Turning point of the expedition
On a mountain such as we knew the Aiguille du Dru to be it would not have been wise to make any attempt with a party of more than four. No doubt three—that is, an amateur with two guides—would have been better still, but I had, during the enforced inaction through which we had been passing, become so convinced of ultimate success that I was anxious to find a companion to share it. Fortunately, J. Walker Hartley, a highly skilful and practised mountaineer, was at Chamouni, and it required but little persuasion to induce him to join our party. Seizing an opportunity one August day when the rain had stopped for a short while, we decided to try once more, or at any rate to see what effects the climatic phases through which we had been passing had produced on the Aiguille. With Alexander Burgener and Andreas Maurer still as guides we ascended once again the slopes by the side of the Charpoua glacier, and succeeded in discovering a still more eligible site for a bivouac than on our previous attempts. A little before four the next morning [pg 191]we extracted each other from our respective sleeping bags, and made our way rapidly up the glacier. The snow still lay thick everywhere on the rocks, which were fearfully cold and glazed with thin layers of slippery ice; but our purpose was very serious that day, and we were not to be deterred by anything short of unwarrantable risk. We intended the climb to be merely one of exploration, but were resolved to make it as thorough as possible, and with the best results. From the middle of the slope leading up to the ridge the guides went on alone while we stayed to inspect and work out bit by bit the best routes over such parts of the mountain as lay within view. In an hour or two Burgener and Maurer came back to us, and the former invited me to go on with him back to the point from which he had just descended. His invitation was couched in gloomy terms, but there was a twinkle at the same time in his eye which it was easy to interpret—ce n’est que l’œil qui rit. We started off and climbed without the rope up the way which was now so familiar, but which on this occasion, in consequence of the glazed condition of the rocks, was as difficult as it could well be; but for a growing conviction that the upper crags were not so bad as they looked we should scarcely have persevered. “Wait a little,” said Burgener, “I will show you something presently.” We reached at last a great knob of rock close below the ridge, and for a [pg 192]long time sat a little distance apart silently staring at the precipices of the upper peak. I asked Burgener what it might be that he had to show me. He pointed to a little crack some way off, and begged that I would study it, and then fell again to gazing at it very hard himself. Though we scarcely knew it at the time, this was the turning point of our year’s climbing. Up to that moment I had only felt doubts as to the inaccessibility of the mountain. Now a certain feeling of confident elation began to creep over me. The fact is, that we gradually worked ourselves up into the right mental condition, and the aspect of a mountain varies marvellously according to the beholder’s frame of mind. These same crags had been by each of us independently, at one time or another, deliberately pronounced impossible. They were in no better condition that day than usual, in fact in much worse order than we had often seen them before. Yet, notwithstanding that good judges had ridiculed the idea of finding a way up the precipitous wall, the prospect looked different that day as turn by turn we screwed our determination up to the sticking point. Here and there we could clearly trace short bits of practicable rock ledges along which a man might walk, or over which at any rate he might transport himself, while cracks and irregularities seemed to develop as we looked. Gradually, uniting and communicating passages appeared to form. Faster [pg 193]and faster did our thoughts travel, and at last we rose and turned to each other. The same train of ideas had independently been passing through our minds. Burgener’s face flushed, his eyes brightened, and he struck a great blow with his axe as we exclaimed almost together, “It must, and it shall be done!”
A difficult descent
The rest of the day was devoted to bringing down the long ladder, which had previously been deposited close below the summit of the ridge, to a point much lower and nearer to the main peak. This ladder had not hitherto been of the slightest assistance on the rocks, and had indeed proved a source of constant anxiety and worry, for it was ever prone to precipitate its lumbering form headlong down the slope. We had, it is true, used it occasionally on the glacier to bridge over the crevasses, and had saved some time thereby. Still we were loth to discard its aid altogether, and accordingly devoted much time and no little exertion to hauling it about and fixing it in a place of security. It was late in the evening before we had made all our preparations for the next assault and turned to the descent, which proved to be exceedingly difficult on this occasion. The snow had become very soft during the day; the late hour and the melting above caused the stones to fall so freely down the gully that we gave up that line of descent and made our way over the face. Often, in travelling down, we were buried up to the waist in [pg 194]soft snow overlying rock slabs, of which we knew no more than that they were very smooth and inclined at a highly inconvenient angle. It was imperative for one only to move at a time, and the perpetual roping and unroping was most wearisome. In one place it was necessary to pay out 150 feet of rope between one position of comparative security and the one next below it, till the individual who was thus lowered looked like a bait at the end of a deep sea line. One step and the snow would crunch up in a wholesome manner and yield firm support. The next, and the leg plunged in as far as it could reach, while the submerged climber would, literally, struggle in vain to collect himself. Of course those above, to whom the duty of paying out the rope was entrusted, would seize the occasion to jerk as violently at the cord as a cabman does at his horse’s mouth when he has misguided the animal round a corner. Now another step and a layer of snow not more than a foot deep would slide off with a gentle hiss, exposing bare, black ice beneath, or treacherous loose stones. Nor were our difficulties at an end when we reached the foot of the rocks, for the head of the glacier had fallen away from the main mass of the mountain, even as an ill-constructed bow window occasionally dissociates itself from the façade of a jerry-built villa, and some very complicated manœuvring was necessary in order to reach the snow slopes. It was not till late in the [pg 195]evening that we reached Chamouni; but it would have mattered nothing to us even had we been benighted, for we had seen all that we had wanted to see, and I would have staked my existence now on the possibility of ascending the peak. But the moment was not yet at hand, and our fortress held out against surrender to the very last by calling in its old allies, sou’westerly winds and rainy weather. The whirligig of time had not yet revolved so as to bring us in our revenge.
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A blank in the narrative
Perhaps the monotonous repetition of failures on the peak influences my recollection of what took place subsequently to the expedition last mentioned. Perhaps (as I sometimes think even now) an intense desire to accomplish our ambition ripened into a realisation of actual occurrences which really were only efforts of imagination. This much I know, that when on September 7 we sat once more round a blazing wood fire at the familiar bivouac gazing pensively at the crackling fuel, it seemed hard to persuade one’s-self that so much had taken place since our last attempt. Leaning back against the rock and closing the eyes for a moment it seemed but a dream, whose reality could be disproved by an effort of the will, that we had gone to Zermatt in a storm and hurried back again in a drizzle on hearing that some other climbers were intent on our peak; that we had left [pg 196]Chamouni in rain and tried, for the seventeenth time, in a tempest; that matters had seemed so utterly hopeless, seeing that the season was far advanced and the days but short, as to induce me to return to England, leaving minute directions that if the snow should chance to melt and the weather to mend I might be summoned back at once; that after eight-and-forty hours of sojourn in the fogs of my native land an intimation had come by telegraph of glad tidings; that I had posted off straightway by grande vitesse back to Chamouni; that I had arrived there at four in the morning, in consequence of a little misadventure, which may be here parenthetically narrated.
A carriage misadventure
The afternoon diligence from Geneva did not go beyond Sallanches. However, an ingenious young man of low commercial morality, who said that he had a remarkable horse and a super-excellent carriage, was persuaded to drive me on the remainder of the way to Chamouni. The young man, observing that he had been very busy of late and had not been to bed for two nights (nor had he, as might be judged, washed or tidied himself since last he sought repose), took a very hearty drink out of a tumbler and climbed on to an eminence like a long-legged footstool, which it appeared was the box seat. With much cracking of whips and various ill-tempered remarks to his horse we started with success, aided by the efforts of a [pg 197]well-meaning person (judging by the way in which he wore his braces loosely encircling his waist, devoted to the tending of horses), who, to oblige his friend the driver, ran suddenly at the slothful animal in the shafts and punched the beast very heartily in the ribs with his fist. Before we had gone a mile our troubles began. The coachman’s ill-humour subsided, it is true, but only in consequence of Nature’s soft nurse weighing his eyelids down. Accordingly I got out my axe and poked him in the back when he curled up under the influence of his fatigue. This made him swear a good deal, but for a time the device was successful enough. Gradually the monotonous jangling of the harness bells induced a somnolent disposition in me too, and I conceived then the brilliant idea, as we were ascending the long hill near St. Gervais at a walk, of planting the head of the axe against my own chest and arranging the weapon in such a way that the spike was in close contact with the small of the driver’s back, so that when he fell back it would run into him. Of a sudden I opened my eyes to find that the jangling had ceased and the carriage stopped. We were undoubtedly at Chamouni, and the journey was at an end. Such, however, was not quite the case. As a matter of fact, we were not 200 yards further up the hill, the horse was peacefully grazing by the roadside, and the young man had eluded my artful contrivance by falling forwards off the box, where he lay crumpled up [pg 198]into a shapeless heap, peacefully asleep, entangled between the shafts, the traces, the splinter bar, and the horse’s tail.
I rubbed my eyes and forced away by an effort the confused jumble and whirl of thoughts that were crowding through the brain. It was not the sound of the parting farewell as the diligence lumbered away from Chamouni, nor the slow heavy clank of the railway carriages as they entered the station, nor the voices of the railway porters that rang in my ears. Voices there were, but they were familiar. I started up and looked around. Surely that was the familiar outline of the Aiguille du Dru clear and bright above; surely that was Hartley (occupied for the moment in mollifying the effects of sunburn by anointing his face with the contents of a little squeeze-bottle), and there was Burgener; but what was this untidy, sleeping mass at our feet? Gradually it dawned upon me that I was but inverting a psychological process and trying to make a dream out of a reality. Hartley was there; Burgener was there; and the uncomely bundle was the outward form of the most incompetent guide in all the Alps. It was not till next day that we learnt that this creature had previously distinguished himself by utter imbecility in a difficult ascent up the north face of the Zermatt Breithorn, nor did we till the next day fully realise how bad a guide a man ranking as such might be. We kicked him in a [pg 199]suitable place and he awoke; then he made the one true remark that during our acquaintance with him he was heard to utter. He said he had been drunk the day before; with this he relapsed, and during the remainder of the time he was with us gave expression to nothing but whining complaints and inaccurate statements.