White Motley: A Novel

by Max Pemberton

And so great hopes went with him, and the smallest check upon them could set his heart beating. Of these the most considerable came at the moment when he headed his machine for the twin-peaked Weisshorn. His brother and the abbé had warned him against the currents of the Valley of Zermatt; but so triumphant had been his progression to this time that he had forgotten the warnings or derided them. Now they returned as an echo to which he must listen. Suddenly, and without any warning at all, he felt himself sinking toward the valley. It was just as though the whole machine dropped rapidly, had lost stability, and would go hurtling down to the abyss as a bird that is shot. In vain he raised his elevating plane to its full capacity. The shell continued its headlong flight, its nose dipped downwards, its engine raced wildly. Then, as suddenly, he regained his balance, went a little way upon an even keel, and discovered that his engine had almost ceased to run. It ebbed away as a life that gasps for air—sobbed out a requiem. And that drove him almost mad with terror; for a spell his wit failed him altogether; he sat back in his chair and looked death in the face.

But it was for an instant, no more. There is this in the instinct of a true mechanic, that whatever the emergency, his mind will grasp the meaning of it before the minds of others, and he will be the first to act. Even as death looked him in the face, Benny could say that the engine had ceased to run because the petrol supply had failed. Turning in his seat he lifted the needles valve, and then struck the side of his tank a fierce blow. As swiftly as the engine had failed, as swiftly it took up the drive again. He heard the hum of it; watched the great propeller racing, and then looked ahead of him to regain his course. There had been a margin of ten seconds perhaps between salvation and the ultimate calamity. He was as white as the snow beneath him when he understood the truth.

A vast black precipice of rock loomed up the third of a mile away. Unable to see more than its jagged face, Benny swung his machine to port, then soared without a break until he had lost all sense of locality, and the air was so bitterly cold that his very breath turned to ice. Now a great white cloud enveloped him. He looked vainly to his compass for help, but the needle oscillated so violently that north and south had no meaning. Descending a little way, he discovered that he was circling about Monte Rosa, and that the plains of Italy called him once more. Then despair seized upon him—the despair of a man who wanders by night, lost to all sense of direction, and vainly seeking lights upon a strange horizon.

In a measure this dread had been inspired by the fall. He waited with ear intent for any sound that the engine would fail a second time, and shuddered at any variation of its rhythm. When the vista became clear again he was astonished to find that the scene was just as it had been when first he crossed the summit of the Matterhorn. All the great peaks—the Dent Blanche, the Rothhorn, the Grand Gorner, the Weissthor—stood in the same relation to his course as when he had set it at the beginning. And at this he took new courage, and with a counsel of prudence which sent him eastward across the mouth of the valley. He would not enter that trap for the second time; he knew that in altitude lay his salvation.

His flight now lay in some part along the Italian frontier. He skirted Monte Rosa and flew straight across the Gorner Grat, kept to the right of the Horner, and henceforth found a kindlier country. Had he persisted he would have come to the lesser peaks which fend the Simplon Pass; but he swung again before he reached them, and so, with the wind at his back, he headed at last straight for Andana and the goal. Half an hour, he thought, would bring the end, if the weather held and the mists were but local.

The latter was now his only doubt, and he could not shake it off despite the magnitude of his attainment. He had reached a point where he should have been able to look right up the Valley of the Rhone; but the view was obscured by those banks of white cloud which had drifted in the valley since dawn, and were still to be reckoned with. He entered the first of them, and was subject once more to all the dread and despair which had afflicted him at Zermatt. A sense of direction was lost as heretofore; vast shadows appeared to pursue him; he raced his engine that he might escape them, but they pressed on the more. Then, in an instant, the way would be clear, the sun shining brightly, the valley below him a smiling scene to summon him to victory.

It was but such a little way, and victory stood so near. When the cloud enveloped him for the third time that day, he tried to soar above it, and succeeded for a little while; but the vapour was mounting also and it would interpose a curtain between him and the earth, so that direction was alternately lost and found, while he himself became soaked to the skin and began to lose the use of his hands. Now, surely, he thought that he was done for; but still he headed for Andana and the slopes, and said that all must be risked in that final descent. Henceforth, it was a race between the endurance of the man and the machine, and the magnitude of the cloud. He heard an ominous misfire in his engine, and shivered as though a cold hand had touched him. The great white sea of vapour below forbade him to see whether he were then above Visp or Sierre; nor did the contour of the valley shape as he had expected. So a woful sense of defeat took possession of him anew; his numbed hands permitted the ship to rock horribly; he went down a hundred feet, but feared the walls of the valley; rose again, and reeled in his seat. He was a beaten man by now, hardly able to raise a hand to a lever; the great white sea had done for him, and he knew it.

Here irony stepped in, and with a weird interposition which would have delighted a cynic. While his machine rolled and sagged in the mists a sound of human voices came up to him from below. He thought that he heard cheers, the hooting of horns, and the crack of a revolver shot. As swiftly as the sounds arose they died away, and the stillness became supreme. He felt that he must come down whatever the cost. The great prize was lost, and with it the hope of the years. And at this tears of a bitter sorrow welled to the man's eyes. Defeated! Yes, that was the truth, and the world would know the story to-morrow, and forget him in a week. What mattered it that he had done so much? Was not victory his all in all? And he was beat—dead beat—by the cloud which mocked him. Almost with a sob he made a last effort and began to come down. The ground below him, emerging suddenly, showed a steep bank of snow with pinewoods above it. There he ran his ship, and as she came to rest he buried his face in his hands and wept aloud.

CHAPTER XXII

THE EMPTY HOUSE