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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?
"Hardly in a fog on the Glacier du Géant," replied Chayne. Michel Revailloud caught at some other possibility. "Of course, some small accident a sprained ankle may have detained him at the hut on the Col du Géant. Such things have happened. It will be as well to telegraph to Courmayeur."
It was evening before they came to the pastures, night before they reached Courmayeur. There Chayne found full confirmation of his fears. In spite of effort to dissuade them, Garratt Skinner, Walter Hine and Pierre Delouvain had started yesterday for the Brenva climb. They had taken porters with them as far as the sleeping-place upon the glacier rocks. The porters had returned.
Chayne asked. "To no mountain to-day. They cross the Col du Géant, monsieur, to Courmayeur. But after that I do not know." "Oh, into Italy," said Chayne, in relief. So far there was no danger. The Col du Géant, that great pass between France and Italy across the range of Mont Blanc, was almost a highway.
There is a terrace upon the roof of the inn at Courmayeur where one may spend hours in the silent watches, when all the world has gone to sleep beneath. The Mont Chétif and the Mont de la Saxe form a gigantic portal not unworthy of the pile that lies beyond.
Shikari of the Upper Himalayas, gillies of Perthshire and the Western Highlands, chamois-hunters of the Tyrol, and guides of Chamounix or Courmayeur, could all have told tales of that long, slashing stride, to which hill or dale, rough or smooth, never came amiss; before which even the weary German miles were swallowed up like furlongs.
It was not until later in the afternoon when at last the blue envelope was brought to him. He tore it open and read the answer of the hotel proprietor at Courmayeur: "Lattery left four days ago with one guide for Col du Géant."
He would sleep very likely in the hut on the Col, and go down the next morning to Courmayeur and make his arrangements for the Brenva climb. On the third day, to-day, he would set out with Walter Hine and sleep at the gîte on the rocks in the bay to the right of the great ice-fall of the Brenva glacier.
"You had better get quietly together what guides you can, Michel," he said. "By the time a rescue party is made up the answer will have come from Courmayeur." Chayne walked slowly back to the hotel.
They told me there was certainly great danger, they had lost their way, but were unwilling to give up. For an hour and a half we beat about in the fog, among the crevasses, trying every way to find the pass, which is very narrow, wet to the skin, and in constant peril; but we knew that the descent on the Chamouni side is far more difficult than that on the Courmayeur side.
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