by John Buchan
Quite suddenly I ran out of the ill weather into a different climate. The sky was clear above me, and I saw that dawn was very near. The first pinewoods were beginning, and at last came a straight slope where I could let the car out. I began to recover my spirits, which had been very dashed, and to reckon the distance I had still to travel... And then, without warning, a new world sprang up around me. Out of the blue dusk white shapes rose like ghosts, peaks and needles and domes of ice, their bases fading mistily into shadow, but the tops kindling till they glowed like jewels. I had never seen such a sight, and the wonder of it for a moment drove anxiety from my heart. More, it gave me an earnest of victory. I was in clear air once more, and surely in this diamond ether the foul things which loved the dark must be worsted...
And then I saw, a mile ahead, the little square red-roofed building which I knew to be the inn of Santa Chiara.
It was here that misfortune met me. I had grown careless now, and looked rather at the house than the road. At one point the hillside had slipped down — it must have been recent, for the road was well kept — and I did not notice the landslide till I was on it. I slewed to the right, took too wide a curve, and before I knew the car was over the far edge. I slapped on the brakes, but to avoid turning turtle I had to leave the road altogether. I slithered down a steep bank into a meadow, where for my sins I ran into a fallen tree trunk with a jar that shook me out of my seat and nearly broke my arm. Before I examined the car I knew what had happened. The front axle was bent, and the off front wheel badly buckled.
I had not time to curse my stupidity. I clambered back to the road and set off running down it at my best speed. I was mortally stiff, for Ivery’s rack was not good for the joints, but I realized it only as a drag on my pace, not as an affliction in itself. My whole mind was set on the house before me and what might be happening there.
There was a man at the door of the inn, who, when he caught sight of my figure, began to move to meet me. I saw that it was Launcelot Wake, and the sight gave me hope.
But his face frightened me. It was drawn and haggard like one who never sleeps, and his eyes were hot coals.
‘Hannay,’ he cried, ‘for God’s sake what does it mean?’
‘Where is Mary?’ I gasped, and I remember I clutched at a lapel of his coat.
He pulled me to the low stone wall by the roadside.
‘I don’t know,’ he said hoarsely. ‘We got your orders to come here this morning. We were at Chiavagno, where Blenkiron told us to wait. But last night Mary disappeared... I found she had hired a carriage and come on ahead. I followed at once, and reached here an hour ago to find her gone... The woman who keeps the place is away and there are only two old servants left. They tell me that Mary came here late, and that very early in the morning a closed car came over the Staub with a man in it. They say he asked to see the young lady, and that they talked together for some time, and that then she went off with him in the car down the valley... I must have passed it on my way up... There’s been some black devilment that I can’t follow. Who was the man? Who was the man?’
He looked as if he wanted to throttle me.
‘I can tell you that,’ I said. ‘It was Ivery.’
He stared for a second as if he didn’t understand. Then he leaped to his feet and cursed like a trooper. ‘You’ve botched it, as I knew you 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 Grunewald. 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 the
se 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 Grunewald.’
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 tiring. I could feel him drag on the rope, and his movements had not the precision they had had in the morning. He was the mountaineer, and I the novice. If he gave out, we should never reach the valley.
The fellow was clear grit all through. When we reached the foot of the tooth and sat huddled up with our faces away from the wind, I saw that he was on the edge of fainting. What that effort Must have cost him in the way of resolution you may guess, but he did not fail till the worst was past. His lips were colourless, and he was choking with the nausea of fatigue. I found a flask of brandy in his pocket, and a mouthful revived him.
‘I’m all out,’ he said. ‘The road’s easier now, and I can direct YOU about the rest... You’d better leave me. I’ll only be a drag. I’ll come on when I feel better.’
‘No, you don’t, you old fool. You’ve got me over that infernal iceberg, and I’m going to see you home.’
I rubbed his arms and legs and made him swallow some chocolate. But when he got on his feet he was as doddery as an old man. Happily we had an easy course down a snow gradient, which we glissaded in very unorthodox style. The swift motion freshened him up a little, and he was able to put on the brake with his axe to prevent us cascading into the bergschrund. We crossed it by a snow bridge, and started out on the seracs of the Schwarzstein glacier.
I am no mountaineer — not of the snow and ice kind, anyway — but I have a big share of physical strength and I wanted it all now. For those seracs were an invention of the devil. To traverse t
hat labyrinth in a blinding snowstorm, with a fainting companion who was too weak to jump the narrowest crevasse, and who hung on the rope like lead when there was occasion to use it, was more than I could manage. Besides, every step that brought us nearer to the valley now increased my eagerness to hurry, and wandering in that maze of clotted ice was like the nightmare when you stand on the rails with the express coming and are too weak to climb on the platform. As soon as possible I left the glacier for the hillside, and though that was laborious enough in all conscience, yet it enabled me to steer a straight course. Wake never spoke a word. When I looked at him his face was ashen under a gale which should have made his cheeks glow, and he kept his eyes half closed. He was staggering on at the very limits of his endurance ...
By and by we were on the moraine, and after splashing through a dozen little glacier streams came on a track which led up the hillside. Wake nodded feebly when I asked if this was right. Then to my joy I saw a gnarled pine.
I untied the rope and Wake dropped like a log on the ground. ‘Leave me,’ he groaned. ‘I’m fairly done. I’ll come on later.’ And he shut his eyes.
My watch told me that it was after five o’clock.
‘Get on my back,’ I said. ‘I won’t part from you till I’ve found a cottage. You’re a hero. You’ve brought me over those damned mountains in a blizzard, and that’s what no other man in England would have done. Get up.’ He obeyed, for he was too far gone to argue. I tied his wrists together with a handkerchief below my chin, for I wanted my arms to hold up his legs. The rope and axes I left in a cache beneath the pine-tree. Then I started trotting down the track for the nearest dwelling.