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Updated: June 13, 2025
The rope was put on; Pierre Delouvain led the way, Walter Hine as the weakest of the party was placed in the middle, Garratt Skinner came last; the three men mounted by a snow-slope and a gully to the top of the rocks which supported the upper Brenva glacier. "That's our road, Wallie," said Garratt Skinner.
He stood trembling, his face distorted with fear, and his body swaying a little from side to side. Garratt Skinner called sharply to Pierre Delouvain. "Quick, Pierre." There was no time for Garratt Skinner to return; but he gathered himself together on the ridge, ready for a spring.
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?
Walter Hine clung to him convulsively, Pierre Delouvain steadied Hine from behind, and thus they went slowly forward for a long while. Garratt Skinner gripped the edge with the palms of his hands so narrow was the ridge the fingers of one hand pointed down one slope, the fingers of the other down the opposite wall. Their legs dangled.
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.
We should have left this spot two hours ago and more," he said, very gravely; and Pierre Delouvain exclaimed excitedly: "Certainly, monsieur, we must go on. It will not do to loiter now," and stooping down, he dragged rather than helped Walter Hine to his feet. The quiet gravity of Garratt Skinner and the excitement of Delouvain frightened Walter Hine equally.
Then Walter Hine was placed in the middle that he might get what warmth and shelter was to be had, the rope was hitched over a spike of rock behind, so that if any one fell asleep he might not fall off, and Delouvain and Skinner took their places. By this time darkness had come. They sat upon the narrow ledge with their backs to the rock and the steep snow-slopes falling away at their feet.
He noticed that in those gullies the steps were cut deep into the ice below, that Garratt Skinner bade him not loiter, and that Pierre Delouvain in front made himself fast and drew in the rope with a particular care when it came to his turn to move. But he did not know that all that surface snow might peel off in a moment, and swish down the cliffs, sweeping the party from their feet.
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.
Every now and then he stopped to cut an intervening step, where those already cut were too far apart, and at times to give Hine a hand while Delouvain let him down with the help of the rope from behind.
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