Why--leave him on the ground, the ground, the ground.
If you have done these things you will not make much of the call of the
temple bells and the palm trees and the spicy garlic smells--least of
all at New Year. You will hear instead the call of the Pillar Rock and
the chorus from the lonely inn. You will don your oldest clothes and
wind the rope around you--singing meanwhile “the rope, the rope,”--and
take the night train, and at nine or so next morning you will step out
at that gateway of the enchanted land--Keswick. Keswick! Wastdale!...
Let us pause on the music of those words.... There are men to whom they
open the magic casements at a breath.
And at Keswick you call on George Abraham. It would be absurd to go
to Keswick without calling on George Abraham. You might as well go to
Wastdale Head without calling on the Pillar Rock. And George tells you
that of course he will be over at Wastdale on New Year's Eve and will
climb the Pillar Rock or Scafell Pinnacle with you on New Year's Day.
The trap is at the door, you mount, you wave adieus, and are soon
jolting down the road that runs by Derwentwater, where every object is
an old friend, whom absence only makes more dear. Here is the Bowder
Stone and there across the Lake is Causey Pike, peeping over the brow of
Cat Bells. (Ah! the summer days on Causey Pike, scrambling and picking
wimberries and waking the echoes of Grisedale.)
And there before us are the dark Jaws of Borrowdale and, beyond, the
billowy summits of Great Gable and Scafell. And all around are the rocky
sentinels of the valley. You know everyone and hail him by his name.
Perhaps you jump down at Lodore and scramble up to the Falls. Then on to
Rosthwaite and lunch.
And here the last rags of the lower world are shed. Fleet Street is
a myth and London a frenzied dream. You are at the portals of the
sanctuary and the great peace of the mountains is yours. You sling your
rucksack on your back and your rope over your shoulder and set out on
the three hours' tramp over Styhead Pass to Wastdale.
It is dark when you reach the inn yard for the way down is long and
these December days are short. And on the threshold you are welcomed by
the landlord and landlady--heirs of Auld Will Ritson--and in the flagged
entrance you see coils of rope and rucksacks and a noble array of
climbers' boots--boots that make the heart sing to look upon, boots that
have struck music out of many a rocky breast, boots whose missing nails
has each a story of its own. You put your own among them, don your
slippers, and plunge among your old companions of the rocks with jolly
greeting and pass words. What a mingled gathering it is--a master from a
school in the West, a jolly lawyer from Lancashire, a young clergyman, a
barrister from the Temple, a manufacturer from Nottingham, and so on.
But the disguises they wear to the world are cast aside, and the eternal
boy that refuses to grow up is revealed in all of them.
Who shall tell of the days and nights that follow?--of the songs that
are sung, and the “traverses” that are made round the billiard room and
the barn, of the talk of handholds and footholds on this and that famous
climb, of the letting in of the New Year, of the early breakfasts and
the departures for the mountains, of the nights when, tired and rich
with new memories, you all foregather again--save only, perhaps, the
jolly lawyer and his fellows who have lost their way back from Scafell,
and for whom you are about to send out a search party when they turn up
out of the darkness with new material for fireside tales.
Let us take one picture from many. It is New Year's Day--clear and
bright, patches of snow on the mountains and a touch of frost in the
air. In the hall there is a mob of gay adventurers, tying up ropes,
putting on putties, filling rucksacks with provisions, hunting for boots
(the boots are all alike, but you recognise them by your missing nails).
We separate at the threshold--this group for the Great Gable, that for
Scafell, ours, which includes George Abraham, for the Pillar Rock. It
is a two and a half hour's tramp thither by Black Sail Pass, and as
daylight is short there is no time to waste. We follow the water course
up the valley, splash through marshes, faintly veneered with ice, cross
the stream where the boulders give a decent foothold, and mount the
steep ascent of Black Sail. From the top of the Pass we look down lonely
Ennerdale, where, springing from the flank of the Pillar mountain,
is the great Rock we have come to challenge. It stands like a tower,
gloomy, impregnable, sheer, 600 feet from its northern base to its
summit, split on the south side by Jordan Gap that divides the High Man
or main rock from Pisgah, the lesser rock.
We have been overtaken by another party of three from the inn--one in
a white jersey which, for reasons that will appear, I shall always
remember. Together we follow the High Level Traverse, the track that
leads round the flank of the mountain to the top of Walker's Gully, the
grim descent to the valley, loved by the climber for the perils to which
it invites him. Here wre lunch and here we separate. We, unambitious
(having three passengers in our party of five), are climbing the East
face by the Notch and Slab route; the others are ascending by the New
West route, one of the more difficult climbs. Our start is here; theirs
is from the other side of Jordan Gap. It is not of our climb that I wish
to speak, but of theirs. In the old literature of the Rock you will find
the Slab and Notch route treated as a difficult feat; but to-day it is
held in little esteem.
With five on the rope, however, our progress is slow, and it is two
o'clock when we emerge from the chimney, perspiring and triumphant, and
stand, first of the year, on the summit of the Pillar Rock, where the
wind blows thin and shrill and from whence you look out over half the
peaks of Lakeland. We take a second lunch, inscribe our names in the
book that lies under the cairn, and then look down the precipice on the
West face for signs of our late companions. The sound of their voices
comes up from below, but the drop is too sheer to catch a glimpse
of their forms. “They're going to be late,” says George Abraham--the
discoverer of the New West--and then he indicates the closing stages of
the climb and the slab where on another New Year's Day occurred the most
thrilling escape from death in the records of the Pillar rock--two men
falling, and held on the rope and finally rescued by the third. Of those
three, two, Lewis Meryon and the Rev. W. F. Wright, perished the next
year on the Grand Paradis. We dismiss the unhappy memory and turn
cheerfully to descend by Slingsby's Crack and the Old West route which
ends on the slope of the mountain near to the starting point of the New
West route.
The day is fading fast, and the moon that is rising in the East sheds
no light on this face of the great tower. The voices now are quite
distinct, coming to us from the left. We can almost hear the directions
and distinguish the speakers. “Can't understand why those lads are
cutting it so fine,” says George Abraham, and he hastens our pace down
cracks and grooves and over ledges until we reach the screes and safety.
And now we look up the great cliff and in the gathering dusk one thing
is visible--a figure in a white jersey, with arms extended at full
stretch. There it hangs minute by minute as if nailed to the rocks.
[Illustration: 0047]
The party, then, are only just making the traverse from the chimney to
the right, the most difficult manoeuvre of the climb--a manoeuvre in
which one, he in the white jersey, has to remain stationary while his
fellows pass him. “This is bad,” says George Abraham and he prepares
for a possible emergency. “Are you in difficulties? Shall we wait?” he
cries. “Yes, wait.” The words rebound from the cliff in the still air
like stones. We wait and watch. We can see nothing but the white jersey,
still moveless; but every motion of the other climbers and every word
they speak echoes down the precipice, as if from a sounding board. You
hear the iron-shod feet of the climbers feeling about for footholds on
the ringing wall of rock. Once there is a horrible clatter as if both
feet are dangling over the abyss and scraping convulsively for a hold.
I fancy one or two of us feel a little uncomfortable as we look at
each other in silent comment. And all the time the figure in white, now
growing dim, is impaled on the face of the darkness, and the voices
come down to us in brief, staccato phrases. Above the rock, the moon is
sailing into the clear winter sky and the stars are coming out.
At last the figure in white is seen to move and soon a cheery “All
right” drops down from above. The difficult operation is over, the
scattered rocks are reached and nothing remains but the final slabs,
which in the absence of ice offer no great difficulty. Their descent by
the easy Jordan route will be quick. We turn to go with the comment that
it is perhaps more sensational to watch a climb than to do one.
And then we plunge over the debris behind Pisgah, climb up the Great
Doup, where the snow lies crisp and deep, until we reach the friendly
fence that has guided many a wanderer in the darkness down to the top of
Black Sail Pass. From thence the way is familiar, and two hours later we
have rejoined the merry party round the board at the inn.
In a few days it is all over. This one is back in the Temple, that one
to his office, a third to his pulpit, another to his mill, and all seem
prosaic and ordinary. But they will carry with them a secret music. Say
only the word “Wastdale” to them and you shall awake its echoes; then
you shall see their faces light up with the emotion of incommunicable
things. They are no longer men of the world; they are spirits of the
mountains.
[Illustration: 0049]
[Illustration: 0050]