_RESCUE FROM A CREVASSE._
Mr. Huxley and myself had been staying for some days at Grindelwald,
hoping for steady weather, and looking at times into the wild and noble
region which the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, the Viescherhörner, and
the Eiger feed with eternal snows. We had scanned the buttresses of
the Jungfrau with a view to forcing a passage between the Jungfrau
and the Monk from the Wengern Alp to the Aletsch glacier. The weather
for a time kept hopes and fears alternately afloat, but finally it
declared against us; so we moved with the unelastic tread of beaten
soldiers over the Great Sheideck, and up the Vale of Hasli to the
Grimsel. We crossed the pass whose planed and polished rocks had long
ago attracted the attention of Sir John Leslie, though the solution
which he then offered ignored the ancient glacier which we now know
to have been the planing tool employed. On rounding an angle of the
Mayenwand, two travellers suddenly appeared in front of us; they were
Mr. (now Sir John) Lubbock and his guide. He had been waiting at the
new hotel erected by M. Seiler at the foot of the Mayenwand, expecting
our arrival; and finally, despairing of this, he had resolved to
abandon the mountains, and was now bound for Brientz. In fact, the
lakes of Switzerland, and the ancient men who once bivouacked along
their borders, were to him the principal objects of interest; and we
caught him in the act of declaring a preference for the lowlands which
we could not by any means share.
We reversed his course, carried him with us down the mountain, and
soon made ourselves at home in M. Seiler’s hotel. Here we had three
days’ training on the glacier and the adjacent heights, and on one of
the days Lubbock and myself made an attempt upon the Galenstock. By
the flank of the mountain, with the Rhone glacier on our right, we
reached the heights over the ice cascade and crossed the glacier above
the fall. The sky was clear and the air pleasant as we ascended; but
in the earth’s atmosphere the sun works his swiftest necromancy, the
lightness of air rendering it in a peculiar degree capable of change.
Clouds suddenly generated came drifting up the valley of the Rhone,
covering the glacier and swathing the mountain-tops, but leaving clear
for a time the upper _névé_ of the Rhone. Grandeur is conceded while
beauty is sometimes denied to the Alps. But the higher snow-fields of
the great glaciers are altogether beautiful--not throned in repellent
grandeur, but endowed with a grace so tender as to suggest the
loveliness of woman.
The day was one long succession of surprises wrought by the
cloud-filled and wind-rent air. We reached the top, and found there
a gloom which might be felt. It was almost thick enough to cut each
of us away from the vision of his fellows. But suddenly, in the air
above us, the darkness would melt away, and the deep blue heaven would
reveal itself spanning the dazzling snows. Beyond the glacier rose the
black and craggy summit of the Finsteraarhorn, and other summits and
other crags emerged in succession as the battle-clouds rolled away. But
the smoke would again whirl in upon us, and we looked once more into
infinite haze from the cornice which lists the mountain-ridge. Again
the clouds are torn asunder, and again they close. And thus, in upper
air, did the sun play a wild accompaniment to the mystic music of the
world below.
From the Rhone glacier we proceeded down the Rhone valley to Viesch,
whence, in the cool twilight, all three of us ascended to the Hotel
Jungfrau, on the Æggischhorn. This we made our head-quarters for
some days, and here Lubbock and I decided to ascend the Jungfrau.
The proprietor of the hotel keeps guides for this excursion, but his
charges are so high as to be almost prohibitory. I, however, needed
no guide in addition to my faithful Bennen; but simply a porter of
sufficient strength and skill to follow where he led. In the village of
Laax Bennen found such a porter--a young man named Bielander, who had
the reputation of being both courageous and strong. He was the only son
of his mother, and she was a widow.
This young man and a second porter we sent on with our provisions to
the Grotto of the Faulberg, where we were to spend the night. Between
the Æggischhorn and this cave the glacier presents no difficulty which
the most ordinary caution cannot overcome, and the thought of danger
in connection with it never occurred to us. An hour and a half after
the departure of our porters we slowly wended our way to the lake of
Märjelin, which we skirted, and were soon upon the ice. The middle of
the glacier was almost as smooth as a carriage-road, cut here and there
by musical brooks produced by the superficial ablation. To Lubbock the
scene opened out with the freshness of a new revelation, as, previously
to this year, he had never been among the glaciers of the Alps. To me,
though not new, the region had lost no trace of the interest with which
I first viewed it. We moved briskly along the frozen incline, until,
after a couple of hours’ march, we saw a solitary human being standing
on the lateral moraine of the glacier, near the point where we were to
quit it for the cave of the Faulberg.
At first this man excited no attention. He stood and watched us, but
did not come towards us, until finally our curiosity was aroused by
observing that he was one of our own two men. The glacier here is
always cut by crevasses, which, while they present no real difficulty,
require care. We approached our porter, but he never moved; and when we
came up to him he looked stupid, and did not speak until he was spoken
to. Bennen addressed him in the patois of the place, and he answered in
the same patois. His answer must have been more than usually obscure,
for Bennen misunderstood the most important part of it. ‘My God!’ he
exclaimed, turning to us, ‘Walters is killed!’ Walters was the guide
at the Æggischhorn, with whom, in the present instance, we had nothing
to do. ‘No, not Walters,’ responded the man; ‘it is my comrade that
is killed.’ Bennen looked at him with a wild bewildered stare. ‘How
killed?’ he exclaimed. ‘Lost in a crevasse,’ was the reply. We were all
so stunned that for some moments we did not quite seize the import of
the terrible statement. Bennen at length tossed his arms in the air,
exclaiming, ‘Jesu Maria! what am I to do?’ With the swiftness that some
ascribe to dreams, I surrounded the fact with imaginary adjuncts, one
of which was that the man had been drawn dead from the crevasse, and
was now a corpse in the cave of the Faulberg, for I took it for granted
that, had he been still entombed, his comrade would have run or called
for our aid. Several times in succession the porter affirmed that the
missing man was certainly dead. ‘How does he know that he is dead?’
Lubbock demanded. ‘A man is sometimes rendered insensible by a fall
without being killed.’ This question was repeated in German, but met
with the same dogmatic response. ‘Where is the man?’ I asked. ‘There,’
replied the porter, stretching his arm towards the glacier. ‘In the
crevasse?’ A stolid ‘Ja!’ was the answer. It was with difficulty that I
quelled an imprecation. ‘Lead the way to the place, you blockhead,’ and
he led the way.
We were soon beside a wide and jagged cleft which resembled a kind
of cave more than an ordinary crevasse. This cleft had been spanned
by a snow bridge, now broken, and to the edge of which footsteps
could be traced. The glacier at the place was considerably torn, but
simple patience was the only thing needed to unravel its complexity.
This quality our porter lacked, and, hoping to make shorter work of
it, he attempted to cross the bridge. It gave way, and he went down,
carrying an immense load of _débris_ along with him. We looked into
the hole, at one end of which the vision was cut short by darkness,
while immediately under the broken bridge it was crammed with snow
and shattered icicles. We saw nothing more. We listened with strained
attention, and from the depths of the glacier issued a low moan. Its
repetition assured us that it was no delusion--the man was still alive.
Bennen from the first had been extremely excited; and the fact of
his having, as a Catholic, saints and angels to appeal to, augmented
his emotion. When he heard the moaning he became almost frantic. He
attempted to get into the crevasse, but was obliged to recoil. It was
quite plain that a second life was in danger, for my guide seemed to
have lost all self-control. I placed my hand heavily upon his shoulder,
and admonished him that upon his coolness depended the life of his
friend. ‘If you behave like a man, we shall save him; if like a woman,
he is lost.’
[Illustration: RECOVERY OF OUR PORTER.]
A first-rate rope accompanied the party, but unhappily it was with the
man in the crevasse. Coats, waistcoats, and braces were instantly taken
off and knotted together. I watched Bennen while this work was going
on; his hands trembled with excitement, and his knots were evidently
insecure. The last junction complete, he exclaimed, ‘Now let me down!’
‘Not until each of these knots has been tested; not an inch!’[11] Two
of them gave way, and Lubbock’s waistcoat also proved too tender for
the strain. The _débris_ was about forty feet from the surface of the
glacier, but two intermediate prominences afforded a kind of footing.
Bennen was dropped down upon one of these; I followed, being let down
by Lubbock and the other porter. Bennen then descended the remaining
distance, and was followed by me. More could not find room.
[11] ‘Ach, Herr,’ he replied to one of my remonstrances, ‘Sein Sie
nicht so hart.’
The shape and size of the cavity were such as to produce a kind of
resonance, which rendered it difficult to fix the precise spot from
which the sound issued; but the moaning continued, becoming to all
appearance gradually feebler. Fearing to wound the man, the ice-rubbish
was cautiously rooted away; it rang curiously as it fell into the
adjacent gloom. A layer two or three feet thick was thus removed; and
finally, from the frozen mass, and so bloodless as to be almost as
white as the surrounding snow, issued a single human hand. The fingers
moved. Round it we rooted, cleared the arm, and reached the knapsack,
which we cut away. We also regained our rope. The man’s head was then
laid bare, and my brandy-flask was immediately at his lips. He tried
to speak, but his words jumbled themselves to a dull moan. Bennen’s
feelings got the better of him at intervals; he wrought like a hero,
but at times he needed guidance and stern admonition. The arms once
free, we passed the rope underneath them, and tried to draw the man
out. But the ice-fragments round him had regelated so as to form a
solid case. Thrice we essayed to draw him up, thrice we failed; he had
literally to be hewn out of the ice, and not until his last foot was
extricated were we able to lift him. By pulling him from above, and
pushing him from below, the man was at length raised to the surface of
the glacier.
For an hour we had been in the crevasse in shirt-sleeves--the porter
had been in it for two hours--and the dripping ice had drenched us.
Bennen, moreover, had worked with the energy of madness, and now the
reaction came. He shook as if he would fall to pieces; but brandy and
some dry covering revived him. The rescued man was helpless, unable
to stand, unable to utter an articulate sentence. Bennen proposed to
carry him down the glacier towards home. Had this been attempted, the
man would certainly have died upon the ice. Bennen thought he could
carry him for two hours; but the guide underrated his own exhaustion
and overrated the vitality of the porter. ‘It cannot be thought of,’ I
said: ‘to the cave of Faulberg, where we must tend him as well as we
can.’ We got him to the side of the glacier, where Bennen took him on
his back; in ten minutes he sank under his load. It was now my turn,
so I took the man on my back and plodded on with him as far as I was
able. Helping each other thus by turns, we reached the mountain grot.
The sun had set, and the crown of the Jungfrau was embedded in amber
light. Thinking that the Märjelin See might be reached before darkness,
I proposed starting in search of help. Bennen protested against my
going alone, and I thought I noticed moisture in Lubbock’s eye. Such an
occasion brings out a man’s feeling if he have any. I gave them both
my blessing and made for the glacier. But my anxiety to get quickly
clear of the crevasses defeated its own object. Thrice I found myself
in difficulty, and the light was visibly departing. The conviction
deepened that persistence would be folly, and the most impressive
moment of my existence was that on which I stopped at the brink of
a profound fissure and looked upon the mountains and the sky. The
serenity was perfect--not a cloud, not a breeze, not a sound, while the
last hues of sunset spread over the solemn west.
I returned; warm wine was given to our patient, and all our dry
clothes were wrapped around him. Hot-water bottles were placed at
his feet, and his back was briskly rubbed. He continued to groan a
long time; but, finally, both this and the trembling ceased. Bennen
watched him solemnly, and at length muttered in anguish, ‘Sir, he is
dead!’ I leaned over the man and found him breathing gently; I felt
his pulse--it was beating tranquilly. ‘Not dead, dear old Bennen; he
will be able to crawl home with us in the morning.’ The prediction was
justified by the event; and two days afterwards we saw him at Laax,
minus a bit of his ear, with a bruise upon his cheek, and a few scars
upon his hand, but without a broken bone or serious injury of any kind.
The self-denying conduct of the second porter made us forget his
stupidity--it may have been stupefaction. As I lay there wet, through
the long hours of that dismal night, I almost registered a vow never to
tread upon a glacier again. But, like the forces in the physical world,
human emotions vary with the distance from their origin, and a year
afterwards I was again upon the ice.
* * * * *
Towards the close of 1862 Bennen and myself made ‘the tour of
Monte Rosa,’ halting for a day or two at the excellent hostelry
of Delapierre, in the magnificent Val du Lys. We scrambled up the
Grauhaupt, a point exceedingly favourable to the study of the
conformation of the Alps. We also halted at Alagna and Macugnaga. But,
notwithstanding their admitted glory, the Italian valleys did not suit
either Bennen or me. We longed for the more tonic air of the northern
slopes, and were glad to change the valley of Ansasca for that of
Saas. We subsequently, on a perfect day, crossed the Alphubel Joch--a
very noble pass, and by no means difficult if the ordinary route be
followed. But Bennen and I did not follow that route. We tried to cross
the mountains obliquely from the chalets of Täsch, close under the
Alphubel, and, as a consequence, encountered on a spur of the mountain
a danger to which I will not further refer than to say that Bennen’s
voice is still present to me as he said, ‘Ach, Herr! es thut mir Leid,
Sie hier zu sehen.’[12]
[12] Rendered in accordance with the tone and sentiment, this would
be, ‘Ah! sir, it breaks my heart to see you here.’