"There has been an accident," he said. "We must hurry."
The peasant was right. He _had_ seen a man waving a signal of distress on the slopes of Mont Blanc above the great buttress. And this is how the signal came to be waved.
An hour before Chayne and Sylvia set out from Chamonix to cross the Col du Géant, and while it was yet quite dark, a spark glowed suddenly on an island of rocks set in the great white waste of the Brenva glacier. The spark was a fire lit by Pierre Delouvain. For Garratt Skinner's party had camped upon those rocks. The morning was cold, and one by one the porters, Garratt Skinner, and Walter Hine, gathered about the blaze. Overhead the stars glittered in a clear, dark sky. It was very still; no sound was heard at all but the movement in the camp; even on the glacier a thousand feet below, where all night long the avalanches had thundered, in the frost of the early morning there was silence.
"We shall have a good day," he said; and then he looked quickly toward Walter Hine. "How did you sleep, Wallie?"
"Very little. The avalanches kept me awake. Besides, I slipped and fell a hundred times at the corner of the path," he said, with a shiver. "A hundred times I felt emptiness beneath my feet."
He referred to a mishap of the day before. On the way to the gîte after the chalets and the wood are left behind, a little path leads along the rocks of the Mont de la Brenva high above the glacier. There are one or two awkward corners to pass where rough footsteps have been hewn in the rock. At one of these corners Walter Hine had slipped. His side struck the step; he would have dropped to the glacier, but Garratt Skinner had suddenly reached out a hand and saved him.
"You think we can do it?" asked Hine, nervously, and Garratt Skinner laughed.
"Ask Pierre Delouvain!" he said, and himself put the question. Pierre laughed in his turn.
"Bah! I snap my fingers at the Brenva climb," said he. "We shall be in Chamonix to-night"; and Garratt Skinner translated the words to Walter Hine.
Breakfast was prepared and eaten. Walter Hine was silent through the meal. He had not the courage to say that he was afraid; and Garratt Skinner played upon his vanity.
"We shall be in Chamonix to-night. It will be a fine feather in your cap, Wallie. One of the historic climbs!"