Garratt Skinner had his pipe and some tobacco. He lit, shading the match with his coat; and then he looked at his watch.
"What time is it? Is it near morning?" asked Hine, in a voice which was very feeble.
"A little longer to wait," said Garratt Skinner, cheerfully.
The hands marked a quarter to ten.
And afterward they grew very silent, except for the noise which they made in shivering. Their teeth chattered with the chill, they shook in fits which lasted for minutes, Walter Hine moaned feebly. All about them the world was bound in frost; the cold stars glittered overhead; the mountains took their toll of pain that night. Yet there was one among those three perched high on a narrow ledge of rock amongst the desolate heights, who did not regret. Just for a night like this Garratt Skinner had hoped. Walter Hine, weak of frame and with little stamina, was exposed to the rigors of a long Alpine night, thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, with hardly any food, and no hope of rescue for yet another day and yet another night. There could be but one end to it. Not until to-morrow would any alarm at their disappearance be awakened either at Chamonix or at Courmayeur. It would need a second night before help reached them--so Garratt Skinner had planned it out.
There could be but one end to it. Walter Hine would die. There was a risk that he himself might suffer the same fate--he was not blind to it. He had taken the risk knowingly, and with a certain indifference. It was the best plan, since, if he escaped alive, suspicion could not fall on him.
Thus he argued, as he smoked his pipe with his back to the rock and waited for the morning.
At one o"clock Walter Hine began to ramble. He took Garratt Skinner and Pierre Delouvain for Captain Barstow and Archie Parminter, and complained that it was ridiculous to sit up playing poker on so cold a night; and while in his delirium he rambled and moaned, the morning began to break.
But with the morning came a wind from the north, whirling the snow like smoke about the mountain-tops, and bitingly cold. Garratt Skinner with great difficulty stood up, slowly and with pain stretched himself to his full height, slapped his thighs, stamped with his feet, and then looked for a long while at his victim, without remorse, and without satisfaction. He stooped and sought to lift him. But Hine was too stiff and numbed with the cold to be able to move. In a little while Pierre Delouvain, who had fallen asleep, woke up. The day was upon them now, cold and lowering.
"We must wait for the sun," said Garratt Skinner. "Until that has risen and thawed us it will not be safe to move."
Pierre Delouvain looked about him, worked the stiffened muscles of his limbs and groaned.
"There will be little sun to-day," he said. "We shall all die here."
Garratt Skinner sat down again and waited. The sun rose over the rocks of Mont Maudit, but weak, and yellow as a guinea. Garratt Skinner then tied his coat to his ice-ax, and standing out upon a rock waved it this way and that.
"No one will see it," whimpered Pierre; and indeed Garratt Skinner would never have waved that signal had he not thought the same.
"Perhaps--one never knows," he said. "We must take all precautions, for the day looks bad."
The sunlight, indeed, only stayed upon the mountain-side long enough to tantalize them with vain hopes of warmth. Gray clouds swept up low over the crest of Mont Blanc and blotted it out. The wind moaned wildly along the slopes. The day frowned upon them sullen and cold with a sky full of snow.
"We will wait a little longer," said Garratt Skinner, "then we must move."
He looked at the sky. It seemed to him now very probable that he would lose the desperate game which he had been playing. He had staked his life upon it. Let the snow come and the mists, he would surely lose his stake.
Nevertheless he set himself to the task of rousing Walter Hine.
"Leave me alone," moaned Walter Hine, and he struck feebly at his companions as they lifted him on to his feet.
"Stamp your feet, Wallie," said Garratt Skinner. "You will feel better in a few moments."
They held him up, but he repeated his cry. "Leave me alone!" and the moment they let him go he sank down again upon the ledge. He was overcome with drowsiness, the slightest movement tortured him.
Garratt Skinner looked up at the leaden sky.
"We must wait till help comes," he said,
Delouvain shook his head.
"It will not come to-day. We shall all die here. It was wrong, monsieur, to try the Brenva ridge. Yes, we shall die here"; and he fell to blubbering like a child.
"Could you go down alone?" Garratt Skinner asked.
"There is the glacier to cross, monsieur."
"I know. That is the risk. But it is cold and there is no sun. The snow-bridges may hold."
Pierre Delouvain hesitated. Here it seemed to him was certain death. But if he climbed down the ice-arete, the snow-slopes, and the rocks below, if the snow-bridges held upon the glacier, there would be life for one of the three. Pierre Delouvain had little in common with that loyal race of Alpine guides who hold it as their most sacred tradition not to return home without their patrons.
"Yes, it is our one hope," he said; and untying himself with awkward fumbling fingers from the kinked rope, and coiling the spare rope about his shoulders, he went down the slope. During the night the steps had frozen and in many places it was necessary to recut them. He too was stiff with the long vigil. He moved slowly, with numbed and frozen limbs.
But as his ax rose and fell, the blood began to burn in the tips of his fingers, to flow within his veins; he went more and more firmly. For a long way Garratt Skinner held him in sight. Then he turned back to Walter Hine upon the ledge, and sat beside him. Garratt Skinner"s strength had stood him in good stead. He filled his pipe and lit it, and watched beside his victim. The day wore on slowly. At times Garratt Skinner rubbed Hine"s limbs and stamped about the ledge to keep some warmth within himself. Walter Hine grew weaker and weaker. At times he was delirious; at times he came to his senses.
"You leave me," he whispered once. "You have been a good friend to me.
You can do no more. Just leave me here, and save yourself."
Garratt Skinner made no answer. He just looked at Hine curiously--that was all. That was all. It was a curious thing to him that Hine should display an unexpected manliness--almost a heroism. It could not be pleasant even to contemplate being left alone upon these windy and sunless heights to die. But actually to wish it!
"How did you come by so much fort.i.tude?" he asked; and to his astonishment, Walter Hine replied:
"I learnt it from you, old man."
"From me?"
"Yes."
Garratt Skinner gave him some of the brandy and listened to a portrait of himself, described in broken words, which he was at some pains to recognize. Walter Hine had been seeking to model himself upon an imaginary Garratt Skinner, and thus, strangely enough, had arrived at an actual heroism. Thus would Garratt Skinner have bidden his friends leave him, only in tones less tremulous, and very likely with a laugh, turning back, as it were, to snap his fingers as he stepped out of the world.
Thus, therefore, Walter Hine sought to bear himself.
"Curious," said Garratt Skinner with interest, but with no stronger feeling at all. "Are you in pain, Wallie?"
"Dreadful pain."
"We must wait. Perhaps help will come!"
The day wore on, but what the time was Garratt Skinner could not tell.
His watch and Hine"s had both stopped with the cold, and the dull, clouded sky gave him no clue. The last of the food was eaten, the last drop of the brandy drunk. It was bitterly cold. If only the snow would hold off till morning! Garratt Skinner had only to wait. The night would come and during the night Walter Hine would die. And even while the thought was in his mind, he heard voices. To his amazement, to his alarm, he heard voices! Then he laughed. He was growing light-headed.
Exhaustion, cold and hunger were telling their tale upon him. He was not so young as he had been twenty years before. But to make sure he rose to his knees and peered down the slope. He had been mistaken. The steep snow-slopes stretched downward, wild and empty. Here and there black rocks jutted from them; a long way down four black stones were s.p.a.ced; there was no living thing in that solitude. He sank back relieved. No living thing except himself, and perhaps his companion. He looked at Hine closely, shook him, and Hine groaned. Yes, he still lived--for a little time he still would live. Garratt Skinner gathered in his numbed palm the last pipeful of tobacco in his pouch and, spilling the half of it--his hands so shook with cold, his fingers were so clumsy--he pressed it into his pipe and lit it. Perhaps before it was all smoked out--he thought.
And then his hallucination returned to him. Again he heard voices, very faint, and distant, in a lull of the wind.
It was weakness, of course, but he started up again, this time to his feet, and as he stood up his head and shoulders showed clear against the white snow behind him. He heard a shout--yes, an undoubted shout. He stared down the slope and then he saw. The four black stones had moved, were nearer to him--they were four men ascending. Garratt Skinner turned swiftly toward Walter Hine, reached for his ice-ax, grasped it and raised it, Walter Hine looked at him with staring, stupid eyes, but raised no hand, made no movement. He, too, was conscious of an hallucination. It seemed to him that his friend stood over him with a convulsed and murderous face, in which rage strove with bitter disappointment, but that he held his ax by the end with the adz-head swung back above his head to give greater force to the blow, and that while he poised it there came a cry from the confines of the world, and that upon that cry his friend dropped the ax, and stooping down to him murmured: "There"s help quite close, Wallie!"
Certainly those words were spoken--that at all events was no hallucination. Walter Hine understood it clearly. For Garratt Skinner suddenly stripped off his coat, pa.s.sed it round Hine"s shoulders and then, baring his own breast, clasped Hine to it that he might impart to him some warmth from his own body.
Thus they were found by the rescue party; and the story of Garratt Skinner"s great self-sacrifice was long remembered in Courmayeur.
Garratt Skinner watched the men mounting and wondered who they were. He recognized his own guide, Pierre Delouvain, but who were the others, how did they come there on a morning so forbidding? Who was the tall man who walked last but one? And as the party drew nearer, he saw and understood.
But he did not change from his att.i.tude. He waited until they were close.
Then he and Hilary Chayne exchanged a look.
"You?" said Garratt Skinner.
"Yes--" Chayne paused. "Yes, Mr. Strood," he said.