Crossing a Snow Couloir ([page 73]).
Thus with untiring thoroughness Imboden led his little band higher and higher, till at last the summit came in sight and our muscles and overstrained nerves saw rest ahead.
I readily agreed to Imboden's decision that we should go down the ordinary way.
After descending for a considerable distance we stopped, and the guides held a short consultation. It seemed that Roman was anxious to try and fetch the waistcoats and watches and my skirt, and his father did not object.
Wishing him the best of good-luck, we parted by the rocks and trudged on over the snow towards Zermatt. We moved leisurely, as people who climb for pleasure, with no thought of record-breaking; and as it was late in September it was dusk as we neared the village.
Later in the evening I saw Imboden, and asked for news of Roman. He had not arrived, and as time passed we grew uneasy, knowing the speed at which, if alone, he would descend. By 10 P.M. we were really anxious, and great was our relief when a figure with knapsack and ice-axe came swinging up the narrow, cobbled street.
It was an exciting tale he had to tell, though it took a good deal of danger to impress Roman with the notion that there was any at all. Soon after leaving us he came to the first gully. Just as he was about to step into it he heard a rumble. Springing back, he squeezed himself under an overhanging piece of rock, while a huge mass of stones and snow dashed down the mountain, some of the fragments passing right over him—though, thanks to his position, none actually touched him. When tranquility was restored he dashed across to the other side, and immediately after a fresh fall commenced, which lasted for a considerable time. At length he approached without injury the spot he was looking for, far down on the lower slopes, where my skirt had been left, and here he felt that all danger was past. But the extraordinarily dry season had thrown out most people's calculations, and at that very moment he was really in the direst peril. As he ran gaily down the slope of earth and stones a tremendous crash brought him to a standstill, and looking back he saw the smoke of a mighty avalanche of ice coming in a huge wave over the cliffs above. He rushed for shelter, which was near at hand, and from beneath the protection of a great rock he saw the avalanche come on and on with the roar of artillery, and he gazed, fascinated, as it swept majestically past his place of refuge. He could see the mound where lay my skirt with its heap of stones. And now a striking sight met his eyes, for before ever the seething mass could touch it the whole heap rose from the ground and was carried far out of the path of the avalanche, borne along by the violence of the wind which preceded it.
The late John Addington Symonds has related in one of his charming accounts of winter in the Alps that an old woman, sitting peaceably before her châlet door in the sun, was transported by the wind of an avalanche to the top of a lofty pine-tree, where, quite uninjured, she calmly awaited assistance; but that my skirt should have such an adventure brought very strongly home to me the dangers Roman had passed through that afternoon and the escape we had had ourselves.