"Peter," said Fordham, interrupting a story over which the guides were
guffawing among themselves, and which related to a certain rash tourist
who had undertaken to cross the Gorner glacier alone, giving Herr
Baedeker as his authority for dispensing with the services of their
fraternity, and how the adventurous one being eventually missed was duly
sought for, which search resulted in the discovery of him at the bottom
of a small crevasse in company with a sprained ankle and a Baedeker, and
how some of them in resentment of the fancied slur upon their craft had
grimly suggested that, whereas Baedeker had got him into his present
quandary, it was only fair that Baedeker should get him out. "Peter,
how long shall we take to get down to Zermatt?"
The man thus addressed stared gravely at the sky, then down at the
valley, then at the surrounding heights, then at his colleague. The
latter went through precisely the same formula. Then he replied--
"If de gentleman"--with a look at Philip--"go down so well as he did
come up, then we shall get there in about seven or eight hours."
"Right you are, Peter. You may put it at that," cried Phil, with
alacrity. "I'll go down like a chamois, my buck. We'll be in easy time
for _table d'hote_." But the other did not enter into this spirit of
exuberance. There was a touch of grimness in his reply, given with
characteristic deliberation.
"You had better be late for de _table d'hote_ than not get to de _table
d'hote_ ever again," he said.
"That's a damper, anyway," rejoined Phil.
"It's a well earned one," said Fordham. "He wants you to realise that
you can no more afford to be careless going down than you could coming
up. And you can't. You're a heavyish chap, Phil, and there are places
where if you lose your footing we are extremely likely to be unable to
hold you up. And although your return to the valley we have just left
may be welcome enough, I doubt if it will be adequately so if effected
in fragmentary form. So don't imagine you can afford to skip down the
Rothhorn on one leg, that's all."
Peter Anderledy, the head guide, was a swarthy, thick-set fellow,
black-bearded, and Italian looking--of apparently about forty, but in
reality ten years younger. The other, Conrad Spinner, was about the
same age but of a different build, being tall and straight, and of the
Northern type. His bronzed face was almost as dark as that of his
colleague, but his hair and moustache were blonde. The countenances of
both men wore the sedate almost melancholy expression common to those of
their calling, but the glance of their eyes was straight and quick.
Both were addicted to the unlimited consumption of tobacco--also in
common with those of their craft--a consideration by the way which is
difficult to reconcile with the popular notion that the soothing weed is
detrimental, not to say disastrous to the nerves, for if there is one
class of men which combines the most consummate coolness and courage
with an unlimited supply of sheer physical endurance and quickness of
resource, assuredly that class is represented by the qualified Alpine
guide.
Few Alpine peaks are perpendicular, even on their most precipitous side.
The Rothhorn, however, is one of these, for its eastern face, if
anything, slightly overhangs, falling in a magnificent drop of ironstone
precipice, a depth of about fifteen hundred feet to the glacier beneath.
Its summit is in reality in two peaks, one slightly lower than the
other. The way lies not over but round the lower of these, effecting
what is termed in mountaineering parlance a "corner." There is
excellent hold both for hand and foot, but whereas the climber at the
moment of rounding this projection can neither see nor be seen by the
rest of his party, and whereas, further, his body is slightly inclined
outward over the dizzy height before mentioned, it follows that the
novice, unless endowed with perfect steadiness of head and nerve, is apt
to find the position a somewhat trying one.
Now this is just what befell Philip Orlebar. At the worst point of the
projection, while hanging on, thus outwardly inclined, curiosity moved
him to turn his face over his shoulder and look down. The effect of the
stupendous height was disastrous. His hands, gripping the rock
overhead, began to tremble. A coldness ran through his legs. He could
not move. He felt that if he did so he must let go. Nor could he
withdraw his gaze from that awful abyss.
"What on earth are you doing, Phil?" sung out Fordham, from behind,
noticing that the rope had ceased moving.
"I'm looking down," came the reply.
"You must not look down. You must come on," called out the head guide,
who was leading.
The voices broke the spell. With an effort he pulled himself together,
and in a minute stood beside Peter. The others promptly followed.
"By Jove! That's a grisly sort of place--eh, Peter?" he said. "I
suppose it's the worst of all?"
"No; it is not de vorst--but it _looks_ de vorst," was the slow reply.
"But--you are all right. You have only to be careful--very careful."
A slight change had been made in their position on the rope for the
downward climb. Peter Anderledy, the head guide, took the lead as
before. Philip as the novice, came next--the theory being that as he
was more likely to make a false step than Fordham, there should be two
above him to increase the chances of his safety--and indeed that of the
whole party--for there are two or three places during the first hour's
descent of the Rothhorn on the Zermatt side where it is difficult to
believe the rope would save anybody, so steep is the face of the rock,
so slight the hold.
And now the work began in earnest. Almost immediately they got into a
narrow gully--a mere indenture in the surface of the rock, going
straight down for a considerable distance, and just sufficiently out of
the perpendicular to enable them to scramble down it slowly and with
infinite trouble--now sprawling face to the surface, now in ungainly,
half-squatting attitude, knees almost on a level with the chin. There
was hardly any hold as such; the climber preserving his position almost
entirely by pressure against the snow and ice-encrusted sides of the
shoot, much as an old-fashioned chimney sweeper in the prosecution of
his trade. It was an ugly place, and in the slippery precariousness of
the position with the whole height of the mountain to fall, was an
extremely trying one.
"I say, Peter," gasped Philip, as at a peremptory call from above to
halt he was striving to make good his stability. "This is a devil of a
bit, you know. I suppose if a fellow were to fall he wouldn't stop till
he got right down on the Durand glacier, eh?"
"Do not talk," came the severe reply. "Take care of what you are doing.
And mind de shtones."
None too soon was the warning. Hardly were the words uttered than a
large flat stone, as big as a full-sized photograph album--upon which
Philip had reckoned as a secure support--gave way beneath his feet with
a startling suddenness that made his blood run cold, and went crashing
and bounding straight for Peter. The latter, however, had seen the
catastrophe almost before it had occurred. With incredible celerity he
rolled aside, and, clinging to the face of the rock like a fly on the
wall, felt the air of the impromptu projectile as it shot by within a
foot of him and right through what a fraction of a second before had
been occupied by his body. Away it went, splitting to fragments, as in
a series of leaps and bounds it disappeared from sight.
"I say, though, I'm awfully sorry," said Philip, while Peter muttered
some very bad language--_secreta_--and Fordham sung out a warning to him
to be more careful and not to trust any stone until he had first well
tested it.
At length the gully ended and was succeeded by some very pretty rock
climbing. The side of the mountain here bore the aspect of being plated
with huge slabs, and it was mainly upon the projections formed by what
should have been the "joints" of these, together with cracks running
across their surface, that the climbers were able to make their way.
"A steeple-jack's work is a fool to this," commented Phil, gazing at the
two high above him as they descended cautiously and with cool
deliberation from point to point.
With ordinary care there was no risk here. Each man securing his
foothold before the others moved they descended slowly but surely. It
was a delightful climb, and, indeed, no form of mountaineering is more
interesting than rockwork of the kind. They arrived without accident at
the point where the way lies through a gap in the high rock ridge, and
sat down for a short rest as well as to refresh the inner man.
Experienced climbers prescribe the latter process for every two hours.
Certain it is that such recuperation is exceedingly welcome no less
often, thanks to the keen air of those high latitudes. But lack of time
and the risk of catching a chill precludes anything but the briefest
halt; wherefore, if the exertion immediate upon feeding resulteth not in
excruciating indigestion, the subject may congratulate himself on an
extra well-ordered internal economy. This poor Philip was destined to
learn at the hands of that hardest of all preceptresses, experience.
His normally buoyant spirits had deserted him, and as they resumed their
way down the rugged rock-face of the mountain he felt altogether bad.
"This Alpineering is a fraud, Fordham," he pronounced. "I know I've got
a splitting headache, and feel as if there was a ball of string in my
diaphragm. I guess the little grass climbs are good enough for me."
"Look where you are going! Never mind de talking till we get down," put
in Peter Anderledy.
The peremptoriness of the rebuke brought Phil's head back from over his
shoulder with the celerity of a recruit at the word "eyes right!" Then
he growled. But this expression of his dissatisfaction made upon the
stolid guide not the faintest impression.
"_Herr Gott_!" imprecated the latter presently, with set teeth and a
savage glance upward as he stopped to listen. "De shtones are falling."
High above among the cliffs, but slightly in front of their line of
march, a hollow rattle became audible. There was something weird and
uncanny about the sound. No mortal hand, no mortal agency had loosened
those rocks and sent them hurtling down into the depths below. It was
almost as if the demons of the air were abroad.
The party was descending a long _couloir_ or gully, which traversed
obliquely the iron face of the mountain. The crannies of the rocks were
filled with snow and the footing was good. Here and there a bit of
sloping ice necessitated the cutting of a step or two, but, on the
whole, the way was easy. Yet the guides seem to cast anxious glances
upward, and ever and anon that ghostly echoing rattle was heard.
"Sunshine is a delightful thing," quoth Fordham. "But like everything
else to which that term applies it is bound to have its obverse side. I
could wish just now it had been cloudier and colder."
"Why the deuce should you wish that?" said Philip.
"Because then there wouldn't be so many stones flying. You see, they're
frozen to the rock by a thin cementing of ice. As soon as the sun has
any power that ice melts and they slide off. All these rock mountains
are the very devil for falling stones. On the Matterhorn you hear them
rattling all day long--"
A vehement imprecation from both guides simultaneously, interrupted
them. There was a rushing sound in the air very like the "whigge" of a
shell, and a shadow seemed to swoop over their heads. Looking upward
they beheld a solid mass of rock of at least two tons' weight, sailing
through the air. It had shot outward from the last projecting portion
of the cliff upon which it had struck, and now describing a lofty arc it
whizzed directly over their position, and striking the rocks some
hundred feet lower split into fragments, which went crashing and roaring
down to the glacier beneath.
Fordham, contemplating this occurrence, shook his head slightly and said
nothing. Philip opened his eyes wide and ejaculated, "By Jove!" The
guides swore with renewed energy. Each action was characteristic.
For any such edifying notions as that the average man feels subdued and
reverential in the presence of impending danger may safely be relegated
to the Sunday school. In nine cases out of ten he relieves his feelings
pretty much as these Alpine guides did theirs--or feels inclined to--
presumably as the outcome of an unwonted excitement not unmixed perhaps
with a sort of irritation against the powers that be, which have, in a
manner of speaking, "cornered" him.
"We must get on so quick as we can. De shtones are going to fall to-day
like a devil," remarked Peter. This comparison as it stood was a
correct one and graphic withal. But in point of fact no thought of the
fall of Lucifer entered the honest guide's head. He was merely
reproducing a time-honoured and highly colloquial simile, the
unconscious variation of which made Philip laugh.
For a quarter of an hour all went well. Suddenly that ominous rattle
was heard again--right overhead. The three foremost were on a small but
steep slope of hard ice, nor could they move out of the steps which had
been cut by the foremost guide's axe. It follows, therefore, that the
attitudes struck by them were grotesque in the extreme as they stood
glaring wildly upward at a rumbling shower of stones coming down
straight at them, as though the power of the human eye might at a pinch
avail to deflect the dreaded volley. On it came, whizzing and
ricochetting by--the three men staring at it in the most ludicrous state
of helplessness, Fordham ducking violently as a small chip rebounding
from the ice grazed his ear like a slug. It was but a shower of small
stones--none larger than a cricket ball. But a bullet is as potent for
evil as a cannon shot, as Philip was destined to learn. He was seen to
pick up his right leg with a howl of pain, and then to go rather white
in the face.
"Are you hurt?" said the head guide, somewhat anxiously.
"Oh, not much, I suppose," was the rather doleful reply. "I believe my
ankle's broken, that's all."
Peter, without a word, turned back to help him, but he declined any aid.
"The sooner we are out of this the better," he said. "I can hop along
somehow. Hand us your flask, Fordham. That's better!"
And he was as good as his word. Though his foot was frightfully painful
he found that he could still use it, and at length they left the
rock-face of the mountain and gained the high ice _arete_ which forms
one of the spurs of the latter.
It was an awkward place wherein to be incapacitated. The way lay right
along the very edge of the _arete_, where there was not room for two to
walk abreast. But Phil was very game. The pain of his bruised ankle
increased with every step, but he was not going to hamper his companions
by collapsing. He took another liberal pull at Fordham's flask, and
started again manfully, trying to persuade himself that he was in
reality more frightened than hurt.
But apart from this casualty the view as seen from the apex of the dizzy
_arete_ was a thing to make the very pulses bound with delight in the
sheer exhilaration of living. Behind rose the stupendous cliffs of the
eastern face of the Rothhorn, soaring up to its twin-peaked summit
against the deep and cloudless blue. Immediately beneath, webbed and
criss-crossed by innumerable cracks, lay an amphitheatre of vast
glaciers flowing down from a crescent of grim and frowning cliffs
culminating in the Ober-Gabelhorn, a tower of precipitous rock. Right
opposite, the huge Matterhorn, a dark monolith, frowning, defiant--then
a white sublimity of dazzling snow mountains, the broad hump of the
Breithorn, and the two smaller ones known as Castor and Pollux--the
perilous Lyskamm and the sheeny mass of the beautiful Monte Rosa.
Glaciers, innumerable and vast, mighty rivers of rolling white waves,
whatever way the eye should turn.
There was a sudden boom as of a heavy thunderpeal--a dull, roaring rush
as of a mighty torrent. A grand avalanche was pouring down the dark
perpendicular precipices which shut in the head of the Trift glacier, a
cataract of powdery whiteness, which, when the glass was brought to
bear, revealed hundreds of tons of frozen snow and huge ice blocks,
falling into a frightful chasm at the foot of the cliff, whence arose a
column of powdery spray for many minutes afterward. As this vast volume
flowed down the metallic face of the dark rock, each peak and precipice
around re-echoed the thunderous boom in a hundred differing
reverberations.
Scarcely had this ceased than there came a sound of yodelling--cheery,
melodious, distant. Far down in the centre of the white and crevassed
plain, four specks, equidistant, were moving in a downward course.
"It is a caravan who has come over de Trift-joch," pronounced Conrad
Spinner. And then he and his colleagues lifting up their voices,
answered the yodel, while Philip, being unskilled in that art but moved
by a British and youthful desire to make a noise of some sort, lifted up
his in an ear-splitting and quite unmelodious yell.
The ice _arete_ came to an end at last and was succeeded by a long
descent over loose rocks, which, piled and packed together by the hand
of Nature, made a very tedious and difficult descent at the best of
times. To poor Philip with his bruised ankle it became excruciating.
At length he could endure it no longer and sank to the ground with an
agonised groan.
"Off with your boot, and let's appraise the damage," said Fordham.
"Yes, it's a bad whack," he went on, as the extent of the injury became
manifest--for the whole ankle was frightfully swollen. It had been
struck on the inside, and the least touch made the sufferer wince. Both
guides shook their heads gloomily as they marked the angry and inflamed
aspect of the contusion, and Peter Anderledy fired off a few invocations
of his Maker in terms far more forcible than reverential. Even for this
there might have been found some extenuation. Besides a rough and steep
descent over the loose rocks aforesaid, there yet remained a bit of
cliff to be climbed down, the end of a glacier to cross, then at least
half an hour down a high moraine, whose edge, sharp and knife-like,
entailed single file progress, before they reached a point from which a
mule or a litter might be used, and even that point was some hours
distant from the village.
This, however, was accomplished at last--the descent of the cliff being
avoided by a long _detour_. With the help of Conrad's stalwart shoulder
poor Phil managed to get along with a minimum of pain. But it took them
rather more than twice the ordinary time to accomplish the traject, nor
did they arrive at the point whence artificial transport could be used
until long after the hour when they had reckoned upon sitting safe and
snug at _table d'hote_ in the Hotel Mont Cervin at Zermatt.
"I say, Conrad, this is a right royal sell," said Philip, as they sat
round a handful of fire which the guide had built--for Peter and Fordham
had hurried on to procure a mule or a _chaise-a-porteur_, and could not
return for some hours. "Sell isn't the word for it. We reckoned on
doing the Matterhorn the day after to-morrow. I suppose there's no
chance of it now."
"If you can walk as far as de Riffel in one week you can tink you are
very lucky," answered the guide.
Poor Philip groaned.
"It's deuced rough," he said. "I didn't come over to Zermatt to lie up
a week in a confounded hotel."
"It would be worse to lie up for ever in de churchyard," answered Conrad
oracularly, as he lit his pipe.
"I suppose it would--but, I say, Conrad, how is it you fellows all talk
such good English? Where the dickens do you learn it?"
"We learn it in de vinter. We make a class."
"But who teaches you? Do you get hold of an Englishman?"
"No. It is a Swiss--a Swiss who has been five years in America. But,"
added the guide, naively, "I don't tink his pronunciation is very good."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, Fordham and Peter were making their way down the wild and
desolate Trift-thal in the moonlight.
"I never did see de Rothhorn so bad for de shtones as to-day," grumbled
the latter. "Dey come down, oh, like a devil."
"It's unfortunate, but one consolation is that it was nobody's fault.
It was sheer ill-luck, Peter, and you or Conrad might equally well have
been hit."
"No, it is nobody's fault," assented Peter. "But, if anyting goes wrong
with de gentleman dere are always peoples what say it is de guide's
fault. But dat is just de very ting no guide can help--de falling
shtones. We get over de place as quick as we can, but we can't _run_.
_Ach_!" he concluded, with a disgusted shake of the head.
There was reason in what he said. An Alpine guide under the
circumstances is in much the same position as the captain of a ship.
There are casualties which can be averted neither by the skill of the
one nor the seamanship of the other, nor the courage of both. Yet when
such occur public opinion is equally hard on both.
It was midnight before the sufferer was safely housed. The local
practitioner looked grave, very grave, when he examined the injury. He
peremptorily forbade the patient to set foot to the ground until he gave
him leave, and that under pain of almost certainly losing his foot
altogether.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Great events from little causes spring." The little cause in this
instance was that little stone. There was a grim literalness in Peter
Anderledy's unconscious variation of a well-worn simile when he
predicted that the stones were going to fall "like a devil"--for the
falling of that little stone was destined to alter the course of Philip
Orlebar's whole life. Its effect might well have been the result of
satanic intervention.