Did I ever meet the Ski-runner of Vermala? I should have a vague fear of being caught prevaricating should I answer either Yes or No. Truth sometimes dwells in half-way houses.
I was staying at Vermala last winter. The glacier de la Plaine-Morte, and the ascent of the Wildstrubel, were objects which a young man of my party kept steadily in view. It was his second winter holiday in Switzerland. A much-travelled man, he had camped out in Persia, and endured thirst and hunger in some of the most God-forsaken spots of the globe. How would he fare in the Wildstrubel country? A man may have done very well in sandy deserts and yet find himself out of his depth in snow. He had ski, but would they do as much for him on these charmed snows as a camel’s spreading feet had done in the desert?
So we set forth late one morning, after paying the usual penalty to the photographic fiend. So great an honour conferred by a number of fair women inspired us with proper pride. It was a most strengthening draught to harden us against the trials that might be in store, but it also worked so insidiously as to cause us to overlook the wise saw of the most bourgeois of French fabulists: “Rien ne sert de courir, il faut partir à temps,” which, topically rendered, might mean: “A man who has started late need never hope to make up for lost time when going uphill on ski.”
The glacier de la Plaine-Morte lies at the altitude of 9,500 feet approximately, measured at the brim, or lip, which we had to overcome before we could dip down to the surface of that shroud of the dead. We were setting out for it from the altitude of 5,500 feet, and allowing for unavoidable “downs” that would break the upline, we had quite 5,000 feet of vertical displacement before us.
At whatever hour of the day we might have started we had that much to ascend by sunset, if we wished to reach the Hildebrand hut in comfortable circumstances, and so the true bourgeois spirit would have us do. Had we been in military mood we should have borne with the dictates of punctuality. Unfortunately we had received attentions that had raised us beyond ourselves. We chose to trust our elation to bring us on over the ground. But the 5,000 feet we had to ascend would not grow less. The sun would not delay its progress. The ups and downs would not smooth themselves out, however much gentle pressure our planks might bring to bear upon them. The refreshing compliments we had stored up would not check the flight of time.
All too early Night put in a punctual appearance upon the scene. She found us, indeed, sailing gently along the shroud of the dead, but far from the place prepared to shelter weary Alpinists.
We seemed to be in for the same adventure as a friend of mine who spent the night wandering on the glacier during a wind and snowstorm. The dead then might almost have been moving under their shrouds in every direction. He did not lose his way, but was impressed by solitude and by the weirdness of the shifting snows, let alone the fatigue that loosened his limbs. He confided to me quite lately how odd he still thought it that he did not go off his “chump.”
Anyhow, Mr. B., my present companion, decided that he saw something happy in the situation, the beckoning finger of a friendly fate, that would guard us while we spent that January night on the open glacier. The air was still and clear. The cold might be keen, but not sharp, though somebody since would absolutely have it that the thermometer marked that night at Vermala 2.2 Fahrenheit.
As Mr. B. was anxious to view this escapade as a fit counterpart to his nights in the Persian desert, the situation could be accepted with equanimity. He was possessed of the true romantic spirit. Poor man! He was afflicted with much thirst. I had, unfortunately, nothing better to offer him than the carefully worded expression of my regret that he had not been able to get himself fitted up, before he left Persia, with some of the valuable water compartments of his Bactrian camels. So by ten o’clock we laid ourselves demurely down on the angular glacier moraine, pretty confident that long before the hour struck for the sun to rise, we should be anxious to roll the shutters away from the Palace of Dawn.