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telegraphed from Courmayeur, the Italian village just across the chain of
Mont Blanc:

"Starting now by Col du Géant and Col des Nantillons."

The Col du Géant is the most frequented pass across the chain, and no
doubt the easiest. Once past its great ice-fall, the glacier leads
without difficulty to the Montanvert hotel and Chamonix. But the Col des
Nantillons is another affair. Having passed the ice-fall, and when within
two hours of the Montanvert, Lattery had turned to the left and had made
for the great wall of precipitous rock which forms the western side of
the valley through which the Glacier du Géant flows down, the wall from
which spring the peaks of the Dent du Requin, the Aiguille du Plan, the
Aiguille de Blaitière, the Grépon and the Charmoz. Here and there the
ridge sinks between the peaks, and one such depression between the
Aiguille de Blaitière and the Aiguille du Grépon is called the Col des
Nantillons. To cross that pass, to descend on the other side of the great
rock-wall into that bay of ice facing Chamonix, which is the Glacier des
Nantillons, had been Lattery's idea.

Chayne turned to the porter.

"When did this come?"

"Three days ago."

The gravity on Chayne's face changed into a deep distress. Lattery's


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