It seems to be a plain fact that no man has yet lost his life on the Italian front as a consequence of riding in a teleferica. Many have been killed in constructing them, and even more in patrolling the lines and keeping them in repair. Men have fallen or have jumped out of the baskets, often from considerable heights, and men have been brought in stiff with cold after two or three hours of exposure to a blizzard in a stalled car. Stations and engines have been carried away and buried, with all serving them, a hundred feet beneath an avalanche; but in these, as well as in all other mishaps connected with telefericas, inquiries which I pursued during the whole time I spent on the Italian front failed to reveal a single instance in which an actual passenger had lost his life. Hairbreadth escapes and rescues I heard of by the score. The story of one of the most remarkable of the latter was related by no less a personage than the brave and distinguished Colonel—now General—“Peppino” Garibaldi, grandson of the Liberator, and hero of the famous capture of the peak of the Coli di Lano.
While I was staying with Colonel Garibaldi in the Dolomites last winter the station of a teleferica which I had been expecting to use on the morrow in going up to the lines on the glacier of the Marmolada was carried away by an avalanche, which also killed one of the engineers. It was the receipt of the news of this disaster which led my host to remark that one of the most spectacularly brave feats he had ever heard of had been performed by an Alpino the previous winter in connection with putting right a stalled car on this very span of cableway which had just been destroyed.
“At this stage of the game,” said Colonel Garibaldi, who is fluent in American idiom as a consequence of his many revolutionary campaigns in both North and South America, “they were not grooving the wheels of the teleferica basket deeply enough, with the result that they were occasionally blown off the cables by strong winds. So far as we could, the carrying of passengers was suspended during blizzards, but of course every now and then an occasion would arise when the chance had to be taken. That was how it happened that a staff officer from the Comando Supremo, who had never been on a teleferica before, was in a basket which was blown from the cable of the first Marmolada span at the height of a heavy storm last March. The basket was within a couple of hundred metres of the end of its journey when the derailment of its two forward wheels occurred—in fact, it was a good deal nearer ‘land’ in that direction than downwards, where there was a clear drop of three or four hundred metres on to frozen snow.
“If the air is quiet, a basket (going up, of course; the ‘down’ one runs by gravity) with only one pair of wheels off can usually be ‘nursed’ along the cable by gentle tugs from the engine, and that was what the engineers tried to do in this instance. The side pressure of the wind was too strong, however, and within a metre or two the cable wedged in beside the wheels and jammed hard. If there had not been a man in the basket, they would simply have sped up the engine and gone on pulling until either the basket came up or something broke. If the former, all was well; if the latter, they picked up the pieces as soon as the weather permitted, rushed their repairs, and started up again. With a passenger—and especially a staff officer—to reckon with, it was a different proposition.
“Luckily the chap kept his nerve, and between snow flurries they could see him working hard trying to get the wheels on again. An expert teleferica lineman can, with luck, occasionally put a pair of wheels back on the track alone; but unless one understands exactly how to take his weight off the basket by hanging over the cable the job is as hopeless as trying to lift yourself by your boot-straps. This chap was anything but an expert, and, after fumbling with numbing fingers for ten or fifteen minutes, he waved his hand with a gesture of despair and sank back into the bottom of the heeled-over basket.
“The Alpino has lived among blizzards all his life, and is able to figure pretty closely how much resistance is left in a man exposed to wind and cold under any given conditions. They knew that a man tucked in comfortably in a basket on an even keel waiting for engine repairs is good for several times as long as one hanging on for dear life to the sides of an apparently hopelessly stalled and half-upset basket. Most of the men watching from the station gave the poor chap from fifteen to twenty minutes; it was only the most optimistic who said half an hour. In any case, there was only one thing to do—to send a man down to the disabled basket; and a lineman who had shortly before performed a similar feat successfully when a load of badly needed shells was stalled on the cable volunteered to do it.
“Suspending the intrepid fellow from the cable in a hastily rigged harness hung from a spare pair of wheels, they tied a long line round his waist and let him coast down by gravity to the basket. The line, paid out slowly, kept him from gaining too much momentum. The journey—an easy feat for a man with a good head—was made without mishap. The officer’s mind was still clear and his nerve unbroken, but, numb with cold and on the verge of physical collapse, he was unable to lift a finger to save himself. The most he could do was to maintain his hold, and even that he could not be expected to do for long.
“For some time the Alpino, still suspended in his harness, put forth all his strength in an endeavour to lift the basket sufficiently to allow the displaced wheels to slip back on to the cable, but there was no way to bring enough force to bear to be of any use, and, after nearly spilling out the man he was trying to save, he gave it up. Next he tried to lighten the basket of the weight of the officer by passing a couple of hitches of the bight of the line around him and tricing him up to the cable immediately overhead. He succeeded in his immediate end, but in doing so defeated his ultimate one. The body of the officer swung clear of the bottom of the basket, but hung in such a way that the Alpino could not himself get in the proper position to lift from.
“By now it was evident to the would-be rescuer that nothing could be accomplished unless the helpless officer were got clear of the car entirely, and this could be effected only by changing places with him. How the resolute fellow did it Heaven and the special providence which always sees the Alpino through only know. They paid him out a couple of metres more of line when they felt him tugging for it, and then they had a snow-blurred vision of him scrambling about the tilted car for three or four busy minutes. Finally they got the short, sharp, double tug which was the signal he had arranged to give in the event that he failed in his attempt and wanted to be drawn back.