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!