Yet there is in simple achievements a satisfaction which nothing else in the world can give. Most other successes leave something to be desired. The instability of wealth and health is a platitude. But Lunn rightly says that every successful expedition is a permanent asset, bringing in year by year a high rate of interest, an incorruptible treasure in the memories of the past which nothing can destroy.
“Next day we got away by 7, stumbled down the steep rocks below the hut, picked up our ski, our faithful boards, standing all bespattered with snow, and by the light of the moon skied merrily down the Fiesch glacier. As dawn broke we pushed up the long slopes leading to our next pass, the Oberaarjoch. Suddenly an expression of pleasure escaped Professor Roget. Such an unprecedented phenomenon—on the part of the old Cynic—aroused my attention. I turned and saw what, for an æsthetic mind, was probably the most striking view of the whole tour—namely, softened and subdued by the magic of the winter atmosphere, the perfect pyramid of the Weisshorn flanked by the daring spire of the Matterhorn.
“A little later it was my turn to give vent to some satisfaction, and the professor looked up to see Adolf walking well at the head of the party with his pack trim and neat on his shoulders, like those people who, when approaching the end of their trials, stride forth as if they had conquered the world.”
We almost reluctantly took our stand upon this the fifth and last sky-line we were to cut through with the flat of our ski. The last of our five passes disclosed the long arm of the Oberaar glacier, backed by the mountains that overshadow the birthplace of the Rhône. Now the Finsteraarhorn showed us his back view, his shoulder blades, terrace upon terrace of sheer rock.
Indeed, the force that was impelling Adolf back towards civilisation was not of the sort that could make the pace for us. We were going onwards and onwards, but rather drawn by the sun towards his haunt in the east, the common goal of so many pilgrims. But our mood was not devout except that we were nature worshippers who, while marching to Canterbury, were diverting one another with appropriate tales. You might have had pleasure in seeing us advance in very open order up the wrinkled back of the Fiesch glacier. I believe one of us was holding a pipe between his teeth, another strolled with his hands in his pockets, a fourth darted about kodak in hand.
Adolf thought we were slow, and grew impatient at our tarrying on this astonishing veranda. It has, perhaps, no like in the world in this, that it is a suspended ice-garden of an extent and altitude well proportioned to the physical faculties of man, showing as much of natural beauty under one of its most prodigious aspects as does not exceed the understanding of a well-balanced mind.
I shall never forget the ever renewed delight which I found in skirting the southern buttresses of the Finsteraarhorn range. We did not take a step forward without stopping to look backward through the wide gap formed by the valley down which the Fiesch glacier pours its waters in the Rhône. The whole of the Pennine Alps displayed themselves within this gap.
There they loomed as lifted off the earth, a gossamer, a sea of soft light, a row of pearls looking as frail as a dream, and yet a real world, the key to which is love of the beautiful.
Softly—the ski have a way of caressing the snow—slowly, chatting, then wrapped in silence, we went forward, as on wings. Immersed in light, we might have been borne aloft by an expansive force within ourselves, so much did we rise without any effort. It was barely midday when we stood on the Oberaarjoch. Before us bent and curved the sides of the last glacier which we had yet to follow—the Oberaar Gletscher. Our eyes embraced a new horizon which, surging beyond the Galenstock and the Dammastock, extended further than the Toedi in the north and enclosed the Bernina in the east.
We were not alone on this Belvedere. The Oberaarjoch hut, high above us on our left, looked like one of those boxes which in a theatre allow the eyes of the occupants to plunge down upon the stage unseen. The platform in front of the hut was occupied by some fellow-runners, whose voices reached our ears almost as soon as we saw them. They were watching us, and we exchanged with them such greetings as ships may send to one another when crossing on the high seas. To-morrow they would resume their course towards the skies we had left behind us, while we pushed our way towards those they had hitherto travelled under.