boulder, or in snow-gullies beneath a bulge of ice,
when one man struggled above, out of sight, and the
rest of the party crouched below with what security
it might waiting for the cheery cry, “Es
geht. Vorwaerts!”; the last scramble
to the summit of a virgin peak; the swift glissade
down the final snow-slopes in the dusk of the evening
with the lights of the village twinkling below; his
memories tramped by him fast and always in the heart
of them his friend’s face shone before his eyes.
Chayne stood for a moment dazed and bewildered.
There rose up in his mind that first helpless question
of distress, “Why?” and while he stood,
his face puzzled and greatly troubled, there fell
upon his ears from close at hand a simple message of
sympathy uttered in a whisper gentle but distinct:
“I am very sorry.”
Chayne looked up. It was the overdressed girl
of the Annemasse buffet, the girl who had seemed to
understand then, who seemed to understand now.
He raised his hat to her with a sense of gratitude.
Then he followed the guides and went up among the
trees toward the Glacier des Nantillons.
THE FINDING OF JOHN LATTERY
The rescue party marched upward between the trees
with the measured pace of experience. Strength
which would be needed above the snow-line was not
to be wasted on the lower slopes. But on the other
hand no halts were made; steadily the file of men
turned to the right and to the left and the zigzags
of the forest path multiplied behind them. The
zigzags increased in length, the trees became sparse;
the rescue party came out upon the great plateau at
the foot of the peaks called the Plan des Aiguilles,
and stopped at the mountain inn built upon its brow,
just over Chamonix. The evening had come, below
them the mists were creeping along the hillsides and
blotting the valley out.
“We will stop here,” said Michel Revailloud,
as he stepped on to the little platform of earth in
front of the door. “If we start again at
midnight, we shall be on the glacier at daybreak.
We cannot search the Glacier des Nantillons in the
dark.”
Chayne agreed reluctantly. He would have liked
to push on if only to lull thought by the monotony
of their march. Moreover during these last two
hours, some faint rushlight of hope had been kindled
in his mind which made all delay irksome. He
himself would not believe that his friend John Lattery,
with all his skill, his experience, had slipped from
his ice-steps like any tyro; Michel, on the other
hand, would not believe that he had fallen from the
upper rocks of the Blaitiere on the far side of the
Col. From these two disbeliefs his hope had sprung.
It was possible that either Lattery or his guide lay
disabled, but alive and tended, as well as might be,
by his companion on some insecure ledge of that rock-cliff.
A falling stone, a slip checked by the rope might have
left either hurt but still living. It was true
that for two nights and a day the two men must have
already hung upon their ledge, that a third night
was to follow. Still such endurance had been known
in the annals of the Alps, and Lattery was a hard
strong man.
