us.At first we took them to be chamois, but they weremen. The leader carried an axe, and his companiona knapsack and an alpenstock. They followed ourtraces, losing them apparently now and then, andwaiting to recover them. Our expedition had putRanda in a state of excitement, and some of its bestclimbers had urged Bennen to take them with him.This he did not deem necessary, and now here weretwo of them determined to try the thing on theirown account, and perhaps to dispute with us thehonour of the enterprise. On this point, however,our uneasiness was small.
Resuming our gymnastics, the rocky staircase ledus to the flat summit of a tower, where we foundourselves cut off from a similar tower by a deep gapbitten into the mountain. The rope was here ourrefuge. Bennen coiled it round his waist; we lethim down along the surface of the rock, until hefixed himself on a ledge, where he could lend me ahelping hand. I followed him, and Wenger followedme. By a kind of screw motion we twisted ourselvesround the opposite tower, and reached the ridge