The keas and the gulls returned in the evening, and one of the keas came inside the hut and walked about, cocking his head knowingly from side to side as if he were taking an inventory of the furniture, and reckoning what it would fetch at an auction sale. There were in all nine keas, and they went through the most comical antics, chattering in their quaint kea language, dancing on the rocks, and even kissing one another. As the night wore on they became a decided nuisance, glissading down the iron roof, and picking up and dropping the empty meat tins behind the hut. The tin-dropping business, with its noisy rattle, seemed to entertain them hugely, but the sleepy mountaineer inside the hut could not see where the fun came in, so he got up and hurled imprecations and stones at them. They replied to the imprecations with some of their own invective, and the stone-throwing, instead of scaring, only amused them. However, I had my revenge, for a random shot laid one of them low. I picked him up and put him in a box, just outside the door, with the intention of skinning him in the morning. Then all the other keas gathered together in a committee meeting a few yards off and jabbered away to one another about this strange big featherless animal who threw stones. I know I was roundly condemned. And the mate of the dead kea came up to the box, and pecked at it, and crooned eerily over the corpse till I felt a perfect brute, and went off to bed again, but was unable to sleep.
Thereupon I fell to moralizing upon the pleasures and penalties of mountaineering. Apart from the actual joy of climbing, it gives the opportunity of beholding Nature in her most sublime and most glorious moods. Sir Martin Conway agrees in this, but adds a word of warning. “The climber,” he says, “pits his life against Nature’s forces, and dares them to take it. He can do so with impunity if he knows enough, and has enough skill. He will get the better of Nature every time, and to an almost dead certainty; but if he does not know enough, or lacks skill, sooner or later Nature will win the trick.” Skill, knowledge, and text-books are supposed to have hurled the dangers of mountaineering almost into the unknown. But Mummery, that most brilliant cragsman—whose own unknown grave lies somewhere among the snows of the giant Himalayas—in his delightful book about his climbs in the Alps and Caucasus, says he cannot forget that the first guide to whom he was ever roped, and one who possessed more knowledge of mountains than is to be found even in the Badminton Library, was none the less killed on the Brouillard Mont Blanc, and his son, subsequently, on Koshtantau. Then the memory of two rollicking parties, comprising seven men, who one day in 1879 were climbing on the west face of the Matterhorn, passes with ghost-like admonition before his mind, and bids him remember that of these seven Mr. Penhall was killed on the Wetterhorn, Ferdinand Imseng on the Macugnaga Monte Rosa, and John Petrus on the Fresnay Mont Blanc. In New Zealand the early pioneers of Alpine climbing have done good work without guides and without accident, and in thus quoting two such famous authorities as Conway and Mummery I have no wish to in any way discourage the practice of so ennobling a sport, but rather to enjoin caution and pains to acquire proficiency. “High proficiency,” as Mummery again points out, “is only attainable when a natural aptitude is combined with long years of practice. It is true the great ridges sometimes demand their sacrifice; but the mountaineer would hardly forgo his worship though he knew himself to be the destined victim. But, happily, to most of us the great brown slabs bending over into immeasurable space, the lines and curves of the wind-moulded cornice, the delicate undulations of the fissured snow, are old and trusted friends, ever luring us to health and fun and laughter, and enabling us to bid a sturdy defiance to all the ills that time and life oppose.”
But I have been led by the lonely hut and its surroundings into a moralizing mood. Let me therefore come back from the great peaks and descend to the valley, for the next morning the former were hidden in the clouds, and even the valley was filled with gloom. Fyfe and Turner had not returned. I felt lonelier than ever, and formed a strong conviction that man is a gregarious animal. Having come to this conclusion, I cooked myself a late breakfast of bacon and onions, and a little later went out and saw the Professor and his party striding down the moraine from the Upper Tasman. In a few minutes the billy was singing on the fire, and then, over a cup of hot coffee with my friends, I became once more a sociable being and all the world was rose-coloured. The visitors resolved to go to the Hermitage in the afternoon. I decided to walk a few miles down the valley with them, and then, tempted by the pleasant company and thoughts of the luxurious ease of the Hermitage, I was persuaded to accompany them all the way. By the time I had done ten miles my ankle was again bad, and, an hour or two later, I limped into the Hermitage, dead lame, and fully convinced that my climbing for that season was at an end.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIRST CROSSING OF MOUNT COOK—continued
“Tighten the muscle, feel the strong blood flow,
And set your foot upon the utmost crest!”
Geoffrey Winthrop Young.
During the next seven days my ankle mended slowly, and a biologist—the nearest approach to a doctor within ninety miles—expressed the opinion that there was a splinter off the bone. So far as I was concerned I had now given up all thoughts of attempting the ascent of Mount Cook; for, with a weak leg, I should be likely to endanger the whole party. It was with a sad heart that I watched the expedition start off once more for the Tasman, in the hopes of accomplishing the first traverse of Mount Cook.