Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XVII. Doctors
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me into such lamentable conditions but don’t
let us talk about that here. Three days later I
arrived in Zermatt and set to work at once to
find out whether life above the snow-line was
more cheerful than below it. The ice-axe became
a new toy to me to play with in the old game of
lose and win between life and death. I began
where most other climbers end, with the
Matterhorn. Roped to the ice-axe on a slanting rock
twice the size of my dining-room table, I spent
the night under the shoulder of the angry
mountain in a raging snow storm. I was interested to
learn from my two guides that we were hanging
on to the very rock from where Hadow, Hudson,
Lord Francis Douglas and young Taugwalder[1]
were hurled down on the Zmutt glacier five
thousand feet below during Whymper’s first ascent.
At daybreak we came upon Burckhardt. I
scratched the fresh snow from his face, peaceful
and still as that of a man asleep. He had frozen
to death. At the foot of the mountain we
overtook his two guides dragging between them his
half-dazed companion, Davies, whose life they
had saved at the peril of their own.
Two days later the Schreckhorn, the sullen
giant, hurled his usual avalanche of loose rocks
against the intruders. He missed us but it was
a fine shot anyhow at such a distance, a piece of
rock that would have smashed a cathedral
thundered past us at a distance of less than twenty
yards. A couple of days later as dawn was
breaking in the valley below, our bewitched eyes
watched the Jungfrau putting on her immaculate
robe of snow. We could just see the virgin’s
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