THE ALTAR OF TAMANOAS
We made our last camp in a glade strewn with wild-flowers that was
rimmed by one of the dingy glaciers, hanging like out-thrust arms
along the mountain's flanks. High overhead, several miles in the
still sky, soared the blunted cone of the summit, silver-white at the
peak, shading to a deeper tone where black hulks of rock cropped up
through the snow-mantle, and steel-gray farther down where the
ice-rivers of the glaciers crawled beneath loads of rock-dust and
pebble-bowlders, wrenched from earth's fabric by their resistless
flow.
Below the glaciers came the zone of wild-flowers, miles and miles of
them, casting their pollen into the air in the midst of icy
desolation, banding the heights with a cincture of fragrant beauty.
Then, a mile nearer earth's level, stood the timber-line; first,
straggling dwarf growths, bent and gnarled and twisted by the winds;
behind these the massive bulwark of the primeval forest, stout cedars
and cumbrous firs, the least of them fit for main-mast to a King's
ship, a green frame for the many-colored miracle of the flower-fields
and the white splendor above.
"Do you think to climb higher, brother?" I questioned Tawannears,
standing with arms folded, his eyes fixed upon the summit that seemed
so near in that radiant atmosphere.
He nodded.
"'Tis no more than a mountain," I continued gently. "Do you not see?"
He turned somber eyes upon me.
"It looks like no other mountain Tawannears has ever seen, Otetiani."
I waved my hand from South to North, where gleamed a dozen peaks
scarce inferior to the giant upon whose thighs we couched.
"They are not the same," he flamed with sudden passion. "Have not
all the people we met told us that this was the Great Spirit?
Tamanoas!" He repeated the name with a kind of ecstasy. "Did
Otetiani ever see anything more like what the Great Spirit must be?
Is He, then, a man like us--with feet and hands and a belly? No, He
is Power and Strength and Beauty and Stillness!"
"_Ja_," agreed Corlaer shrilly. "Andt if we go up high we see all
der country aroundt. Dot safes trouble. _Ja!_"
I unsheathed my tomahawk.
"Very well," I said. "'Tis settled. We try for the top. Therefore,
heed what I say. A mountain is a jealous foe, strong, as you have
said, eke treacherous. In France there is a mountain like to this,
which is called the White Mountain. Men climb it for love of danger,
but they go in parties roped together, so that if one falls, his
mates may save him. We must cut up our buffalo-robes and braid the
strips for rope, and besides, we shall need sticks to help us on the
ice. Also, we must make shift to climb by daylight. In the darkness
we should slip to our deaths--if, indeed, we do not die, in any case,
which I think is most likely."
Concern showed in the Seneca's face.
"Tawannears is selfish," he said quickly. "He thinks only of
himself. There is no need for Otetiani and Peter to go with me. Let
them wait here whilst I go up and make prayer to Tamanoas."
I laughed, and Corlaer's flat visage creased in a ridiculous simper,
which was the Dutchman's idea of derisive mirth.
"These many thousand leagues we have traveled," I answered, "without
one venturing alone. Shall we begin now? I say no."
"_Ja_," said Corlaer. "But we go in der morning, eh? Tonight we
eat."
In the morning we cached our muskets and spare equipment in a hollow
tree, and started up, with no more encumbrances than our
food-pouches, tomahawks, some fifty feet of resilient hide-rope and
the staves we had whittled from cedar saplings. Our path was obvious
enough. We crossed the zone of the wild-flowers, skirted the glacier
which terminated in their midst in a spouting, ice-cold stream of
brown water, and found firm footing for half a mile upon a tongue of
rock. Beyond this was a snow-field, solid and frozen almost to the
consistency of ice, in which we were obliged to cut our steps foot by
foot. The glare was dazzling as the bright sunlight was reflected
from the smooth, sloping surface, but we won to our objective,
another rock-mass, only to discover it too precipitous for climbing,
and were forced to entrust ourselves to the glacier, which encircled
it.
Here was work to try our souls. The dull, dirt-hued ice-river was
riven by cracks and crevices, some a few inches wide, others
impassable, from whose dark-green depths came faint tinklings, and
blasts of that utter cold that numbs life instantly. But it was not
cold on the glacier's top. The warm sun made us sweat as we toiled
upward, testing the ice in front of us with our sticks at every step,
studying ways to evade the widest crevices, aiding each other to leap
those where there was substantial footing on either side.
But the hour came when a great, spreading crack that struck
diagonally across it compelled us to abandon the glacier as a
highway. We clambered laboriously over the side walls of bowlders it
had built in the ages of its descent, and assailed another
snow-field, aiming for a series of rock-ledges which lifted, one
above the other, toward the summit. The air was like wine, heady,
yet strangely thin, and we began to pant out of all proportion to our
efforts. Tawannears and Peter, both of them stronger than I, seemed
to feel it more; and I was startled to see the big Dutchman sink to
his knees.
"I bleed," he gasped. "Who strikes us, eh!"
Tawannears, too, dashed a flux of blood from his nose and collapsed
on the snow.
"Tamanoas is displeased," he muttered as I stooped beside him.
"Otetiani was right! We die."
His bronze face was ghastly pale, and for a moment I feared he would
faint; but he rallied when I shook him by the arm. I was worried
more for him than for Peter, in which respect I erred.
"'Tis not Tamanoas," I urged. "At least, brother, 'tis no more than
ordinary mountain sickness I have often heard men tell of. Up here,
above the world, the air is lighter than we are wont to breathe. We
have gone too fast. Let us rest, and grow used to it."
He accepted the explanation with the illogical combination of
civilization and barbarism which was the key to his extraordinary
character.
"Peter," he grunted, pointing weakly.
I looked around to find the Dutchman in a dead faint, the blood
trickling from mouth and nose, to all appearances dying. But after I
had bathed his temples with snow for a short while he struggled to a
sitting position.
"Who shoots us?" he quavered.
I explained the phenomenon to him as simply as I could--he was
actually more ignorant of physics than the Seneca--and once he had
comprehended its significance he was for continuing the ascent
immediately; but upon my insistence agreed to allow his body an
opportunity to readjust itself to the new strains upon it. We
occupied the enforced rest by examining the country disclosed to us
at this height, a panorama of dense forests and snowy peaks, and
westward, in the distance, a winding body of water, too broad for a
river, too irregular for a lake.* But nowhere a sign of habitation,
of beings, human or otherwise, who might have enjoyed this land of
natural happiness and plenty. Indeed, 'twas avoided by the
surrounding savages as the abode of that divinity they visualized in
the snowy majesty of the mountain, Tamanoas.
* Apparently, Puget Sound.--A.D.H.S.
Tawannears rose first, a look of grim determination in his eyes.
"The sun is high, brothers," he said. "If Corlaer's pain is gone----"
"_Oof!_" interrupted the Dutchman, with the distaste of any man of
abnormal physique for admitting weakness. "We go to der top now. If
der air is thin I hafe fat, eh? Dot's enough. _Ja_."
To us, then, it seemed as though the summit was at most an hour's
climb away, but actually our stiffest effort was ahead of us. All of
that weary afternoon we climbed, risking precipice and crevice,
pausing at frequent intervals for the rest that was essential, if we
were not to become light headed and dizzy. Once we slipped and slid
a half-mile toward death, bringing up by driving our staves through
the ice and checking gradually the impetus of our descent. That
meant an hour's work to do over again. We gritted our teeth and did
it. Our moccasins were shredded on knife-edged rocks and ice-chunks.
Our faces were blistered by the sun-glare. Our hands were cut and
sore from constant contact with the ice. We had spells of nausea.
But we went up--and up.
I was leading, head bowed, my eyes on the rocks and ice ahead in
search of the safest foot-holds, when Tawannears touched my shoulder.
"See, brother," he exclaimed. "Tamanoas breathes."
I looked up, startled. The rim was several hundred yards away, and
above it floated what I took to be a cloud low in the sky. But there
were no clouds, and I soon saw that the mist in the air above the rim
was constantly disintegrating, constantly being replenished. It was
like the steam that exudes from the spout of a boiling kettle.
"We shall soon learn what it means," I said. "There is an opening
here. Keep to the snow--the rocks are shifty."
We crossed a ramp of snow, sloping easily, and entered a huge gap in
the crest. What a spectacle! No, I speak not of the view spread out
around the mountain's base. We did not look at that. Our eyes were
on the vast bowl, a mile in breadth, that was carved in the
mountain's top. Snow filled it deep in many places, poured over the
rim through gaps such as that we stood in to form the sources of the
glaciers that twisted downward into the flower-zone like gigantic
serpents with silver tails and dingy-gray, scale-covered coils. But
here and there over the snowy floor were scattered groups of
peculiar, black rocks out of which jetted the steamy clouds that
Tawannears had noticed.
"Whose fires?" squeaked Corlaer.
The Seneca looked eagerly in all directions, hungry for---- Who can
say what vague form his thoughts were molded in?
"The Great Spirit built them," I answered. "Ay, and tends them this
moment."
Tawannears bent doubting glance upon my face.
"'Tis so," I affirmed. "Do you remember in the missionary's school,
talk of mountains called volcanoes?"
"But those were found only in hot countries--or so they taught us,"
answered the Seneca.
"Then they taught you wrong. I, myself, have seen such a mountain in
Italy, which is in Europe. And here we stand on a mountain that
is--or has been--a volcano."
Corlaer jumped perceptibly.
"Volcanoes hafe fires?" he protested.
"Yes," I agreed. "Did not our Indian friends tell us that sometimes
Tamanoas exploded--made a loud noise? That is what they meant. Deep
down, under all this ice and snow, in the bowels of the rocks, burns
the undying fire of the world. And I suppose 'tis not far wrong to
say the Great Spirit tends that. From it flows all life, and is not
He the Giver of Life?"
"_Ja_," said the Dutchman thoughtfully. "Andt now we go down pretty
---- quick, eh?"
But I pointed to the sun dropping in the West behind a welter of
clouds, and then to the miles of icy rocks betwixt us and the
timber-line.
"What chance of coming down whole of limb in darkness?" I asked.
Tawannears spoke up before he could answer me.
"Tamanoas is--Tamanoas," he proclaimed in his resonant voice. "As
Otetiani has said, under us burns the fire of the Life-giver of the
world. Brothers, Tawannears goes to make his prayer to the Great
Spirit. Surely, here in His own abode, He will listen!"
And he strode to the nearest rock-pile whence issued the steam of the
earth-fires, and flung up his arms in the Indians' dignified gesture
of prayer--for I think it incomparably more dignified for man to
approach the Great Spirit, in whatever form, not as a suppliant upon
bended knee, but as one who craves favor from an honorable master.
And his voice rang sonorously again in the rhythmic oratory of the
Hodenosaunee, as he stated his case, pleaded his hungry heart, cited
his bitter need.
We could not hear his words. They were not for us; and we welcomed
the little wind that blew into the crater, twining his stately figure
in the mist of the fumeroles and carrying the echoing phrases over
the opposite snow-banks. But we watched him enthralled, the while
the shadows blackened on the mountain's lower flanks and a pink glow
flooded the peak around us, shooting a miniature rainbow through the
steam-clouds. Tawannears tossed out his arms in one final appeal,
proudly, as though he had a right to ask, then turned, with a light
of exultation in his eyes, and walked back to us.
"I think Hawenneyu opened His ears to me," he said simply. "My heart
that was sad commenced to sing bravely. It grows strong. All fear
has left me."
With the approach of night the little wind became a gale that moaned
amongst the rocks. The air, deprived of the sun's heat, was deadly
cold. We were in the grip of a Winter frost. And true it is we
should have died there before morning had it not been for a
steam-chamber I found in one of the clumps of black rocks. 'Twas
unpleasantly damp, but the warmth gave us opportunity for sleep. We
awoke in a different world. The peak was wrapped in a thick, moist
blanket of fog. The air that had been briskly cold was now clammy.
Water congealed on our foreheads. Our hide garments were stiffened
by it. We shivered like people with marsh fever. Our teeth rattled
as we ate our breakfast--the last food we had, for in our ignorance
we had thought to complete the ascent and return in a single day.
Even Tawannears, uplifted by his conviction that he had secured for
his quest the aid and endorsement of an unearthly power, was
depressed by this outlook.
Having finished our scanty meal, we fumbled our way to the gap in the
crater wall by which we had entered the previous evening, and
hesitated there, peering into the fog.
"We have two choices," I said at length, shattering the uncomfortable
silence. "We can stay here without food in the dampness until the
clouds are dispersed--or we perish. Or we can commit ourselves to
the hazards of chance in this pit-mirk and essay to go down where
yesterday we came up--with every chance, comrades, that a misstep
will hurl us all to destruction."
At that instant the fog was rent for as long as the eye can remain
open without blinking, and we caught a fair glimpse of the
flower-fields and the lordly stands of timber those few short miles
away.
"Let us go down, brothers," said Tawannears.
"_Ja_," squeaked Corlaer. "Here I hafe shifers in my back."
I had been leader on the ascent, but when we came to rope ourselves
together Tawannears insisted upon going first.
"Tawannears brought you into this peril, brothers," he declared. "It
is for Tawannears to lead you out."
So 'twas he who headed us as we scrambled down the outer side of the
crater rim. I came next, and Corlaer, puffing lustily, was third.
At the beginning our task was simple. We had only to follow the
foot-holes we had chopped in the snow-ramp under the crest, and we
made this initial stage at a rapid rate. Below the snow-ramp was a
rock-ledge, and we negotiated this with equally swift success; but
Tawannears was confused by the swirling gray fog and missed the chain
of foot-prints that started from the lower edge of the rocks across
the next snow-bank.
We blundered around for a time trying to find them, and finally, in
desperation, launched out upon the dim white expanse of the
snow-field, here so level that we did not need to chop foot-holds.
When we started we had been able to see perhaps a dozen feet ahead.
Tawannears, in advance, was a ghostly figure in my eyes, no more than
a voice in the mist to Corlaer. But in the middle of this level
snow-field the fog suddenly thickened to a soupy consistency, and we
all three disappeared, one from another. I could not see the hand I
held in front of my face. The clouds were so dense as to seem
stifling.
"What shall we do, brothers?" called Tawannears in a voice that was
muffled and bodiless.
"_Oof!_" grunted Corlaer behind me. "We choke to death here, eh?"
"Bide, and give the mirk time to weaken," I advised.
We sat and waited until our garments were so saturated with moisture
as to weigh heavy upon us, and our clicking teeth warned us of the
danger of inaction. The Seneca rose abruptly.
"Tawannears did wrong to say we should descend, brothers," he said.
"But we will die of the cold and wet if we stay here. To try to
climb back to the top is as dangerous as to climb down. We have no
choice save to continue. If Hawenneyu has his eyes upon us we shall
live."
Ten steps farther on I bumped into his crouching figure.
"Back!" he cried fiercely. "Here is death!"
I looked down past his feet at a blue-green gulf that showed in an
eddy of the mist and was promptly swallowed up again. We had
wandered out upon a glacier, of which the snow-bank was the source,
and this was one of those fathomless abysses that descended into the
icy vestments of the mountain.
Foot by foot, on hands and knees, we traced the course of the crevice
to a snow-bridge that spanned it, an arch of icy masonry. This
Tawannears beat upon with his staff to test its resistance. It did
not quiver, and he ventured but upon it, whilst Corlaer and I dug our
heels into the snow and leaned back to catch him up should it bear
him down. Presently the fog swallowed him--and his voice hailed us
announcing he had crossed. I followed him with celerity, and gave
the word to Corlaer. The Dutchman's figure, distorted out of its
true proportions by the shifting mists, swam into our view, stepping
cautiously across the arch, when, without warning there was a crackle
of splitting ice, and Peter bounded into the air and dug his heels
into the very margin of the precipice's brink as the snow-arch sank
beneath his weight.
Tawannears and I gasped in horror and braced ourselves for the shock
of his fall; but he teetered back and forth for two breaths, there on
the verge of eternity, then balanced erect and stepped toward us.
"_Oof_," he remarked with shrill glumness. "Dot time Peter heardt
der angels sing. _Ja!_"
We worked off the top of the glacier onto a second rock-ledge, none
too sure of the direction we were taking, but thinking mainly of
escaping the treacherous network of crevices. But we could not have
avoided the tangle of glaciers on the mountain's sides with the sun
shining to light our way, and in the fog it was a certainty we should
stumble onto them so soon as we had reached the lower margin of the
rock-island--for that was what it really was--we had gained. We were
encouraged, however, by an apparent tendency of the mist to
dissipate, which enabled us to achieve almost satisfactory progress
across the yawning surface of this second stretch of
glacier--probably a lower coil of the one which had nearly trapped us
above. But just as we were congratulating ourselves upon our success
and hoping that we should soon pass out of the cloud-bank, the wind
veered and the thick, gray blanket walled us in again.
We kept on doggedly, now immune to fear--or rather, fearing more the
suffering of inertia. Tawannears walked like a blind man, tapping
the ground in front of him with his staff, and shouting to us from
time to time the nature of the ground ahead. The descent was
regular, and for a quarter-mile or so the ice had given excellent
footing. I suppose it made him over-confident. The mist was
thinning once more, too, and I could discern his figure, a shadow
gliding in advance of me a dozen feet away.
"The ice is broken, brothers--beware a bowlder on the right--no----"
He vanished! There was a violent wrench upon the rope hitched around
my waist, and I was jerked from my feet, clawing with all my limbs
for a hold to stay me. Small stones and ice chunks rattled down as I
slid forward. I felt one leg pass over a declivity, sensed that my
right arm was beating space. Then some new force was exerted behind
me. My descent was arrested. I sprawled half over the precipice,
but I did not fall further, as I normally should have done.
"Who is there?" gasped Corlaer out of the fog.
"'Tis I! Ormerod!" I answered. "Tawannears is over the brink."
"Is he dead?"
I mustered courage to peer into a blue-green caldron of writhing mist.
"Tawannears!" I shouted in an oddly cracked voice.
"Yes, brother," he answered calmly, surprisingly near. "I am here."
"Are you hurt?"
"No. I am holding to the rope. I have one foot on an ice-shelf."
"I hear," came Corlaer's voice behind me. "Now, you do what I say.
I pull--like----! First comes Ormerod. He lets oudt der rope as he
comes. When he is safe, we pull togedder for Tawannears. Readty?
Oop!"
The Dutchman's breath came in great, gagging pants. It seemed as
though a dozen yoke of oxen were tugging at that rope. An
exclamation from Tawannears warned me that the haulage might pull him
from his foot-hold on the ice-shelf, with a resulting increase in the
strain upon Corlaer, and I managed to wriggle sideways as Peter
dragged me up, so as to release a spare coil of the hide-rope. The
instant I had all four limbs on hard ice, I shouted to Peter to let
be, lifted myself shakily to my knees and crawled to where he sat,
with his feet propped on the bowlder Tawannears had warned us
against, taking in the slack of the line, hand over hand.
"Now, we pull Tawannears oudt," he puffed.
I seized the line beside him, but my efforts were not what counted.
His immense shoulders bent forward. His back and arm-muscles bulged
through his hide shirt. His legs braced like steel pillars against
the bowlder, luckily frozen fast to its icy bed. And slowly, very
slowly, I was able to collect a few inches of slack. The heavy rope
chafed against the dull, rounded edge of the precipice, but it held
is no hempen cable could have done.
Tawannears' arms appeared above the brink, clutching for something to
hold to. Presently, the Seneca's face rose to view--and Peter's
breath came in the same regular, explosive puffs. Then Tawannears
got one hand on a level space, found leverage for the other.
"Corlaer has done enough," he panted. "Hold fast! Tawannears can
bring himself up the rest of the way."
We held the line taut, the Seneca gave a heave, swung one leg over
the edge--and crawled out of danger, carefully, inch by inch, lest
the broken ice betray him a second time.
Corlaer straightened to his feet, and released the breath from his
lungs in one mighty blast.
"_Oof!_" he grunted. "Dot was no choke."
"No joke!" I protested. "You saved our lives!"
"Corlaer has added more to the debt which Tawannears can never
repay," said the Seneca. "He is stronger than the buffalo bull. He
is like the Great Tree which upholds the sky. Tawannears will not
forget."
"_Ja_," mumbled the Dutchman. "Andt now we go down, eh? It is not
goodt here. I hafe shifers in my back."
We brushed the moisture from our eyelashes and started forth anew
with redoubled caution. The mist was not so thick, but the
wind-currents were brisker, and the clouds eddied in a way that was
most perplexing. We succeeded in getting off the glacier onto a
rock-edge, and this fetched us to a snow-field, so steep that we must
resort again to our hatchets to cut steps for our descent--and here,
I think, the blinding mist was an advantage, for it prevented us from
being confused by the giddy depths below.
I had just taken the lead from Tawannears to rest him from the taxing
labor of chopping out the foot-holds, when the whole surface of the
field commenced to slip. Corlaer lost his footing first, and was
flung head over heels across the snow, dragging Tawannears and me
after him. The mass of snow gathered headway as it sped on, but a
short distance below the starting-point it was arrested by a terrace
in the mountain-side, and only a miniature torrent of ice-chunks
attended us on our continued descent. For we, probably because of
our individual weight, were bounced off the terrace, and rolled down
a farther slope, sometimes flung into each other's arms, occasionally
separated by the length of our connecting lines, anon ramming one
another in head or stomach.
How far we slid I cannot say, but it must have been several thousand
feet. Of a sudden, the clouds around us seemed to thin away, and we
rolled out of darkness into the comparative brilliance of an overcast
day. I had a fleeting perception of the lowering wrack overhead,
glanced down as I turned an involuntary somersault and perceived the
wild-flower zone almost at hand, and the next moment we were cascaded
over a bluff and dropped into a snow-drift within a quarter mile of
the glade from which we had started the ascent.
Bruised and sore, our clothing slashed to ribbons, we were yet sound
in limb, and we picked ourselves up from the snow with feeble grins
of amusement at the figures of dilapidation we presented. Then,
limping through the flowers to our hut, we made a fire, broiled a
haunch of green venison and crawled into a bed of sweet-smelling
cedar boughs for a sleep that lasted until after sun-up the next
morning.