WITH SKI TO THE DIABLERETS
_First Ascent._--The Bear inn at Gsteig--The young
Martis--Superstitions--The rights of guides.
_Second Ascent._--The composition of the caravan--Odd
symptoms--Winter amusements on the glacier--A broken ankle--The
salvage operations--On accidents--My juvenile experience--A
broken limb on the Jaman.
_Third Ascent._--The Marti family--The Synagogue once more--An
old porter--We are off.
It has been three times my lot to lay the flat of my ski across the brow
of the Diablerets. This in itself would be of but little interest had not
a trifling incident occurred each time which may be related with more
animation than the ascents can be described.
1. In the month of January, 19--, at a time when the ascent of the
Diablerets had not yet been attempted on ski, I marched early in the day
out of the slumbering Bahnhof hotel at Gstaad, with a full rucksack on my
back and rattled through the village on my ski along the ice-bound main
street.
The sun had not yet risen when I knocked at the door of the Bear hotel at
Gsteig and presented to the frowsy servant who appeared on the doorstep a
face and head so hung about with icicles and hoar-frost that she started
back as though Father Christmas had come unbidden.
When she had sufficiently recovered herself, I inquired of her whether
she knew of any man in the village who would accompany me to the top of
the Diablerets. She looked so puzzled that I hastened to explain that by
man I did not mean a guide, but any one who might be foolish enough to
enter upon such an expedition with a complete stranger advanced in years.
A mere boy would do, provided he could cook soup and could produce a pair
of ski with which to follow his employer.
Two lads offered themselves; the brothers Victor and Ernest Marti, sons
of an old guide. At first they understood no more of the business than
that a gentleman had arrived with whom there was some chance of casual
employment. When I had made my intention plain to them, they jumped at my
purpose with the eagerness of their age. They had ski which they had made
themselves, but was the ascent possible? Anyhow, if I wanted one of them
only, he certainly would not go without the other, and when I tackled
the other to see whether he would not come alone, they might have been
Siamese twins for aught I could do to separate them alive. They went to
their mamma, who raised her hands to heaven and would have put them into
the fire to rescue her darlings from my dangerous clutches.
In the end the boys, dare-devils much against their wish, sallied forth
loaded with ropes, ice-axes, and other cumbersome paraphernalia, among
which it would be unfair to reckon their mother’s blessings and their
father’s warnings. Indeed, in their sight I was an evil one, bent upon
sundry devilries in an ice-bound world. But for the halo thrown for them
about my undertaking by the prospect of the beautiful gold pieces to be
gained, they would rather have committed me alone to the mercy of the ice
fiends.
Lusty of limb, though with quaking hearts, they had no sooner slipped on
their ski than their fears were dispelled. They flew to and fro on the
snow like gambolling puppies. Who would have thought they bore on their
backs a pack that would have curbed the ardour of any ordinary person?
They were already prepared in their minds to become Swiss soldiers a few
months later, when they would carry, in equipment and arms, more than
weighed their present guides’ attire.
Guides, by the way, they were not, but hoped to be some day, when they
were soldiers. I discovered that, meanwhile, besides working at the
saw-mill, they played the part of local bandsmen. From Christmas Eve to
New Year’s Day they had shared as fiddlers in the mummeries, revels, and
dances of the season. They had conceived thereby much thirst, as was soon
made clear by the flagging of their spirits, and by the loving way in
which they bent down to the snow, pressed it between their hands like a
dear, long, unbeheld face and kissed it. When they were refreshed their
tongues were once more loosened.
We were drawing nearer to the Diablerets. The overhanging rocks seemed
to arch themselves threateningly over our heads, and if the young men
now spoke glibly, it was with a tremble in their voices and about their
renewed fears. It is not without reason that Diablerets and devilry are
cognate sounds in languages so distant from each other as the Romance
_patois_ of the Vaudois Alps and the gentle speech of the Thames Valley.
Like the remainder of Christian Europe, those valleys shared once upon
a time in the Catholic faith, and this had wonderfully commingled the
early and earthly beliefs of our kind with the teachings of Divinity.
Free-thinkers in the Protestant sense of the word, those boys, creeping
under the shadow of the cliffs up to the snowy vastness above, saw
welling up from the depths of their minds, as in a mirror, the images of
the strange beings with which the rude fancy of the peasantry peoples
those upper reaches of the Alps which they call the Evil Country. But on
that day nothing came of those forebodings.
On the next morning, after a night spent in complete freedom from
haunting ghosts, my boys hesitated a moment before rounding the shoulder
of the Oldenhorn. The Zan Fleuron glacier opened up just beyond. This was
the known Synagogue, or meeting place of the spirits. They dreaded to see
what they might see there if they turned the corner before the arrows of
light-bearing Apollo had scattered the night mists of Hecate.
Suddenly the sun broke and poured forth in floods upon a world springing
up innocently from the folds of sleep. My lads felt saved by glad day.
But, if they went through this first expedition without suffering injury
from the spirits, they were less fortunate in their dealings with
myself. They had allowed themselves to be drawn into a temptation for
which they were yet to undergo punishment; namely, they had, for gold,
disregarded the rules of the Bernese corporation of guides. It is a
salutary regulation of that honourable guild that none who is not an
officially certificated guide shall accompany alone a gentleman in the
district. Now, a terrible thing had happened. Two young men, neither
of whom was a certificated guide, had accompanied a gentleman in the
district. Indeed, the mother of the boys must in the end be proved to
be right in her mistrust. That gentleman had induced her boys to make
light of the fundamental rule of local etiquette as to keeping off the
Zan Fleuron beat entirely reserved for the spirits from All Souls’ Day to
Easter Sunday, and, in addition, he was getting them into trouble with
the police.
One or two months later I was busily and peacefully engaged in my study
when a member of the Geneva detective force was ushered in. I started up.
What could be the matter?
The gentleman then explained politely that I was wanted somewhere in the
Canton de Berne. What for? It could be no light matter.
Now I knew--by repute, rather than by personal experience--that justice
in Berne is extremely rough and even handed. I said I would rather
appear before a Geneva judge. On repairing to the courts, I was informed
that the brothers Marti were summoned at Saanen for palming themselves
off as guides upon an unwary gentleman of uncertain age and feeble
complexion. They had preyed upon his weak mind and enthusiasm to drag him
in midwinter up to the top of the Diablerets, exposing his body to grave
risks, and his soul to the resentment of the fairies, and thus indirectly
infringing a privilege which certificated guides alone enjoyed, to the
exclusion of the remainder of man and womankind.
Reassured on my own behalf, I at once became “cocky” and proceeded to
prick that legal bubble and take the guiding corporation down a few pegs.
I solemnly swore before the judge--in presence of the clerk who took
my words down with forced gravity--that I had engaged Victor Marti as
lantern-bearer to the elderly Diogenes I actually was, and his brother
Ernest to act for me as crossing-sweeper over the Zan Fleuron glacier,
because I expected there might be some snow, and it is bad for old men to
have cold feet.
I have since heard that the two boys got off that time without a stain on
their character.
I say that time, because this trouble is not the last I got them into.
But this is another tale, and will appear hereafter.
2. My second ascent of the Diablerets was somewhat tragic--this, too, in
January, and in pursuit of the magnificent ski-run which one gets down
the Zan Fleuron glacier to the Sanetsch pass, and back to Gsteig.
The brothers Marti were again with me. The eldest was now a certificated
guide, and had thus acquired the legal right to take his brother with
him when escorting strangers in the mountains.
On that occasion there were some strangers, mostly English, in the party.
One of them was a young and able runner on ski, another was an elderly
member of “the” Alpine Club, in whose breast a love for ski was born
late in life, probably in the same years when I myself fell a victim to
that infatuation. The third stranger of British blood need not for the
nonce be otherwise presented to the reader than in a spiritual garb as a
vision. He--or rather she--will appear in the flesh when a ministering
angel is called for in the disastrous scene yet to be enacted, when the
kind apparition will flutter down as unexpectedly as the goblins pop up
through the soft white carpet, under which they have their homes in the
comfortable cracks designed for them by the glacier architect.
This caravan went up the usual way, in the usual manner, above the Pillon
pass. Near the end of the day, and at sunset, one of us was suddenly seen
to curl up and roll in the snow. The next moment he was back at his place
again, with his rucksack on his shoulder, ice-axe in hand, and with his
ski under his feet, as if nothing had happened. Yet we had all seen him
curl up and roll down. And here he was again, spick and span, like one of
those tourists carved in wood which are offered for sale at Interlaken or
Lucerne. The Marti brothers looked at me queerly.
They were, indeed, thankful I had got them unscathed out of the police
court. In spite of parental advice, they had come again with me on that
account. But this was beyond a joke. However, they went on, exchanging
among themselves their own remarks, wondering whose sticks, ski, and
rucksack would next be seen flying in opposite directions.
But nothing happened during the night. The next morning the brothers
Marti, heading our column, wended their way carefully, as before, to the
corner of the Oldenhorn, and peered cautiously round. It was still dark.
From this place it is usual before dawn to catch a glimpse of the gnomes.
They are impervious to cold. Being of an origin infernal in some degree,
they naturally delight in the coolness of winter nights, and their eyes
being habitually scorched by the flames that blaze in the bowels of the
glacier, they much enjoy the soothing caress of the moonbeams.
On that morning--since there is a morning even to an evil day--the
gnomes were still engaged in their after midnight game of skittles. They
plant their mark on the edge of the glacier, above the cliffs which drop
down clear on to the Derborence grazings. Their bowls are like enormous
curling-stones hewn out of the ice. When the gnomes miss their aim--which
in their love of mischief they like to do--the ice blocks fly over the
edge of the rock parapet, and crash down upon the grazings. In summer the
shepherds endeavour to meet this calamity by prayer. In winter it is of
no consequence.
But what was of consequence is that we had no business on the glacier
while the night sprites were still holding Synagogue. This the brothers
Marti knew, and that woe was in store for us on that account. But all
went well with us, to all appearances.
We left our baggage at the foot of the Diablerets peak, and, on our ski,
pushed merrily along to the summit. We lunched, and enjoyed the view,
like any ordinary mortals, ignorant of having challenged Fate.
Then down we went, curving and circling over the glacier, crossing
unawares the place of the Synagogue. A gnome, crouching somewhere on the
edge of a crevasse, lay in wait for us, hiding behind a heap of carefully
hoarded curling-stones. The deadly weapons began gliding about. The
brothers Marti were proof against them, being involuntary offenders.
The head of the party could not be struck, being of the sceptical kind.
The young Englishman jumped about, being ever safe in the air when
the gliding missile came his way. But the member of “the” Alpine Club
suffered the fate all were courting. His fibula was snapped.
Then nothing was seen but a man lying down in pain upon a beautifully
white snow-field. The evil spot was clad in the garb of innocence. The
sky spread above in a blue vaulted canopy, such as Madonnas are pictured
against. One of the poor offending mortals lay low, expiating the fault
of all. Would the sacrifice be accepted?
Yes. Amid the scene of temple-like beauty, charity--it might have been
the Madonna or a simple Ice Maid--appeared in human shape amid the
effulgence of midday, in the opportune costume of a hospital nurse.
[Illustration: SPORT ON THE ZAN FLEURON GLACIER.
To face p. 42.]
With such help, the moment to be absolutely practical came. It was two
o’clock in the afternoon. We were still on the glacier as high as we
could be. Whether we retraced our footsteps or glided on, the distance
was the same to Gsteig, where the Pillon and Sanetsch passes join
together. Luckily the weather was fine, the air quite warm and still. I
despatched Victor Marti, the better runner of the two, down the Sanetsch
to Gsteig. His orders were to summon by telegraph a medical man from
Gstaad to Gsteig, with instructions there to await our arrival, and to
come provided with splints for the crippled man.
This young winged Mercury received another message to convey. It was to
send forthwith a team of four men to the top of the Sanetsch pass. He
himself was to bring back to the pass eatables, drinkables, and blankets.
It was, indeed, impossible to tell whether we should not be kept out in
the wilderness the whole night. In such places at that time of the year,
the wind, in rising, might be attended by the worst consequences to human
life.
We had before us many, many miles to be travelled over, across hill and
dale, in deep snow, conveying on foot a helpless man, whom immobility
would expose to serious risks while out in the open during the night
hours.
Our messenger carried out his instructions with the utmost rapidity and
punctuality. His ski carried him swiftly over many miles of snow to the
wooded confines of the Sanetsch pass. He hailed two wood-cutters, and
sent them straight up to the top of the pass, as a forward relief party.
They got there some time after sunset, while Victor Marti continued on
his way down into the valley to complete his task.
As for those left behind, they had in prospect a six-mile trudge before
they could reach the pass. No question of continuing on ski. Our sister
of mercy wanted them all to accommodate the wounded man. On the glacier
the snow was not so deep that the hard, icy, under-surface could not
support our footsteps, but as we proceeded lower our plight got worse.
A ski-runner who, on deep snow, has to give up the use of his ski, is
very much like a sailor upon a small craft in mid-ocean. Suppose the boat
capsizes, the sailor may swim. But for how long? Similarly, a ski-runner
bereft of his ski amid boundless, pathless snow-fields, may walk. But for
how long? Snow is a good servant, but a bad master.
Most people who have not found it out for themselves do not know that
snow gets deeper and deeper as you descend from the glaciers into the
valleys. After we had reached the pass we would still have to climb by
night down the Sanetsch gorge. This manifold task was about to fall to
the lot of a party in which everybody, except one, was new to winter
work. They were, besides, totally unacquainted with night conditions. The
ministering angel dropped from heaven, too, was one who, strange to say,
had never yet been sent to Switzerland on an errand of mercy. Besides,
her task grew so upon her that the discharge of it made her more and more
human, and in the end she experienced in herself all the inconveniences
of being the possessor of a material body.
With the help of puttees we tied the inert limb to one ski. The other ski
of the same pair supported the intact leg. We cut our ski-sticks into
lengths, split them down the middle, and making cross-bars of them we
fixed the ski to one another. Thus was the stretcher or shutter made. We
had nails, fortunately, and plenty of cord.
A stretcher, however, cannot be carried in deep snow up hill and down
dale. We now required a sleigh. To build one we laid down on the snow,
carefully and side by side, three pairs of ski, binding them together
with straps, and thereupon we laid the shutter on which was tied the
wounded man.
Would this improvised sleigh run on the snow? By means of his rope Ernest
Marti yoked himself to the front of it. Head down, shoulders bent, he
gave a pull. His feet broke through the crust of snow and he sank in up
to the waist. To this there was no remedy. He would plunge at each step,
and, recovering himself, breathless and quivering, he would start afresh.
Each time he got off the victim of our accident received a jerk that
threw him back, for we had not the wherewithal to make a support for
his shoulders. To obviate this very serious trouble, we fitted an empty
rucksack to his back, and pulled tightly the straps over his shoulders
and across his chest. The young Englishman and myself walked then on each
side of him. Holding him by means of the shoulder straps, we checked the
back thrusts to which he was exposed, and kept him upright from the waist.
Thus our caravan proceeded on its way, our pockets stuffed with the
remaining bits of our ski, with which we might be glad to light a fire
that night in some deserted shepherds’ hut.
The charity dame walked alongside of us, cheering with her smile the sad
hero of this melancholy adventure. What a picture it would have made if
only one of us had had the heart to photograph it!
Night was creeping on. The snows turned dark and gloomy, still we were
drawing near to the pass and had no sooner reached it than two burly
figures rose up before us. They smiled, and laid hold of the guiding-rope
which Ernest Marti, exhausted, threw to them. They had appeared in the
nick of time to save us from spending the night up there. From that
moment, turning to the north, we were able to continue to the top of the
Sanetsch gorge without a stop.
The stars had long been glittering overhead when we were able to look
down into the gorge across to Gsteig. The village was all agog. Lanterns
were creeping about like glow-worms. Some appeared at time amid the
woods, flitting from place to place like fire-flies. The other two men,
ordered up by Victor Marti, now showed their lights quite near us. And
then began the last stage in our salvage operations.
The Sanetsch gorge was as a vast, curved sheet of ice. Its northern
exposure and the night air had done their work. It would not be possible
to convey a man reclining on a stretcher down the steep windings of the
mule path. The rescuing party soon hit upon the only practicable scheme.
The patient was removed from his splints, poles, straps, and bindings,
and set across the back of a powerful highland man. Ernest Marti took
my Lucifer lamp and placed himself in front to light up the way. Two
men stood immediately behind the human pack-mule. The group thus formed
launched itself down into the gorge, each man depending for security upon
the rough _crampons_ driven into his shoe leather. All’s well that ends
well. The doctor was found waiting at Gsteig.
It is now his turn to take up the cue, but we do not vouch that he will
satisfy the reader’s curiosity, should we by any chance have left him
with any curiosity to satisfy. I hope we may, because our third ascent of
the Diablerets still awaits him.
This was not the first mountaineering misadventure I found myself mixed
up with. Moreover, it was an accident, the memory of which I do not
particularly relish. I am afraid I smarted visibly under it, and showed
my personal disappointment. This may have conveyed to some the impression
of some unfairness on my part.
Has the reader ever noticed how different is the attitude of the public
mind towards accidents on land and on sea? Why should mountaineering
accidents be less sympathetically received than those befalling sailors?
It is, however, not unnatural that the sea should be more congenial, and
command forgiveness by its grandeur. It teaches charity by the immensity
in which it drops the cruel dramas enacted upon its surface.
When casualties occur in mountaineering, even those concerned appear to
make efforts to single out somebody on whom to fasten the blame. Some
people’s vanity is bent upon discerning the wisdom, or unwisdom, of one
or another of their companions. If a boat goes down a respectful silence
is allowed to dwell alike around the survivors and those lost. But shall
we ever, for instance, hear the end of the merits or demerits of each
concerned in the accident that befell the Whymper party, in 1865, on the
Matterhorn?
When a climbing party comes to grief, it is as an additional course
for the menu of the _table d’hôtes_: a dainty morsel for busybodies,
quidnuncs, and experts alike. The critical spirit grows ungenerous in
that atmosphere. The victims of the Alp were tempting Fate; one knows
exactly what mistake they made; so-and-so was altogether foolish in ----,
and so forth. With such more or less competent remarks, the fullest
mead of admiration is blended. This, too, be it added with the utmost
appreciation of a kind disposition, does not go without some admixture of
silliness.
I should prefer, even now, to leave all accidents in an atmosphere of
romance. It is best to meet with them when one is young. The tender
spots in one’s nature are then nearer the surface, and the vein of
chivalry more easily struck. The flutter and excitement of a rescue are
then delightful. One would almost wish for accidents elsewhere than in
day-dreams for the sake of dramatic emotion.
The accidents, however, arranged in the flights of my imagination
were weak in one respect. They were egotistic. The brilliant part of
a quixotic rescuer fell regularly to me. Let me give the reader an
instance from real life before I take him for the third time up the
Diablerets.
The thing occurred in a Byronic spot. In this place in my book it will
detach itself as a spring-flower against the snow and ice background
which all these chapters have in common.
Was I in my “teens,” like “her,” or not quite so green, or much greener?
The question arouses some vague twinges of wounded vanity. But I consult
in vain the tablets of my memory. They are now as illegible in many
places as old churchyard stones. If I then believed I had grounds for
jealousy, I could not now trust myself to say with truth that they were
genuine.
My resentment fastened upon a rival. I withdrew proudly to the recesses
of the hills, as it is recorded by romantic lore that even males of
the dumb creation are in the habit of doing when baffled in desire and
injured in self-esteem.
But as, a few days later, I lay lazily stretched out at full length
on the tender pasture grass of the Plan de Jaman, viewing at my feet
the scene of my sentimental _déconvenue_, I do not wish the reader to
paint for himself the picture of an angry bull pawing the ground and
snorting for revenge, though the number of cows grazing about and the
multitudinous tinkling of the bells might well suggest such a classical
impersonation.
The view over the lake was pure, crystal-like through a moist, shiny air.
Rain had fallen during the night over Glion and the bay of Montreux. The
long grass on the steep pastures of Caux was tipped with fresh snow. It
lay here and there in melting patches, and every blade of grass had its
trickle of water.
Seated on my knapsack for dryness, I was comfortably munching some bread
and chocolate when discordant and husky cries burst upon me from behind.
The sound was more grotesque than pathetic.
On looking round there hove in sight a suit of fashionable clothes, which
seemed to betray the presence of a man. They were mud-bespattered and
stained green with grass. A scared and besmirched face stood forth from
above them, marked with what looked like dried-up daubs of blood. From
that dreadfully burlesque and woebegone countenance issued the affrighted
Red Indian cries which had startled my ears. Dear me, how un-Byronic all
this!
My feelings grew more sympathetic to that vision--and that, in a sense
particularly exhilarating to myself--when in the soiled, distracted
fashion-plate I recognised my successful rival. His language became
immediately an intelligible speech for me, and when he blurted out a
familiar name he won a friend, if not to himself at least to his plight,
which was coming to me as a splendid opportunity. Too dazed to be aware
of the true identity of his audience, he confessed to having lost his way
with “her” that very morning on the Jaman grazings. Their house-shoes
had literally melted away in the wet, slippery grass and been torn to
shreds on the rocks. Famished, thirsty, exposed to the beating rays of
the midday sun, his presence of mind had deserted him. They had fallen
together over a wall of rock. “Where, oh where?” shouted I.
[Illustration: FROM THE DENT BLANCHE, LOOKING WEST.
To face p. 50.]
The wretch could not tell. His mind was a blank. He had run thus far,
but knew not whence, and looked round vacantly for a clue. Exhausted, he
tumbled down upon the turf. To him it had fallen to do the mischief. I
was to repair it....
But was the repairing still within human power? My eyes travelled
anxiously up and down the hangs of the Dent de Jaman. By what end should
I begin my search? Had the accident occurred in the wooded parts screened
over by a growth through which I could not see?
I began a systematic search at one end of the battlefield, as would have
done a party of stretcher-bearers, Red Cross men, clearing the ground of
the wounded and dead. I called out at regular intervals the name of the
object of my search. No reply. Her companion looked on disconsolately
from afar. An hour passed, two hours. Then at last, at one end of the
wooded slope, hidden away in a gorge of minute dimensions, I came upon an
apparently lifeless figure partly reclining on a moss bank with a foot
hanging out from a torn muslin dress over a running stream of snow water.
The faint had lasted long. But for the tears in her dress she looked as
though she had quietly fallen asleep. When I took her up in my arms, my
touch seemed to re-animate her, evidently because it caused her some
pain. Then she came back to life more fully, and gradually realised how
the situation accounted for my presence. She was suffering from a broken
leg. I carried her down to Les Avants.
The reader would expect to hear that this adventure bound together again
the broken threads of love. Not so. The story did not end as in the case
of a friend of mine who happened to be at the right moment in command of
a column of artillery moving along the Freiburg high road.
A carriage and pair with several ladies in it was being driven up
from behind. The horses took fright and bolted down a side lane. My
friend galloped up, cut the traces of the horses with his sword, while
the affrighted driver just managed to put on the brakes. On further
approaches being made from both sides, it turned out that the carriage
contained the material appointed by Fate to make a wife for him.
I believe that in my case so much emotional force got vent in bringing
the work of rescue to a successful issue, that none was left over to
nurse the flower of love to fruition. My personal feeling became as a
part of my obligations to humanity. Dissolved into chivalry and quixotry,
its subtle essence was lost in so broad a river and swept away to the sea.
3. It is not a far cry from the Dent de Jaman back to the Diablerets. At
the end of March, 1910, I set out with Monsieur Kurz, of Neuchâtel, to be
avenged on the ill-luck which had marred the January trip.
The name of Mr. Marcel Kurz will appear repeatedly under my pen in this
volume. I made his acquaintance years ago on the occasion of a political
speech. I was only too glad, after a night spent in public talk and
conviviality, to throw off the fumes of oratory and post-prandial
cordiality. In this a lot of keen young ski-runners agreed with me. Among
them was Marcel Kurz, son of Louis Kurz, the eminent maker of the map of
the Mont Blanc range. He has since accompanied me on several expeditions,
the first of which was planned on that day, while practising side by
side Christiania and Telemark swings in friendly emulation. Some of the
photograph reproductions which adorn these pages were made from snapshots
taken by him. Not having yet become acquainted with the Diablerets range
in winter, he accompanied me there in 1910 with our old friends, the
brothers Marti. These were _dienstbereit_, which, being put in English,
would read: Ready for service, which guides and soldiers ever are.
But were they as free from their ancient fears as they were willing
to undergo fresh trials? I might well have my doubts when, this time,
their father expressed a desire to see me before his boys acquiesced.
The accident which attended our last expedition had left its mark in
the minds of the people. The man with the broken leg had unfortunately
hobbled about so long, on crutches, all over the country side, that
this sight had rudely shaken the confidence which they were beginning
to repose in me, as bringing into the country fresh means of earning a
little money during the winter months.
The old Marti lady, particularly, whose heart had no eye--if this is
not an Irish bull--for economic advantages that ran counter to the
conservative character of her domestic affections, watched me wickedly
from her doorstep, while her husband interviewed me in the village
street. Here we stood, with the villagers round us, looking a picture
truly symbolic.
An old father, clothed in authority by his age and experience, the
preserver of the traditions of the past in his house, as in the village
community, and bearing within himself the true doctrine of the guiding
corporation; his sons, with their minds in that half-open condition
which is that of so many young peasants of the present day, when they
may be compared, without thereby losing anybody’s esteem, to oysters
opening to the sunlight the shells out of which they cannot grow; the
mother, anxious for those nurtured at her breast, the coming founders,
as she hoped, of a domestic hearth like unto the old; a man from the
outside, dropped maybe from a higher sphere, but disturbing the even
tenour of their lives, and presenting in a new light to their awakening
consciousness their sense of inferiority and perhaps of misdirected
adherence to the past; lastly, the onlookers and passers-by, a homely
throng, bearing witness, after the style of the Greek chorus in the
village comedy.
I proposed to the old man that his sons should come again with me
unhindered. We were a small party, and made up of such elements that
there was but little chance of the last accident being repeated. But it
had got to his ears that I had privately consulted with his sons as to
pushing on from the Diablerets to the east over the Sanetsch and Rawyl
passes. I had to confess that such was the intention of myself and of
Marcel Kurz. Whereupon the old man held up his hands and his wife
hurried to his side.
In the end it was decided that Ernest Marti should accompany me and my
friend with provisions for one day only, and that on the next day the
other brother and a porter would meet us on the Sanetsch pass. Unwilling
to inquire at once what this porter arrangement might portend, lest the
whole affair might be stranded on that inquiry, as a ship might do on
leaving the stocks, we agreed to the suggestion. The conference broke up,
each party being satisfied that it had gained one of its points.
Our ash planks carried us up without a hitch to the confines of the
glacier. At the Oldenhorn hut, however, another of those sights awaited
us which had made the brothers Marti feel queer. They of the Synagogue
spent the witching hours of the next night in a drunken snowballing orgy.
They pushed an enormous bolt of snow against the door of the hut during
our peaceful slumbers therein. Never mind. We opened the window, got out
through it into the snow, bored our way to the outside, and slipped down
on to the ice. There was some spectral light in the air when we came out.
The Oldenhorn battlements crackled and crepitated a little. When the sun
lit them up from behind, it looked for a moment as if they were manned
with a fringe of tittering monkeys. As I have said, there was a strange
play of light in the air. But the snowballing might have been the work
of avalanches. There is as a rule a natural explanation to be given of
phenomena of this kind.
While the Oldenhorn pyramid glowed in the morning light, a veil of mist
hung over the Zan Fleuron glacier. The mist in no ways interfered with
our run. We flew like birds over the scene of the January accident. On
the pass we sat down and waited. Victor Marti was to come up. But who was
to accompany him up the pass, in the guise of a porter, with a further
supply of provisions? We required no such thing as a porter--nor even
guides, for the matter of that; but if I acted upon that view, the game
was up. Local men would be slow in taking up the cry, the new cry: Winter
mountaineering! So we looked for the expected two.
The mist still hung on the pass between us and the sun. Now and then the
sun shone vaguely, as through cotton wool. When the wind broke the mist
up in rifts a patch of blue would look down upon us benignly. At last,
low down in the north, a black speck showed itself to our straining eyes.
Then the speck divided up. There were two men, and something moving along
close to the ground. This turned out to be a dog, dragging along a pair
of ski. The dog got on very well on the hard frozen snow. But when about
to leave the wind-beaten tract, he floundered and got no further. On
inspection with my binoculars, the porter turned out to be none other
than Father Marti, come to fetch his bairns. But we never quite knew why
the dog was made to bring up an extra pair of ski.
The position was peculiar; the would-be porter could not cover the
distance which separated him from us. We might have snapped our fingers
at him and parodied the biblical phrase: “Thus far shalt thou come and no
farther.”
We preferred to push into shore on our skiffs and to parley. The old man
declared he had come up to say the weather was bad. We looked round. Did
appearances give him the lie? Kurz was sure they did. More cautious,
because nearer the age of the old salt, I thought they might; but both
boys promptly agreed with their father and the dog wagged its tail
approvingly.
Kurz and myself began by making sure of the provisions. Then, by a few
judiciously applied biscuits, we won the favour of the dog. Then we said
that, rather than come down at such an early hour, we should spend the
day in runs on the glacier, whereupon Victor Marti felt it would be his
duty to do likewise. Ernest, in his turn, did not see why he should not
spend, in our agreeable company, a day that was so young. The father
winced, but consented.
Then I thought the juncture had come when I might propose to both young
men to take full advantage of our new supplies of victuals and drink by
spending another night on the heights. The family met again to “sit” upon
the suggestion. Meanwhile I liberally paid old Marti for his trouble and
took him apart to tell him that if the weather was really bad on the
morrow, I should send his boys down. This arrow hit the mark. He was a
perfectly honourable old man, true to the core. Turning to his sons,
he told them that on no account were they to come back home without
their “gentlemen.” I hope, for his comfort, that he realised that the
“gentlemen” would not either consent to be seen again in the valley
without his boys.
Anyhow, we spent a delightful day in ski-ing in the precincts of the
Synagogue, repaired at night to our hut, slipped through the window, and
spent a night free from molestation. I deemed that it would be wise to
let the sun rise before _we_ did. When it did, it shone with wonderful
grace and power. The mists were scattered out of the sky and the cobwebs
cleared away from our brains. We entered upon the trip which is described
in the next chapter, and during which my excellent young friends pushed
on steadily to Kandersteg, our goal, longing all the time for the sight
of the telegraph poles on which hung the wires which would convey to
their mother the message of their safety.
[Illustration]