I immediately took up my port-folio, and the box that contained my dispatches. My two soldiers Golikoff, and Nedarezoff, whose dexterity I had already experienced, consented to accompany me. Without their assistance it would, I believe, have been impossible to save this precious deposit; we carried it in turn, exchanging it from one to another. He that had last received it, for instance, who always marched foremost upon this narrow parapet, threw it suddenly into a hollow place of the rock, advancing at the same time a few steps; the others came after him, took up his burthen, and relieved themselves from it by the same manœuvre. I cannot express what I felt during this operation; at every stride of the bearer over the gaps of the path, I imagined I saw my box ready to fall into the sea. Twenty times it was upon the point of escaping from our hands, and I felt my very blood curdle as if I had seen death itself gaping under my steps. Indeed I am not able to say what would have been the effect of my despair, if I had had the misfortune to lose it. I knew not a moment’s ease till I had deposited this solemn charge in a place of safety; my joy was then as vehement as had been my anxiety. This second success inspired me with so much confidence, that I no longer doubted of the possibility of transporting our sledges in the same manner. I communicated my ideas to my soldiers: animated by my example, and by the event of their first experiment, they cheerfully returned with me for this new undertaking. By my order they had unharnessed a part of the dogs; they now fastened to the four corners of the sledges long thongs of leather which I directed to be held by those who were before and behind the vehicle. We presently found the utility of this precaution; our sledges were sometimes wider than the parapet, and of consequence only rested on one skate, so that the load must have overturned them into the water if they had not been strongly supported; at other times the ice, as I have said, was entirely gone, when it was necessary to give them a sudden elevation in order to preserve their equilibrium. The muscular arms of my guides were scarcely equal to the weight, and it was sometimes as much as all of us could do to keep one another from falling. It was to no purpose, for us to grapple the rock; it was perpetually to be feared that one of us should draw in the other, or that the ice should suddenly fail under our feet. We however suffered nothing but the apprehension.