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.