CHAPTER XVIII.

THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

In early February the winter sports season at Gurnigel was already on the wane.

The four hundred odd people in the great big hotel _de luxe_ had dwindled down to about three hundred, all of them English, yet the gaieties both day and night proceeded merrily under the direction of the genial and ever-popular manager, whose chief object was to know each of his visitors personally and see that they were looked after by his efficiently-trained staff.

The Swiss have ever been the best _hôteliers_ in the world. Wherever you go in either hemisphere, you know that if you decide upon a Swiss-managed hotel you will be comfortable at moderate expense.

So it was at Gurnigel. The many petty jealousies and little bickerings between the English clientèle often caused the amiable director to retire to his chalet at night and clench his fists in desperation. And well he might. He held an onerous and responsible position, and no one knew his troubles more intimately than the old artist Mr. Gordon Mitchell, who almost daily sat in his private office and held counsel with him.

Mitchell was a man of world-wide repute who had no axe to grind. He very naturally treated the conspiracy against himself by a few nobodies as the result of disappointed ambitions. “People pay their little round sums to a tourist agency, and expect to be regarded as little tin gods,” was how he expressed it to his intimates.

One day Sibell, who had grown friendly with the smiling, round-faced old bachelor, was sitting at tea with him and her financé, when she said:

“Do you know, I’d love to see a glacier. I’ve read lots about them, but I’ve never seen one.”

“Well, Miss Dare, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. Why not take the train up to the Little Scheidegg, and go out upon the Eiger Glacier? That would give you a very good idea of what a glacier is like.” Then, turning to Otway, he said: “I have to go up to the Scheidegg the day after to-morrow, and I’ll escort you both, if you like. You’ll want a guide. Why not take John? He’s excellent at glacier work--that is, if you can induce him to leave here for three days.”

The idea appealed to the young pair.

“Your aunt put you both in my charge before she went away, you know,” Mr. Mitchell laughed. “So I make no excuse for the suggestion. You want to go on a glacier, so I’m ready to take you there. The Eiger Glacier is close to the Jungfrau, beneath it, as a matter of fact, and will give you perhaps the best idea of glaciers you can get in Switzerland.”

“But what is a glacier really like?” asked the girl in her ignorance.

“Imagine a sea of ice with huge fissures in it on every hand, cracks hundreds of feet deep--all pure grey-green ice--the ice of ages,” answered Mr. Mitchell, who, in his younger days, had been an ardent Alpine climber. “Sometimes, if you are lucky enough to see an ice avalanche, you witness one of the most stupendous alterations of Nature. You see the ice edge of a gigantic glacier of countless ages break away and fall with thunder over a precipice, the great ice boulders bounding from rock to rock down thousands of feet until they become pulverized, and, like white powder, stream down like swift-moving rivers out of the ravines, into the valley below. The sight of a great ice-avalanche is one of the most awe-inspiring scenes in the world, hundreds of thousands of tons of the remains of the ice age breaking from the edge of the dangerous glaciers to be hurled into space with irresistible force, carrying everything before them. It is usual for all glaciers to move forward some eight or ten inches each day, and as they move, they form deep and dangerous crevasses, sometimes two hundred feet deep, terrible death-traps for the Alpinist who climbs.”

“How wonderful!” said the girl. “I’d love to see a glacier and go on it.”

“Well, I am ready to take you both,” said the grey-haired old Alpine climber. “So if you like to fix it, I’m quite game to go to Interlaken, and then up the Wengern Alp to Scheidegg.”

They decided to go, and two days later took train up the delightful valley of Lauterbrunnen, and there by the rack and pinion mountain line for a further four thousand feet, climbing on the face of the Alps past the popular winter-sports village of Wengen up to Wengern Alp and Scheidegg.

As they sat together upon a seat at the lonely little mountain halt, with the dark Trummelbach Valley between them, and beyond, the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau, with the Schneehorn and a dozen other finely poised peaks, with their glaciers, black rocks, and fields of eternal snow forming a wonderful panorama, they suddenly heard a roar.

“Avalanche!” cried Mr. Gordon Mitchell, springing to his feet. “Look! Several!”

Then across from the valley came an increasing thunderous roar of ice-avalanches from the glaciers of the Kühlauenen, the two Bandlauenen, and from the deeply-cleft Giessen and the Lammlaui in rapid succession, while, from one or other of the five narrow gullies in the black rocks, the steam of ice, ground to powder, poured forth, raising great clouds of dust. It was a unique sight and never to be forgotten, for they were face to face with Nature, witnessing the irresistible force of the mighty, grinding glaciers, as they slowly moved down towards the valley, until in the ages to come the last relics of the Ice Age will have vanished and left their traces upon the ice-worn rocks through which they have passed.

Have you ever seen an avalanche? The warm wind, known in the Alps as the Föhn, is probably blowing. The glaciers and snowy sides of the mountains are slowly thawing. We hear ominous cracking sounds deep in the crevasses if we happen to be on the glacier, while water is everywhere trickling across the surface of the ice, for under the Föhn the snow is gradually disappearing.

As the trio watched, the roar slowly died away.

“Look!” cried Sibell, pointing to another glacier high up near the summit before them. “There’s another! Oh, what a wonderful sight!”

Of a sudden Nature trembled as though in expectation. They held their breaths instinctively, when, in a few seconds, they saw great walls of ice collapse, detaching themselves from the glacier and toppling over the edge of a precipice, followed by rumbling, a blustering, and then a deafening roar, as from the lowest part of the glacier the ice smashed in its fall, and poured through the funnels of rock, far down into the valley, just as it has done for thousands of years, and as it will for yet more thousands. The thundering of the avalanche is the angry voice of the Giants disturbed from their winter silence by the presence of man. It was an awe-inspiring sight, the memory of which would live with them always.

That night they spent at the comfortable Bellevue Hotel at Scheidegg, over seven thousand feet above the sea, and, looking from their windows, saw deep in the valley the lights of gay Grindelwald twinkling thousands of feet below.

After sunset a keen frost set in, as it always does at that altitude. Scheidegg is, _par excellence_, the resort of the practised skier, who can run down to Grindelwald or to Wengen without danger, and it is consequently very popular, for the snow up there is always good when often impossible at lower heights.

After dinner the well-known artist sat with his two young friends over the big log fire in the hall, all three smoking cigarettes with their coffee and _kirsch_ discussing the morrow’s adventure on the Eiger Glacier.

“I’m getting most excited!” cried Sibell. “Fancy walking out upon a glacier!”

“Yes, but it is not without a certain element of danger,” remarked Mr. Gordon Mitchell, who had had a good deal of experience in glacier work, and who had picked up his ice-axe at the well-known Hôtel du Lac in Interlaken, where he kept it from year to year. Sibell and her lover had borrowed axes from the hotel in which they had taken shelter for the night, and they had been greatly interested in the strongly-made implements, with their hafts of ash and hatchets of finest steel, upon which human life so often depends in the Alps.

While they were enjoying the warmth of the fire and chatting with half a dozen skiers of both sexes who, like themselves, were going on an expedition in the morning, the smart Swiss hotel manager entered, and, addressing Mr. Mitchell, whom he knew well as a devotee of winter sports, said:

“John, the guide, has just telephoned from Gurnigel that he has unfortunately hurt his ankle while giving a lesson this afternoon. Somebody ran into him, so he cannot come up in the morning. I propose to telephone to Amacher and Stutz down in Wengen to come up by the first train. Both are good guides of the Jungfrau and they know the glacier well.”

“Excellent!” said Mr. Mitchell. “I’ve had Amacher before, up to the Guggi Hut and also to the summit of the Breithorn and on other tours. He’s a first-class fellow. Thanks, if you’ll get them both for us, I’ll be obliged.”

“Stutz was one of those who climbed with Prince Chichibu of Japan last season,” said the hotel manager. “The Prince is a wonderful climber, he says, as well as a good skier. Everyone in the Oberland admired him when he was in Mürren. A pity he had to leave to return to Japan under such tragic circumstances.”

“Yes. Everyone knows what a real winter sportsman he is,” remarked the old Alpinist. And then the conversation turned upon the daring exploits of the Imperial Japanese Prince in the Bernese Alps.

That night a blizzard raged, one of those blinding snowstorms which arise in the high mountains so suddenly and abate so rapidly, yet are so dangerous to those who may be caught in them without shelter. The railway watchmen on duty, seeing the rapidly increasing drifts, telephoned down to Lauterbrunnen to set the snow-ploughs at work in order to keep open communication with the world below. So all night the electric ploughs were slowly going up and down to keep the road clear, though it was impossible to keep open that section of a couple of miles between Scheidegg and the Eiger Gletscher station, where the tunnel enters the mountain and climbs to the Jungfrau.

Hence, when Sibell--rising early and putting on her mountain kit, consisting of a waterproof wind-jacket and breeches, thick woollen stockings and her heavily nailed climbing-boots, which differed in many respects from those built for ski-ing--appeared below in the hall, she met Mr. Mitchell, who said:

“The line is blocked, so we’ll have to walk to the glacier. Amacher and Stutz are here having breakfast, and they are packing their rucksacks for us.”

Just then Brinsley put in an appearance, and the three went into the _salle-à-manger_ to a substantial English meal of ham and eggs, which the popular artist had specially ordered as a preliminary to the day’s expedition.

Later the two guides joined them in the hall. Amacher, a short, thick-set man, dark and ill-shaven, with that keen eagle’s look in his great blue eyes which seems inborn in the mountain guide, approached and greeted Mr. Mitchell.

“_Grüss Gott_, Herr Mitchell!” he exclaimed, putting out his big, hard hand. He wore a battered round felt cap with his snow-glare glasses around the band, and over his shoulder a coiled safety-rope of best and strongest hemp, while suspended from his wrist was his trusty ice-axe, that had saved his life in a dozen or so tight corners when climbing.

“Goin’ across the glacier to-day, eh?” he asked in his kind of parrot-English. He was one of the bravest guides of that perilous range, and always acted as director of the search-party of guides who were ever ready to risk their lives to save those reported missing upon mountain or glacier.

“Yes, Fritz. We want you to take us on the glacier. My friends here are anxious to see the crevasses--the deep ones.”

The sturdy, sun-tanned Swiss--brown-faced because of the reflection of the glaring sun upon the ice--replied:

“All right, Herr Mitchell.” And then he introduced the tall, thin, wiry man who stood behind him, as Hans Stutz. The guide, proud of the bronze badge with the white enamelled cross on his chest, which showed him to be approved and licensed by the Swiss Alpine Club, smiled and lifted his peaked cap and wished them “Good morning, gentlemen and lady.”

He, too, had his rope on his shoulder, his well-filled rucksack upon his back, and his ice-axe ready for the crossing of the treacherous glacier.

“The weather is none too good,” Fritz mentioned to Hans in Swiss-German, and Mr. Mitchell, understanding the remark, asked at once, “Look here, Amacher, is there any danger?”

“Oh, no,” laughed the guide. “If the weather turns bad we can get back again. We will go by the safe route and show the lady and gentleman the deep crevasses. There are lots of them just now--after the Föhn. We’ve got the food in our rucksacks. Shall we go?”

The others assented, for all were ready dressed.

“Walk very slowly, mees, over the snow,” Amacher advised, taking the girl’s arm. “You have a long way to go and hard walking. Just easy--easy--so!” And he slowed down and made her walk his pace. “You see, we are climbing another thousand feet, before we get to the glacier, and you must not be fatigued before we get there. If you hear noises, great cracklings, water running far below and look down into the darkness, don’t get frightened. Hans and I are with you. We know the glacier from boys.”

“I trust in you,” said the girl, placing her gloved hand upon his strong arm, while Brinsley was walking with the tall Stutz.

“No danger. Not at all,” Amacher said. “I am guide. Trust me, mees.”

“I do, Amacher,” she said, and they went along up the steep hill, following the railway lines and passing the kennels of the grey wolf Uke Arctic dogs kept there, until at last they reached the moraine, that beach of stones and débris left by the Ice Age, while beyond it lay an undulating mass of square miles of ice, full of treacherous ice-bridges across wide and fatal crevasses, yawning chasms from twenty to three hundred feet deep.

At the edge of the ice they paused. It seemed to them--as it really was--the roof of the world.

The guides removed their rucksacks from their backs to rest, and Sibell, at Amacher’s invitation, seated herself on one of them and had a cigarette her lover offered her.

The sky had changed. From the howling blizzard of early morning the bad weather had abated, and now the sun shone so brightly in a cloudless sky that Amacher and Stutz had put down their glare-glasses over their eyes as precaution, though their charges felt no inconvenience.

Already it was noon, so it was decided to have a sandwich before venturing out upon the glacier. Weatherwise, Amacher scanned the mountains around, and in a low voice remarked in his native Swiss-German to his fellow-guide: “Bad weather coming, friend Hans.”

“Yes,” replied Stutz. “We won’t go very far. Up to the corner, if it’s narrow enough to get them over.”

Mr. Mitchell, who understood only very little Swiss-German, for it is a language which few Englishmen have ever been able to master, believed it to be a joke between the two guides, for both men laughed.

A few minutes later Amacher uncoiled his rope and began to make mysterious turns and knots in it as he placed it over Sibell’s shoulders, naturally thrilling her with the idea of mountaineering in the high Alps.

Having securely roped her around her waist, and putting a hitch over her shoulder, he gave her several coils of slack to hold and then roped her to her lover in the same way, and afterwards to Mr. Mitchell, while he roped himself to one end of the file, and Stutz fastened on the other.

“Now,” he said warningly, “be careful. I go first and prick the snow with my axe. Watch me, all of you, and put your feet exactly in the steps I have made. Now--off!”

And they went out upon the snow-covered glacier in single file, Amacher in front picking his way very carefully, fearful of stepping upon a thin crust of snow concealing some deep crevasse.