Mr. Standfast
would. I knew no good would come of your infernal subtleties.” And he
consigned me and Blenkiron and the British army and Ivery and everybody
else to the devil.
I was past being angry. “Sit down, man,” I said, “and listen to me.” I
told him of what had happened at the Pink Chalet. He heard me out with
his head in his hands. The thing was too bad for cursing.
“The Underground Railway!” he groaned. “The thought of it drives me
mad. Why are you so calm, Hannay? She’s in the hands of the cleverest
devil in the world, and you take it quietly. You should be a raving
lunatic.”
“I would be if it were any use, but I did all my raving last night in
that den of Ivery’s. We’ve got to pull ourselves together, Wake. First
of all, I trust Mary to the other side of eternity. She went with him
of her own free will. I don’t know why, but she must have had a reason,
and be sure it was a good one, for she’s far cleverer than you or
me.... We’ve got to follow her somehow. Ivery’s bound for Germany, but
his route is by the Pink Chalet, for he hopes to pick me up there. He
went down the valley; therefore he is going to Switzerland by the
Marjolana. That is a long circuit and will take him most of the day.
Why he chose that way I don’t know, but there it is. We’ve got to get
back by the Staub.”
“How did you come?” he asked.
“That’s our damnable luck. I came in a first-class six-cylinder
Daimler, which is now lying a wreck in a meadow a mile up the road.
We’ve got to foot it.”
“We can’t do it. It would take too long. Besides, there’s the frontier
to pass.”
I remembered ruefully that I might have got a return passport from the
Portuguese Jew, if I had thought of anything at the time beyond getting
to Santa Chiara.
“Then we must make a circuit by the hillside and dodge the guards. It’s
no use making difficulties, Wake. We’re fairly up against it, but we’ve
got to go on trying till we drop. Otherwise I’ll take your advice and
go mad.”
“And supposing you get back to St Anton, you’ll find the house shut up
and the travellers gone hours before by the Underground Railway.”
“Very likely. But, man, there’s always the glimmering of a chance. It’s
no good chucking in your hand till the game’s out.”
“Drop your proverbial philosophy, Mr Martin Tupper, and look up there.”
He had one foot on the wall and was staring at a cleft in the snow-line
across the valley. The shoulder of a high peak dropped sharply to a
kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of snow. All below
the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the configuration of the
slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran from it to the main
glacier at the river head.
“That’s the Colle delle Rondini,” he said, “the Col of the Swallows. It
leads straight to the Staubthal near Grünewald. On a good day I have
done it in seven hours, but it’s not a pass for winter-time. It has
been done of course, but not often.... Yet, if the weather held, it
might go even now, and that would bring us to St Anton by the evening.
I wonder”—and he looked me over with an appraising eye—“I wonder if
you’re up to it.”
My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness to physical
toil.
“If you can do it, I can,” I said.
“No. There you’re wrong. You’re a hefty fellow, but you’re no
mountaineer, and the ice of the Colle delle Rondini needs knowledge. It
would be insane to risk it with a novice, if there were any other way.
But I’m damned if I see any, and I’m going to chance it. We can get a
rope and axes in the inn. Are you game?”
“Right you are. Seven hours, you say. We’ve got to do it in six.”
“You will be humbler when you get on the ice,” he said grimly. “We’d
better breakfast, for the Lord knows when we shall see food again.”
We left the inn at five minutes to nine, with the sky cloudless and a
stiff wind from the north-west, which we felt even in the deep-cut
valley. Wake walked with a long, slow stride that tried my patience. I
wanted to hustle, but he bade me keep in step. “You take your orders
from me, for I’ve been at this job before. Discipline in the ranks,
remember.”
We crossed the river gorge by a plank bridge, and worked our way up the
right bank, past the moraine, to the snout of the glacier. It was bad
going, for the snow concealed the boulders, and I often floundered in
holes. Wake never relaxed his stride, but now and then he stopped to
sniff the air.
I observed that the weather looked good, and he differed. “It’s too
clear. There’ll be a full-blown gale on the Col and most likely snow in
the afternoon.” He pointed to a fat yellow cloud that was beginning to
bulge over the nearest peak. After that I thought he lengthened his
stride.
“Lucky I had these boots resoled and nailed at Chiavagno,” was the only
other remark he made till we had passed the _seracs_ of the main
glacier and turned up the lesser ice-stream from the Colle delle
Rondini.
By half-past ten we were near its head, and I could see clearly the
ribbon of pure ice between black crags too steep for snow to lie on,
which was the means of ascent to the Col. The sky had clouded over, and
ugly streamers floated on the high slopes. We tied on the rope at the
foot of the _bergschrund_, which was easy to pass because of the
winter’s snow. Wake led, of course, and presently we came on to the
icefall.
In my time I had done a lot of scrambling on rocks and used to promise
myself a season in the Alps to test myself on the big peaks. If I ever
go it will be to climb the honest rock towers around Chamonix, for I
won’t have anything to do with snow mountains. That day on the Colle
delle Rondini fairly sickened me of ice. I daresay I might have liked
it if I had done it in a holiday mood, at leisure and in good spirits.
But to crawl up that couloir with a sick heart and a desperate impulse
to hurry was the worst sort of nightmare. The place was as steep as a
wall of smooth black ice that seemed hard as granite. Wake did the
step-cutting, and I admired him enormously. He did not seem to use much
force, but every step was hewn cleanly the right size, and they were
spaced the right distance. In this job he was the true professional. I
was thankful Blenkiron was not with us, for the thing would have given
a squirrel vertigo. The chips of ice slithered between my legs and I
could watch them till they brought up just above the _bergschrund_.
The ice was in shadow and it was bitterly cold. As we crawled up I had
not the exercise of using the axe to warm me, and I got very numb
standing on one leg waiting for the next step. Worse still, my legs
began to cramp. I was in good condition, but that time under Ivery’s
rack had played the mischief with my limbs. Muscles got out of place in
my calves and stood in aching lumps, till I almost squealed with the
pain of it. I was mortally afraid I should slip, and every time I moved
I called out to Wake to warn him. He saw what was happening and got the
pick of his axe fixed in the ice before I was allowed to stir. He spoke
often to cheer me up, and his voice had none of its harshness. He was
like some ill-tempered generals I have known, very gentle in a battle.
At the end the snow began to fall, a soft powder like the overspill of
a storm raging beyond the crest. It was just after that that Wake cried
out that in five minutes we would be at the summit. He consulted his
wrist-watch. “Jolly good time, too. Only twenty-five minutes behind my
best. It’s not one o’clock.”
The next I knew I was lying flat on a pad of snow easing my cramped
legs, while Wake shouted in my ear that we were in for something bad. I
was aware of a driving blizzard, but I had no thought of anything but
the blessed relief from pain. I lay for some minutes on my back with my
legs stiff in the air and the toes turned inwards, while my muscles
fell into their proper place.
It was certainly no spot to linger in. We looked down into a trough of
driving mist, which sometimes swirled aside and showed a knuckle of
black rock far below. We ate some chocolate, while Wake shouted in my
ear that now we had less step-cutting. He did his best to cheer me, but
he could not hide his anxiety. Our faces were frosted over like a
wedding-cake and the sting of the wind was like a whiplash on our
eyelids.
The first part was easy, down a slope of firm snow where steps were not
needed. Then came ice again, and we had to cut into it below the fresh
surface snow. This was so laborious that Wake took to the rocks on the
right side of the couloir, where there was some shelter from the main
force of the blast. I found it easier, for I knew something about
rocks, but it was difficult enough with every handhold and foothold
glazed. Presently we were driven back again to the ice, and painfully
cut our way through a throat of the ravine where the sides narrowed.
There the wind was terrible, for the narrows made a kind of funnel, and
we descended, plastered against the wall, and scarcely able to breathe,
while the tornado plucked at our bodies as if it would whisk us like
wisps of grass into the abyss.
After that the gorge widened and we had an easier slope, till suddenly
we found ourselves perched on a great tongue of rock round which the
snow blew like the froth in a whirlpool. As we stopped for breath, Wake
shouted in my ear that this was the Black Stone.
“The what?” I yelled.
“The Schwarzstein. The Swiss call the pass the Schwarzsteinthor. You
can see it from Grünewald.”
I suppose every man has a tinge of superstition in him. To hear that
name in that ferocious place gave me a sudden access of confidence. I
seemed to see all my doings as part of a great predestined plan. Surely
it was not for nothing that the word which had been the key of my first
adventure in the long tussle should appear in this last phase. I felt
new strength in my legs and more vigour in my lungs. “A good omen,” I
shouted. “Wake, old man, we’re going to win out.”
“The worst is still to come,” he said.
He was right. To get down that tongue of rock to the lower snows of the
couloir was a job that fairly brought us to the end of our tether. I
can feel yet the sour, bleak smell of wet rock and ice and the hard
nerve pain that racked my forehead. The Kaffirs used to say that there
were devils in the high berg, and this place was assuredly given over
to the powers of the air who had no thought of human life. I seemed to
be in the world which had endured from the eternity before man was
dreamed of. There was no mercy in it, and the elements were pitting
their immortal strength against two pigmies who had profaned their
sanctuary. I yearned for warmth, for the glow of a fire, for a tree or
blade of grass or anything which meant the sheltered homeliness of
mortality. I knew then what the Greeks meant by panic, for I was scared
by the apathy of nature. But the terror gave me a kind of comfort, too.
Ivery and his doings seemed less formidable. Let me but get out of this
cold hell and I could meet him with a new confidence.
Wake led, for he knew the road and the road wanted knowing. Otherwise
he should have been last on the rope, for that is the place of the
better man in a descent. I had some horrible moments following on when
the rope grew taut, for I had no help from it. We zigzagged down the
rock, sometimes driven to the ice of the adjacent couloirs, sometimes
on the outer ridge of the Black Stone, sometimes wriggling down little
cracks and over evil boiler-plates. The snow did not lie on it, but the
rock crackled with thin ice or oozed ice water. Often it was only by
the grace of God that I did not fall headlong, and pull Wake out of his
hold to the _bergschrund_ far below. I slipped more than once, but
always by a miracle recovered myself. To make things worse, Wake was