Two o’clock! By walking well they could be at the top by mid-day. “_Zou!_” said the P. C. A., very lively, and dashing forward, as if to the assault. But his guides stopped him. They must be roped for the dangerous passages. “Ah! _vaï_, roped!.. Very good, if that amuses you.” Christian Inebnit took the lead, leaving twelve feet of rope between himself and Tartarin, who was separated by the same length from the second guide who carried the provisions and the banner. The hero kept his footing better than he did the day before; and confidence in the Company must indeed have been strong, for he did not take seriously the difficulties of the path--if we can call a path the terrible ridge of ice along which they now advanced with precaution, a ridge but a few feet wide and so slippery that Christian was forced to cut steps with his ice-axe. The line of the ridge sparkled between two depths of abysses on either side. But if you think that Tartarin was frightened, not at all! Scarcely did he feel the little quiver of the cuticle of a freemason novice when subjected to his opening test. He placed his feet most precisely in the holes which the first guide cut for them, doing all that he saw the guide do, as tranquil as he was in the garden of the baobab when he practised around the margin of the pond, to the terror of the goldfish. At one place the ridge became so narrow that he was forced to sit astride of it, and while they went slowly forward, helping themselves with their hands, a loud detonation echoed up, on their right, from beneath them. “Avalanche!” said Inebnit, keeping motionless till the repercussion of the echoes, numerous, grandiose, filling the sky, died away at last in a long roll of thunder in the far distance, where the final detonation was lost. After which, silence once more covered all as with a winding-sheet. The ridge passed, they went up a _névé_ the slope of which was rather gentle but its length interminable. They had been climbing nearly an hour when a slender pink line began to define the summits far, far above their heads. It was the dawn, thus announcing itself. Like a true Southerner, enemy to shade, Tartarin trolled out his liveliest song: Grand souleu de la Provenço Gai compaire dou mistrau-- A violent shake of the rope from before and behind stopped him short in the middle of his couplet. “Hush... Hush...” said Inebnit, pointing with his ice-axe to the threatening line of gigantic _séracs_ on their tottering foundations which the slightest jar might send thundering down the steep. But Tartarin knew what _that_ meant; he was not the man to ply with any such tales, and he went on singing in a resounding voice: Tu qu ‘escoulès la Duranço Commo un flot dé vin de Crau.