Chapter Twenty Two.
An Adventure on the Top of Mount Everest.
Leaving the country at last—to the very great regret of the inhabitants, who found that every little service rendered to the white strangers was munificently rewarded by a present of beads, buttons, party-coloured cloth, or perhaps a small hand mirror—the travellers made the best of their way to Bombay, at which place Mrs Scott and her nieces were anxious to be landed, and there they bade their fair guests a reluctant adieu. Thence, starting under cover of night and rising to a height of about ten thousand feet above the ground surface, the travellers made their way across the Indian peninsula in a north-easterly direction, travelling at a speed of about one hundred miles per hour, and arriving about eight o’clock the next morning at the foot of Mount Everest, the summit of which—towering into the sky to the enormous altitude of twenty-nine thousand feet above the sea-level, and believed to be the most lofty spot of earth on the surface of our globe—they intended attempting to reach.
Here, on a magnificent grassy plateau surrounded by trees, and with not a single sign of human life at hand, the Flying Fish was brought to earth and temporarily secured whilst the party took breakfast.
“Now,” said the professor as they rose from the breakfast-table, “in seeking to plant our feet upon the topmost peak of Mount Everest we are about to enter upon a task of no ordinary difficulty and danger, and it is desirable that no avoidable risks should be run. The danger arises from two causes—the excessive cold, and the highly rarefied state of the atmosphere at so enormous an elevation. The first can be guarded against by suitable clothing; the second can only be overcome by the assumption of our diving dresses. The latter, no doubt, seems to you a strange precaution; but it is a fact, that on the top of Mount Everest the air is too thin to support life, at all events in comfort, and for any but the briefest possible time; so we must take up our air with us. Let us therefore go and make these necessary changes of costume before we attempt moving the ship from her present position.”
Half an hour later, the party, accoutred in their diving armour—between which and their ordinary clothing they had interposed stout warm flannel overalls—and armed with small ice-hatchets, mustered in the pilot-house; the ship was released from the ground, a vacuum created in her air-chambers, and upward she at once shot into the clear blue cloudless sky. A few minutes only sufficed her to soar to the height of ten thousand feet, after which her progress upward, as indicated by the steadily falling column of mercury in the tube of the barometer, gradually decreased in velocity. At the height of twenty-nine thousand feet the mercury ceased to fall, or the ship ceased to rise, which amounted to the same thing, and Mount Everest lay before them, its snowy peak glistening in the sun ten miles away, and its topmost pinnacle still towering somewhere about five hundred feet above the line of their horizon.
“Well,” said the professor, remarking upon their failure to attain a greater altitude, “I anticipated this; I was quite prepared to find that here, where the sun is so much more nearly vertical than it is with us in England, we should meet with a more rarefied atmosphere. However, we cannot help it. We must do what we can; and if we fail to reach the summit we shall simply be obliged to descend again, rid ourselves temporarily of a few of our more weighty matters, and then renew the attempt. Perhaps we may be enabled to force her up that remaining five hundred feet by the power of her engines. Let us try.”
The engines were sent ahead at full speed, and the Flying Fish rushed toward the glittering peak, the professor so adjusting the helm as to give the ship’s bows a slight upward inclination. The experiment resulted in partial success, an additional elevation of some two hundred feet being attained, but beyond that it was found impossible to go; even then it was necessary to keep the ship moving at full speed, and to maintain the upward inclination of her bows, in order to preserve the slight additional height gained, her tendency being to sink immediately upon any relaxation of speed. It was resolved to be satisfied with this, to effect a landing somewhere, and to attempt surmounting the remaining three hundred feet by climbing. A landing-place was next sought for, and this was at length found on the northern side of the mountain, on a sidelong slanting snow-bank, which seemed to have accumulated between two projecting crags. It was by no means a desirable spot on which to effect a landing, the area of the bank being very small, and the surface sloping most awkwardly; however, it was the best place the travellers could find, and they were therefore obliged to rest content with it; so the ship was headed toward it, and in another second or two a harsh grating sound, accompanied by an upward surge, showed that she had taken the ground, or rather the snow-bank. The engines were then stopped, and the grip-anchors brought into requisition to secure her in her somewhat precarious berth.
“Well, here we are,” exclaimed the baronet; “and the next thing, I suppose, is to land and commence our climb without loss of time. What a wild-looking spot it is, to be sure; if I were to stand looking at it long I believe I should lose my nerve and shirk the task.”
“Better not look at it any longer, then, until we can contemplate the prospect from the peak away up aloft there,” remarked the practical Mildmay. “But,” he continued, “I don’t half like the idea of going out upon that sloping slippery surface of frozen snow that the ship has grounded upon; a single slip or false step and away one would go over the edge, to bring up, perhaps, on a rock a thousand feet below. I shall hook on the rope-ladder, and endeavour to make a start from yonder naked spur of rock.”
The others also seemed to think this the wisest plan, and in a few minutes they were making their way cautiously down the rope-ladder one after the other, the baronet, an experienced mountaineer, leading, and Mildmay bringing up the rear.
The adventurers soon found that their task was likely to be a great deal more difficult and hazardous than they had at all contemplated. The snow-bank upon which the Flying Fish rested proved to be the only even approximately level spot at that elevation; the rocks rising almost sheer above them everywhere, with only an occasional crevice here and there by way of foothold, and in many places the precipice was coated with treacherous frozen snow, sometimes tenacious enough to afford a momentary support, but more often crumbling away beneath the weight of the body. Slowly and steadily, however, they worked their way upward—now occupying perhaps five minutes to advance as many feet, and anon hitting upon a favourable spot where twenty or thirty feet might be gained in a single minute. At length, after a toilsome and hazardous climb of more than an hour’s duration, the baronet found himself clinging to a slender pinnacle of rock about seven feet high and four feet in diameter, upon the top of which he next moment triumphantly seated himself. The colonel, the professor, and Mildmay speedily followed, and there they sat, undoubtedly the first human beings who had ever reached the topmost pinnacle of Mount Everest.
Having accomplished the ascent, they now settled themselves down as comfortably as they could upon their narrow perch to enjoy at leisure the magnificent view spread out around them, a view such as no human eye had ever before looked upon, and which even they would probably never have another opportunity of beholding. The atmosphere, most fortunately, was exceptionally clear and transparent, not a vestige of cloud or vapour being anywhere visible; the view was therefore unobstructed to the very verge of the horizon, which extended round them in a gigantic circle measuring four hundred and eighteen miles in diameter.
Northward of them stretched the vast plains of Thibet, the only object worthy of notice being the river Sampoo, which, although sixty miles distant, was distinctly seen as it issued from the purplish-grey haze of the extreme distance on their left, meandering along the plain beneath for a visible distance of nearly two hundred miles before its course became again lost in the haze on their right hand. Eight and left of them stretched the vast mountain chain of the Himalayas, their wooded slopes and countless peaks and cones presenting a bewildering yet charming picture of variegated colour, sunlight and shadow, as they dwindled away on either hand until all suggestion of local colouring was swallowed up and lost in an enchanting succession of increasingly pure and delicate soft pearly greys, which merged and melted at last into the vague shapeless all-pervading purple-grey of the horizon. Glancing immediately around and beneath them their blood curdled and their brains whirled with the vertigo which seized them as they peered appalled and shrinkingly down upon the sharp crags, the sheer precipices, the steeply-sloping snow-fields with their lower edges generally overhanging some fathomless abyss, the great glaciers, the awful crevasses spanned here and there by crumbling snow bridges—the effect of the scene being heightened and intensified in its impressive grandeur by the deathlike silence which prevailed, broken only by the occasional thunderous roar of an avalanche far below. The scene was absolutely fascinating in its appalling sublimity; but it was a relief to turn the eye further afield until it rested to the eastward upon the grandly towering mass of Everest’s rival, snow-capped Kunchinjinga, which reared its giant crest aloft to a height of twenty-eight thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level, and which, though it was eighty-five miles away, appeared to be almost within rifle-shot. And still more was it a relief to turn the eye in an opposite direction, and to allow it to rest upon the glittering summit of Dhawalagiri, which, at a distance of no less than two hundred and forty miles, gleamed faint and softly opalescent out of the western haze. And, lastly, to the southward of them they beheld the fertile province of Nepaul, watered by countless tributaries to the mighty Ganges; and, beyond it again, the still more fertile province of Oudh. The professor, totally forgetful of his exceedingly perilous position, was enthusiastically expatiating, after his usual manner, upon the marvellous extent and beauty of the prospect, and interrupting the flow of his eloquence at short intervals to assure his companions that a—to them—invisible object on the far horizon must be the town of Patna, when a terrific crackling crash just below them drew the eyes of the party in that direction, just in time for them to see the supposed projecting crag—in reality an enormous mass of ice—which supported the snow-bank on which the Flying Fish rested, break off and go thundering down into the unfathomable depths below. The spectators clung to each other in helpless nerveless terror at so appalling a spectacle as the falling of this mass, weighing probably millions of tons; but the full significance and import of the catastrophe did not present itself to their dazed and bewildered senses until they beheld the Flying Fish, after following the falling mass for a couple of hundred feet, recover herself and float jauntily in the air, adrift, at a distance of fully two thousand feet from the mountain side. Then, indeed, the full horror of their position began to slowly dawn upon them, and they looked at each other with eyes in which could be read a despair too deep and too complete to need or find expression in words. Their long search for a landing-place that morning had unconsciously impressed upon them a fact which now—and not till now—took intelligible shape within their brains, and it was this: they could descend the mountain as far as the spot at which they had left the Flying Fish, but no further; beyond that point further descent, with the means at their disposal, was impossible. Which meant, in plain language and few words, that, sooner or later, they would try to get down, and either be dashed to pieces in the attempt or perish miserably of starvation upon the edge of some ghastly impassable precipice.
It took but a moment for these ideas to shape themselves intelligibly, and then a general movement was made to commence the descent and thus cut short a state of suspense which would soon become unbearable.
But at this moment the colonel interposed with a word of caution.
“One moment,” said he. “Before we start let each one of us clearly understand that perfect coolness and presence of mind is imperatively necessary if we would emerge from this strait alive. We may perhaps find a way down after all, but in order to do so we must have our wits completely about us; let no man move, therefore, until he has fully recovered the control of his nerves; when all have done so we will make a start, and I will go last.”
“And I first,” exclaimed the baronet, “because, next to you, I believe I am the most experienced mountaineer of the party.”
The colonel’s little speech produced a most beneficial effect upon the nerves of the whole party, his own included; and now, without further ado, a general start was made, the baronet going first and directing and helping the professor, who followed him; Mildmay going third, also helping von Schalckenberg, and being helped in his turn by Lethbridge, and the latter bringing up the rear.
The descent, owing to the perpendicular precipices over which they had to pass, and the extremely dangerous character, generally, of the road, proved to be even more tedious and difficult than the ascent; and within the first quarter of an hour (during which they had accomplished only about one hundred feet of perpendicular descent) every one of the party had experienced at least one narrow escape from certain death.
Steadily, however, they toiled on; foot by foot they crept down the face of the icy precipice, and at length they reached a ledge nearly a foot in width, upon which the entire party were enabled to pause for a minute or two to rest and relieve their tired and quivering muscles.
When their feet were safely planted upon this ledge Mildmay spoke.
“I may now venture,” he said, “to call your attention to a fact which I feared to mention before, lest it should upset the balance of your nerves and produce a catastrophe. It is this. The Flying Fish, floating undisturbed in this motionless air, is, in obedience to the law of gravitation, slowly but steadily being drawn in toward the side of the mountain; and if—which God grant—it remains perfectly calm up here for another quarter of an hour, she will be once more alongside, and we may yet regain access to her. To do this, however, we must edge away more toward the eastern side of the mountain, where I fear we shall encounter even greater difficulties than we have yet met with. We can but try, however, and I think the sooner we push on the better.”
“Forward, then, at once,” cried the baronet; “and take heed to your steps, my friends, for this ice is terribly smooth and slippery.”
Once more was the journey resumed, the baronet availing himself of the ledge, as far as it extended, to work his way round the shoulder of the hill in the required direction; and by the time they reached a point where actual descent had again become necessary, they had once more come within sight of the ship, and had the satisfaction of seeing that she had drawn sensibly nearer to the cliff.
“All right,” exclaimed Sir Reginald cheerfully, “I see the spot we must aim for—that pinnacle of bare rock yonder, and there is a tolerably easy road down to it, moreover.”
Away they now went, their spirits at the very highest pitch of exhilaration, and their nerves by so much the steadier, and such rapid progress did they make that ten minutes later saw them clustered together clinging to the rocky pinnacle before mentioned. And a gruesome-enough looking spot it was—a sharp projecting point of rock overhanging a sheer precipice some two hundred feet deep, with a narrow snow-bank immediately beneath, and then another frightful abyss of unknown depth beyond. And, to the right and left of it, an almost vertical face of bare rock coated with smooth, slippery, transparent ice, any attempt to traverse which would be courting death in its most horrible form.
The Flying Fish seemed to be drifting steadily in toward this pinnacle of rock, though at a depth of some twenty feet below it, and it was resolved to pause there and allow events to develop somewhat before exerting themselves further.
Slowly, very slowly, the Flying Fish drifted nearer and nearer in; the little party clustered upon the rock watching her with bated breath, and every moment dreading that a faint air of wind might after all waft her beyond their reach. But nothing of the sort occurred; in she steadily came, until at last her starboard gangway was immediately underneath the party.
“Now or never!” exclaimed Sir Reginald. “I am going to make a jump for her. We shall scarcely have a better chance; and breeze may at any moment sweep round the face of the rock and carry her away from us. Lethbridge and Mildmay, let me steady myself by your shoulders whilst I stand on the extreme point of the rock. Stand firm, now; I am about to jump. Are you ready? Then—one—two—three!”
The body of the baronet darted outward from the face of the rock, Mildmay and the colonel retaining their footing with the utmost difficulty under the recoil from the outward impulse; and then the three men left behind on the rock craned their necks over the precipice to watch the result.
The sight which met their eyes caused their hair to bristle and their blood to curdle with horror. Sir Reginald had either miscalculated his distance, or his foot had slipped in the act of springing, for instead of alighting upon the ship’s deck, as he had intended, he had fallen on the circular bilge of the vessel, from whence, after an unavailing struggle to secure a footing, he slid off, and, with a piercing scream, went whirling downward until he alighted on the narrow snow-bank some two hundred feet below. His horror-stricken companions fully expected to see him rebound and go plunging over the edge of the next precipice, but luckily the snow upon which he had fallen was so deep that his body sank into it, and there he lay, motionless.
“Merciful Heaven, he is killed!” ejaculated the colonel with stammering lips.
“Perhaps not,” returned Mildmay; “at all events we will hope for the best. Let me see if I can do better. Quick—out of the way—ah! The wind after all! We are too late!”
And even as he spoke the bows of the Flying Fish swung slowly round, and her hull was swept gently away from the face of the cliff by a capricious zephyr which just then came creeping along the mountain side.