The spot on which my feet again met the mountain was not the best of landing-places, for the rock shelved outwards into snow. It was now Peter’s turn to descend, so I planted myself as firmly as possible and watched the operation. He was a good stone and a half heavier, so there must have been a considerable strain on Fyfe’s arms. As he slid off the rocks into the air, his ice-axe caught in the chimney, and sent him swinging round like a top. I saw a long body and a swirling mass of arms and legs above me, preceded by an excellent felt hat that went sailing down on the wind to the Linda Glacier thousands of feet below, and then a somewhat dishevelled but cool mountaineer, with a little assistance as to where to plant his feet, landed beside me. Peter’s descent was so comical that I could not refrain from laughter. Turner was the next man, and Fyfe urged him forward. The rope was fastened round his waist, and he too cut a comical figure as he slid off from the perpendicular, clawed vainly at vacancy, and eventually landed beside us. Fyfe’s grinning countenance above, peering over the edge of the precipice, as if he were enjoying the sport, was quite a study.
Sensational as this performance was, especially until a landing-place had been found, a more serious one remained for Fyfe to accomplish. I, however, well knew Fyfe’s capabilities, otherwise I should never have undertaken such a descent. We had been together in other tight corners before, and I had absolute faith in his ability to get down safely. Once more he hitched the double rope over a rock, and scrambled over the edge of the precipice. The only rock available was slightly loose, so he had to be very careful at the start in case the rope should slip over the projection. Such experiences are apt to be a little nerve-shattering, and these two sensational descents—especially the latter one—must have put some strain upon his nerve. However, he was again equal to the emergency, and, assisted by Graham’s long reach as he swung like a pendulum over the last few feet, he was soon beside us in safety.
A halt was called for a few minutes while we donned our spare clothing. I gave Graham my hat, as I had a spare cap in my rücksack, and then bound my bleeding finger with strips of adhesive plaster. After all, there was something very exhilarating in such difficult work. Every nerve and muscle was at full tension, and thoughts of all else save the matter in hand were banished from the brain. The way ahead now seemed clear. We had “drunk delight of battle with our peers,” and, thus far, had won.
Roping up once more in the old order, we continued the descent. We were still a long way from the saddle, and the summit of Mount Hector seemed very far below. The climbing, however, now became easier, and in places we were able to make fairly quick progress. Eventually, at a quarter to seven on Wednesday evening, we had left the dreadful arête behind us, and Peter cut steps across a frozen ridge that led from Green’s Saddle into the long 2000-feet couloir that sloped steeply down to the Hooker Glacier. It was a quarter to seven on the evening of Wednesday, and, as we had now been going since 11.15 p.m. on Tuesday, or for 19-1/2 hours, we hoped to find the couloir in good order. Our hearts sank as we saw Graham plying his ice-axe. Fyfe shouted to him to endeavour to do without the cutting, and to kick steps; but this was impossible—the slope was frozen hard! The wind was also increasing in violence, and bitterly cold. There was still the alternative of cutting down to the Linda Glacier on the eastern side, and of a comparatively easy and comfortable descent, out of the wind, to the great plateau, from which we could gain the Glacier Dome and then descend to the Bivouac Rock by means of our steps of the night before. The matter was mentioned between Fyfe and myself; but we scarcely gave it a second thought, and decided to stick to our original intention to “col” the peak. The word was given to go forward down the couloir, and young Graham, who was leading, treated us to a splendid example of ice-craft and physical endurance as he hacked a way with his axe down that 2000 feet of frozen slope. It was a narrow, steep gully varying in width from about fifteen to twenty yards, and flanked on either side by great walls of precipitous rock.
Hour after hour went by, and we appeared to be getting no nearer to the foot of the couloir. The wind seemed to pierce to our bones, and every now and then it would send a shower of broken ice from the precipices above swishing down about our ears. Some of the bits were big enough to hurt. In one place we took to a rib of rock in the middle of the couloir. Occasionally the rocks on the left of the couloir were used for hand-grips, thus enabling Graham to cut smaller steps. Turner, at this stage, began to feel the want of sleep, and asked me to talk to him to keep him awake. The mere suggestion of a man’s falling asleep in such a situation was, of course, sufficient to keep one more than ever on the alert, especially as, if Turner had slipped, it would have devolved upon me, being next above on the rope, to hold him up. A few minutes later, some bits of rock—dislodged, no doubt, through the falling icicles that were broken by the wind—came whizzing past us, and as Turner immediately cried out, “Oh, my head! my head!” I knew that he had been struck. In a moment the handle of my axe was driven into the frozen snow and the rope hitched around it; while Fyfe, behind me, had already taken a firm stand. Turner, in his account of the accident, says: “We would have been dashed to eternity if I had fallen and upset Graham out of his steps while step-cutting, which would have been a very easy matter.” Such, however, was not the case, for both Fyfe and I had the rope absolutely taut, and, being well anchored, we could easily have held up three times Turner’s weight. As a matter of fact, he could not have fallen a single yard.
Fortunately, the accident was not a serious one. It resolved itself into a scalp wound about three-quarters of an inch long, and Turner, after a few minutes, was able to continue the descent. Stones falling from such a great height—probably a thousand feet or more—acquire an extraordinary velocity. Indeed, they come so fast as to be invisible, and you can only hear them whizzing past. Had this stone struck Turner on the top of the head, it would undoubtedly have cleft his skull in twain. Luckily, it only grazed the back of his head at the base of the skull.
We had now descended about a thousand feet of the couloir. The sun had dipped to the rim of the sea, and the western heavens were glorious with colour, heightened by the distant gloom. Almost on a level with us, away beyond Sefton, a band of flame-coloured cloud stretched seaward from the lesser mountains toward the ocean, and beyond that again was a far-away continent of cloud, sombre and mysterious, as if it were part of another world. The rugged mountains and the valleys and forests of Southern Westland were being gripped in the shades of night. A long headland, still thousands of feet below us, on the south-west, stretched itself out into the darkened sea, a thin line of white at its base indicating the tumbling breakers of the Pacific Ocean.
Difficult as was our situation, Fyfe and I could not refrain from occasional contemplation of this mysterious and almost fantastic scene of mountain glory. Turner was concerned mostly with his head, and Peter had to devote his whole attention to the step-cutting. We climbed down a rib of rock in the dusk between the lights, and then zigzagged on down the couloir in the steps cut by the never-tiring Graham. Presently the moon rose and bathed the snowy slopes of Stokes and Sefton and other giant mountains in a flood of silver. After the accident we kept closer in to the rocks to evade any falling icicles or stones that might come down. Graham, anxious no doubt to get out of the couloir, was now making the steps rather small, and there was sometimes difficulty in seeing them in the semi-darkness, and in standing in them once they were found; but we got occasional hand-grips on the rocks, so that the danger from a slip was reduced to a minimum. On one occasion I did slip in a bad step; but Fyfe was easily able to hold me on the rope. Down, down, down we went on this apparently never-ending slope. Hour after hour went past, and still the end of the couloir seemed a long way off.
Very little was said. Occasionally there would be a request by Turner asking me to hold him tight on the rope, or a plaintive cry of “Peter! where are the steps?” Peter was non-committal. He had enough to do to cut the steps without telling us where they were, and there was the additional fact that, in some instances, identification might not have been altogether an easy matter. But, if Peter was too busily engaged to be other than non-committal, I, on the other hand, had sufficient time to be optimistic, and I made a point of answering cheerily that Turner was doing splendidly, and that there was only another couple of hundred feet of step-cutting. As a matter of fact, there was more—nearly a thousand feet of it—but, under the special circumstances, I have no doubt the recording angel has overlooked all the lies I told between half-past nine and twelve of the clock that night, both in regard to the length of the couloir and the figure cut by our now despondent companion.
Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock went past, and still we could not see the final bergschrund at the foot. Fyfe took a turn at step-cutting, but quickly relinquished the task in favour of Graham. Fyfe, however, relieved Graham of his knapsack, and, with his double load, must have had a difficult time coming down in those “economical” steps that Graham was making for the sake of speed. Speed! The word seemed a mockery. We went almost at a snail’s pace!