'I would be if it were any use, but I did all my raving last night in that den of Ivery's. We've got to pull ourselves together, Wake. First of all, I trust Mary to the other side of eternity. She went with him of her own free will. I don't know why, but she must have had a reason, and be sure it was a good one, for she's far cleverer than you or me ... We've got to follow her somehow. Ivery's bound for Germany, but his route is by the Pink Chalet, for he hopes to pick me up there. He went down the valley; therefore he is going to Switzerland by the Marjolana. That is a long circuit and will take him most of the day. Why he chose that way I don't know, but there it is. We've got to get back by the Staub.'
'How did you come?' he asked.
'That's our damnable luck. I came in a first-class six-cylinder Daimler, which is now lying a wreck in a meadow a mile up the road. We've got to foot it.'
'We can't do it. It would take too long. Besides, there's the frontier to pass.'
I remembered ruefully that I might have got a return passport from the Portuguese Jew, if I had thought of anything at the time beyond getting to Santa Chiara.
'Then we must make a circuit by the hillside and dodge the guards. It's no use ****** difficulties, Wake. We're fairly up against it, but we've got to go on trying till we drop. Otherwise I'll take your advice and go mad.'
'And supposing you get back to St Anton, you'll find the house shut up and the travellers gone hours before by the Underground Railway.'
'Very likely. But, man, there's always the glimmering of a chance.
It's no good chucking in your hand till the game's out.'
'Drop your proverbial philosophy, Mr Martin Tupper, and look up there.'
He had one foot on the wall and was staring at a cleft in the snow-line across the valley. The shoulder of a high peak dropped sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of snow. All below the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the configuration of the slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran from it to the main glacier at the river head.
'That's the Colle delle Rondini,' he said, 'the Col of the Swallows.
It leads straight to the Staubthal near Grunewald. On a good day Ihave done it in seven hours, but it's not a pass for winter-time. It has been done of course, but not often. ... Yet, if the weather held, it might go even now, and that would bring us to St Anton by the evening. I wonder' - and he looked me over with an appraising eye -'I wonder if you're up to it.'
My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness to physical toil.
'If you can do it, I can,' I said.
'No. There you're wrong. You're a hefty fellow, but you're no mountaineer, and the ice of the Colle delle Rondini needs knowledge.
It would be insane to risk it with a novice, if there were any other way. But I'm damned if I see any, and I'm going to chance it.
We can get a rope and axes in the inn. Are you game?'
'Right you are. Seven hours, you say. We've got to do it in six.'
'You will be humbler when you get on the ice,' he said grimly.
'We'd better breakfast, for the Lord knows when we shall see food again.'
We left the inn at five minutes to nine, with the sky cloudless and a stiff wind from the north-west, which we felt even in the deep-cut valley. Wake walked with a long, slow stride that tried my patience.
I wanted to hustle, but he bade me keep in step. 'You take your orders from me, for I've been at this job before. Discipline in the ranks, remember.'
We crossed the river gorge by a plank bridge, and worked our way up the right bank, past the moraine, to the snout of the glacier.
It was bad going, for the snow concealed the boulders, and I often floundered in holes. Wake never relaxed his stride, but now and then he stopped to sniff the air.
I observed that the weather looked good, and he differed. 'It's too clear. There'll be a full-blown gale on the Col and most likely snow in the afternoon.' He pointed to a fat yellow cloud that was beginning to bulge over the nearest peak. After that I thought he lengthened his stride.
'Lucky I had these boots resoled and nailed at Chiavagno,' was the only other remark he made till we had passed the seracs of the main glacier and turned up the lesser ice-stream from the Colle delle Rondini.
By half-past ten we were near its head, and I could see clearly the ribbon of pure ice between black crags too steep for snow to lie on, which was the means of ascent to the Col. The sky had clouded over, and ugly streamers floated on the high slopes. We tied on the rope at the foot of the bergschrund, which was easy to pass because of the winter's snow. Wake led, of course, and presently we came on to the icefall.
In my time I had done a lot of scrambling on rocks and used to promise myself a season in the Alps to test myself on the big peaks.
If I ever go it will be to climb the honest rock towers around Chamonix, for I won't have anything to do with snow mountains.
That day on the Colle delle Rondini fairly sickened me of ice. Idaresay I might have liked it if I had done it in a holiday mood, at leisure and in good spirits. But to crawl up that couloir with a sick heart and a desperate impulse to hurry was the worst sort of nightmare. The place was as steep as a wall of smooth black ice that seemed hard as granite. Wake did the step-cutting, and I admired him enormously. He did not seem to use much force, but every step was hewn cleanly the right size, and they were spaced the right distance. In this job he was the true professional. I was thankful Blenkiron was not with us, for the thing would have given a squirrel vertigo. The chips of ice slithered between my legs and Icould watch them till they brought up just above the bergschrund.
The ice was in shadow and it was bitterly cold. As we crawled up I had not the exercise of using the axe to warm me, and I got very numb standing on one leg waiting for the next step. Worse still, my legs began to cramp. I was in good condition, but that time under Ivery's rack had played the mischief with my limbs.
