The Ascent of Rum Doodle Page 5

  But it was a desperate situation. When I tried to rise the rope pulled me forward as Constant fell still further. Only by lying spreadeagled could I get sufficient friction to halt his fall. I could do nothing to save Constant; unless help came there was no hope for us.

  Our only chance was the radio. With my heart in my mouth I edged my right hand nearer and nearer, and at last I was able to place the apparatus near my face. I called up Burley and Wish. The former replied, and I asked him to hurry to our help.

  To my consternation he informed me that they, too, were in difficulties. Wish was stuck half-way up his rock-face, being unable to move up or down. Burley was completely exhausted; evidently he had not fully acclimatized. He had himself been on the point of calling for help.

  There was only one solution. Jungle must leave Shute, who at least was belayed to Jungle’s ice-axe, and come to our help. The three of us would then rescue the others. Jungle acknowledged his instructions and told us he was setting off.

  I hope I never have to endure such an ordeal again. Every minute was an hour, every hour an eternity. A hasty move on my part might send both Constant and myself crashing into the abyss. My nose itched, but I dared not scratch it; it froze, but I dared not rub it. I was getting colder and colder. Constant, with whom I could converse in shouts, was in a similar predicament. He was unhurt, but as cold and miserable as I was, if not more so.

  After a long time the radio buzzed. It was Jungle. He had lost his way.

  My heart sank, and Burley, who was listening in, gave a groan. It was surely all up with us now. I was suddenly seized with an overwhelming sense of the pathos of it all. We, who had set off so confidently, who had worked so hard and come so far; we who were our country’s hope and a world’s heroes: we were to perish miserably in this stern country, far from home and dear ones.

  It was so sad that I could not hold back the tears. The tears froze immediately and I found myself stuck to the glacier by two icicles and in an even worse state than before.

  I told Constant the news and did my best to comfort him. Poor fellow, he took it well, and so did Burley when I spoke to him. If we were to die, at least we would die like gentlemen.

  There was still hope that Jungle would find us, but so low was I that I put little trust in him.

  The day wore on.

  I was, I think, half unconscious when an idea came to me. The porters! They had saved us before; could they save us again?

  The only way of communicating with them was via Prone. None of the porters would touch the radio; I think they thought it was witchcraft. The question was: was Prone within hearing of a radio, was the radio operational, and was he in fit condition to answer it?

  I called and waited, called and waited again; and went on calling. I became frantic with anxiety.

  Then I realized that I was doing it wrong. I stopped buzzing and spoke into the microphone:

  ‘Binder to Ailing. Binder to Ailing. Are you receiving me? Over.’

  And then came the words that will ring in my ears to my dying day.

  ‘Ailing to Binder. Ailing to Binder. Receiving you loud and clear. Are you receiving me? Over.’

  I could have wept – had not the icicles been a reminder of the folly of doing so. I explained the situation to Prone and asked him to get the Bang. He did so, and I began the difficult business of instructing him. Constant translated my messages into Yogistani and I passed them on as accurately as I could to Prone, who gave them at third hand to Bing.

  It was hopeless. My stomach and Prone’s were quite unused to pronouncing Yogistani. The noises we produced would have been a disgrace in any company; as vehicles of communication they were a total failure. Constant said that the replies which I passed on to him bore no relation at all to the problem under consideration. They would, he said, if uttered in the streets of Chaikhosi, result in imprisonment for life, if not worse. They were, he imagined, without precedent or parallel in the whole history of spoken language. He himself had never imagined that such statements were possible; if he ever came out of the crevasse alive he would have to reconsider his whole philosophy in the light of what I had said. He begged me to keep my stomach closed and tell Prone to do the same. If the least suspicion of what he had heard should reach the ears of the Bang, the result might well be a massacre; at the very least, the porters would desert, or would be incapacitated for further work.

  This was serious. There remained one hope: was Prone fit to travel?

  No, he said; it was out of the question. His legs would not support him.

  But he could be carried? Yes; he was fit enough for that.

  And so it was arranged. Again, we waited, but this time in high hope. Prone, carried by the Bang, gave us a running commentary on his progress.

  Then they were with us: Bing, short and immensely powerful, with Prone pick-a-back; Bung, shorter still but equally sturdy; and a third porter, Bo by name, who was even shorter and sturdier.

  In no time my icicles were hacked away and Constant hauled to the surface, chilled but otherwise none the worse. Bing and Bung were despatched to the rescue of the others, while Constant and I staggered back to Base Camp accompanied by Bo with Prone on his back.

  The others returned within the hour. Bing had climbed up to Shute and brought him down under his arm, and later had done the same for Wish. Both were shaken by their ordeal and had to be treated with champagne. Burley, who had been carried back, went to bed with a bottle.

  The question now was: where was Jungle? We called him by radio but failed to make contact. Shute said that we had probably seen the last of him; he would turn up next year in Vladivostock, or the year after that in Valparaiso, and write a book entitled Route-finding in Asia and America. He said that since Jungle was aiming for Base Camp it was a mathematical certainty that he would never reach it; we had better forget about him.

  I could only conclude that Shute was still suffering from shock.

  A search party was clearly the thing. But none of us was fit to go out again. Could the porters help us? Constant put it to the Bang. The latter immediately called out the porters and made them form a straight line with one end at the camp and the other far out on the glacier. With the camp as centre they described a circle, and it was not long before Jungle was caught and restored to us, tired but sound. He was quite surprised to find that we had been anxious about him and inclined to take it as a reflection on his competence. I told him that he must allow for our natural over-anxiety at the bare possibility of losing him. He saw my point, and seemed satisfied.

  *

  Next day we held a council of war. The North Wall was proving a tougher proposition than we had anticipated; our plans would have to be drastically revised. Moreover, Burley said that he would not in any circumstances allow himself to be alone on a rope again with Wish. he had, he said, promised his fiancée that he would take no unnecessary risks, and cragsmen who became cragbound at the very earliest opportunity were clearly an unnecessary risk. He said that his frequently-expressed opinion of the nuisance value of scientists upon mountains had been fully vindicated. A mountaineer scientist was, he said, one of the worst and most dangerous types of split personality, and not to be relied upon except to do the wrong thing.

  Wish retorted that the leading man on a rope had the right to expect help from the second. If Burley had been half a mountaineer, instead of wholly a handicap, yesterday’s unfortunate incident would never have occurred. He said that big men were notoriously clumsy on crags, and it would suit him very well indeed if Burley stayed at the bottom of the mountain, where he could do the least amount of damage. Those of us who had fiancées, he said, owed it to them to keep as far away from Burley as possible.

  Jungle broke in now, saying that he himself had no fiancée, but if he had he would consider it his elementary duty to keep away from Shute, who, he said, was as little to be trusted with an ice-axe as a Red Indian on the warpath. Shute, considerably agitated I thought, said that his fiancée had express
ly warned him against passengers who let other people do all the work and got lost when their turn came. He said that the sight of Jungle on the other end of one’s rope was enough to make the safest iceman drop his axe. He said that nothing would induce him to venture out alone with Jungle again.

  All this was somewhat bewildering. It was quite clear, of course, that my companions had not yet recovered from their recent shaking-up. That portion of their remarks which was not friendly plain speaking was doubtless due to nervous reaction from their ordeal; in a day or two they would be their normal hearty selves again. In the meantime I had the responsibility of nursing two friendships, and this did not promise to be easy. My mind was further confused by trying to decide who had a fiancée and who had not.

  In the end, all I could think of was to remind them again that Rum Doodle was not Mont Blanc. Shute said that he was glad to be reminded of this, as he had completely forgotten the fact. He asked me if I could recall any of Totter’s remarks on the subject which might be of help to him in future. I quoted to him Totter’s famous remark: To climb Mont Blanc is one thing; to climb Rum Doodle is quite another. Shute thanked me and said that this was one of the soundest things he had ever heard; it would, he said, be a great inspiration to him. He would be quite conscious in future that he was not on Mont Blanc, and would behave accordingly. He said that had he been on Mont Blanc he would have been delighted to have Jungle as his partner; as, however, he was not on Mont Blanc, but on Rum Doodle, he insisted on having a third person on the rope – preferably a porter.

  This seemed reasonable enough. Yesterday’s lesson was that two on a rope were ill-fitted to cope with an emergency. A porter with each pair would greatly increase our factor of safety. But since the bivouac tents were made to accommodate two, it would have to be four on a rope: two Europeans and two porters. This arrangement would have the additional advantage that the porters would be able to carry complete equipment for all four, so that each rope would be a self-contained unit capable of looking after itself, if necessary, for several days.

  Burley pointed out that this would upset all our planning; but since it would mean that he would no longer have Wish all to himself he was heartily in favour of it. The others were just as enthusiastic, and we decided to adopt the idea. I was greatly pleased by our unanimity, which seemed to me to reflect the spirit of the expedition.

  7

  The North Wall Conquered

  ON THE FOLLOWING day we set off once more. Burley was too weak to leave his sleeping-bag so I sent Shute and Constant away together with their two porters, followed by Wish and Jungle with theirs. Before setting off myself I sent a runner with a despatch: ‘Reorganizing for second assault on North Wall. All fit and well. Team spirit beyond praise and the porters are excellent.’

  That day’s work was truly phenomenal. On arriving at the foot of his ice slope Shute wisely decided to give his porters lessons in icecraft. He first showed them how to cut steps, then let them try it for themselves. They picked it up very quickly – so quickly, in fact, that Shute and Constant could hardly keep up with them. They mounted the steep slope as rapidly as they were able to climb in the rarefied atmosphere. Both said they had never seen anything like it. The porters showed no sign of tiring; they kept on and on, in spite of their full loads and the work of chipping steps in hard ice.

  When Wish and Jungle arrived at the ice wall the first party were nearly out of sight. It would obviously have been foolish to ignore so satisfactory a staircase, and they abandoned the idea of tackling the rock-face again.

  I arrived some hours later. By this time neither party was to be seen. I called Wish on the radio. He told me what had happened. He said that all the Europeans were on the verge of exhaustion due to the pace set by the porters. They would certainly reach the South Col. He advised me to go back to Base Camp and follow next day with all the equipment needed at Advanced Base. He particularly asked me not to forget the medical equipment, which was likely to be of more use there than at Lower Base.

  So back I went to Base Camp, not sorry to have a chance to rest and to spend some friendly hours with Burley. My affection for this forthright giant had been growing ever since our first meeting. A leader should not have favourites, but I must confess that from all my companions I would have chosen Burley to share a tent with.

  I found him in his sleeping-bag and said that I proposed to spend the night with him. He said it was kind of me, but he really thought that Prone needed me more than he did. Prone, he said, would be left quite alone at Base and would be happier during his lonely vigil if he had the memory of one night of companionship. This was very unselfish of him and, disappointed though I was, I could not but see that my duty was with the lonely one.

  I found him in his sleeping-bag. He also was grateful but unselfish, saying that he would not dream of depriving Burley of my company. I told him I would not hear of such a sacrifice, and soon we were settled in for the night.

  Poor Prone seemed quite low, and to brighten him up I encouraged him to talk about his home. Had he a fiancée? I asked. He said no, his wife was the unsympathetic kind and his children considered one mother quite enough.

  I apologized for my blunder, but said I was surprised to hear that he was married; Sir Hugeley had told me that he was a bachelor. Prone said that Sir Hugeley was welcome to his opinion on this, as on every other subject; but his own impression was different. I said that I supposed he found family life congenial. He said, on the contrary, he found it unsupportable.

  I urged him to tell me more, saying that a trouble shared was a trouble halved. The poor fellow was reluctant at first, but I overcame his shyness and he told me his sad story. He was of poor family. His father was an unemployed oil-stroker of the old-fashioned sort with a strong pride in his craft and a horror of receiving charity. To send his son to medical college he forced himself to swallow his pride. Prone said that the daily sight of his father swallowing his pride had been the strongest impression of his early manhood. Not only did his father swallow his pride, he wore it to the bone for the sake of his son, drawing benefit from six different charities under eight different names, writing begging, threatening and anonymous letters, picking pockets, robbing mail-vans and women’s handbags, burgling houses, taking toffee from children and writing penitent articles for revivalist journalists. Such willing and grinding sacrifice had inspired the young Prone to dedicate himself to the fulfilment of his father’s desire. He resolved that no obstacle should prevent him from attaining the distant goal of GP.

  After many years of devoted study his ambition was achieved. To provide the money for his purchase of a practice his father made the final sacrifice, accepting the honorary treasurership of a charitable organization which offered unlimited scope for embezzlement. Prone became a practising doctor.

  His very first patient was a widow suffering from acute horror and malevolence due to reading her small son’s comics. She hated the young doctor at first sight and made up her horrible mind to marry him. She told him that unless he took her to wife she would accuse him publicly of having mislaid her medical card. Rather than risk disgrace and the shattering of his father’s dreams, Prone consented. They were married at Gravesend on Hallowe’en.

  His married life had been a long martyrdom. His wife, he said, was a fiend in human shape. A gracious lady to the outside world, she was a devil to him. The things she did were too horrible to be mentioned. Their children, who numbered eight and one to come, were fitting offspring of such a monster, each more loathsome than the last – the one to come being, by a process of extrapolation, truly ghastly in his imagination. Nobody, said Prone, could possibly have the faintest idea of what he had gone through. His Saturday afternoons were nightmares.

  I was deeply grieved by this pathetic story. I told Prone that he had my full sympathy and offered my help in any way which might be of use to him. He said that it was very kind of me; as a matter of fact there was one little thing I could do: he wished to test an anti-pes
ter serum; did I mind if he tried it on me?

  Naturally I was glad, both at his change of mood and of my chance to be of use to him. He got out his hypodermic syringe and gave me a large injection.

  He told me afterwards that he was quite satisfied with the result. The effect was to send me to sleep at once; and so ended the only heart-to-heart talk which I was able to have with Prone.

  *

  Next morning I rose late, feeling for some reason quite below par. I had the task of organizing the porters in Constant’s absence without understanding a word of their language. Luckily, the equipment was already prepared; all I had to do was to get hold of the porters one by one and lead them to their loads. It turned out, however, that they had their own ideas as to who was to carry what, and a good deal of confusion resulted. We were just ready by lunch time, when, of course, they all went off to eat. After lunch it all had to be gone through again, and it was quite late when we were at last ready to move off.

  I had difficulty in persuading Prone to allow the medical equipment out of his hands, but he finally agreed to let me take it, after taking out anything which he himself might need. We had a long discussion about whether the champagne – which, of course, was part of the medical equipment – should be taken to the South Col. We compromised by leaving one case behind; he needed it particularly, he said, as he was about to contract anaemia.

  Burley was unable to give me any help, being still sleeping-bag-ridden. But he appeared, good fellow that he is, to see me depart. He was disturbed when he saw that I had the medical equipment; he had not realized that it was going to the South Col.

  We set off, after I had taken an affectionate farewell of Prone, and had gone only a little way when Burley overtook us. He did not like, he said, to see me going off alone, and as he was suddenly feeling much better he had decided to accompany me. He would, he said, be able to acclimatize more quickly on the Col.