XXIII
If Biner had known we were nearing the top, he kept it to himself. To us three it came as an entire surprise—and an unspeakably joyous one. We were still alive. That was the main point. We had surmounted that inconceivable cliff and were still alive!
However, we could not stop long to rejoice. The summit of the pass was barely big enough to stand on. The wind swept across it furiously and the cold was unbearable. Above us on either side rose the rocky, snowy peaks of the Finsteraarhorn, Lauterhorn and Schreckhorn groups, only a few thousand feet higher than we were. Behind us was the precipice we had just climbed. Before us dropped very, very steeply, yet not in a precipice, a much longer slope of snow, at the bottom of which lay a great glacier. The distance, Biner said, was three thousand feet, and we absolutely must not slip, as there would be no stopping-place short of the bottom. He made Frater and Belle Soeur change places, so as to put Frater’s strength at the rear for bracing back should any of us start sliding. However, he impressed it upon us that we must not slide. He told us afterwards that he was much more afraid of this part of the trip than of the climb up the cliff, but it was by no means so fear-inspiring to us, nor so physically exhausting.
It was a shame to leave that tremendous, awesome, Walpurgisnacht revel of glacierdom visible from the summit of the pass so soon. But flesh and blood could not endure the freezing gale.
The last night’s fall of snow added much to the danger of the descent, as it made the surface treacherous. Biner cut out each step ahead of him with his ice-axe, taking care to get down to the hard-packed surface beneath. As he put his foot in it, I put mine in the step he had just vacated. Belle Soeur took my last resting-place and Frater hers. It was slow, and we had our minds firmly fixed on not sliding. But it was heaven compared with the cliff climb!
The rest of the afternoon’s trip, between rocks and ice, was strenuous, and we should have considered it highly perilous before our last experience. But now we took everything as a matter of course. We were in the midst of very wild and magnificent scenery, of which the continued cloudiness somewhat impaired our view, while the intense cold and our knowledge of the flight of time kept us from lingering to enjoy what we could see. As it was, we just barely reached the Schwarzegg hut before dark.
To our great relief, we found it empty. The other party had gone on to Grindelwald. Never, I am sure, was a refuge more gratefully and joyously entered. It was not so large as the Dollfus Pavilion, having only one room. But it was Waldorf-Astoria and Paradise all rolled into one to us!
We put two francs in the tin box on the wall and took a bundle of wood from the closet (at the Dollfus we had to bring our own fuel with us), and in a few minutes Biner had a fire crackling in the stove. We took off our ice-caked shoes and stood them by the stove whence arose a steaming vapor for hours. Belle Soeur and I stuffed our wooden clubhouse shoes full of straw to keep them on, and getting rid of our skirts, which were frozen stiff as boards almost to the waist, we hung them also to steam near the stove and wrapt ourselves, Indian fashion, in gray blankets. We were enduring acute physical pain as our frozen toes and fingers thawed out, but our minds were so at ease that we did not care.
Soon Biner was handing us great tin cups full of steaming coffee.—Oh, the joy of it!—And as we drank scalding gulps of it between bites of bread and cheese, we were as happy a little party as one would care to see. And then we rolled up in, oh, ever so many blankets, six pairs apiece, I think, and went to sleep in the straw on the shelf.
We did not get a very early start next morning. It was so luxurious to take things easy! The coffee was a second brewing from last night’s grounds, and the bread and cheese a little scanty, but we didn’t mind. We knew we should soon be where we could get more.