As I looked about me, the wind suddenly changed. It began to blow down from the glacier. The snow and the leaden sky was swept slowly away like a gauze curtain being drawn back. Black peaks began to stand out above me. The snow hills all round me were no longer blurred shapes, but sharp and clearly defined. Ahead of me and about a thousand yards down the valley was a glacier. It was not the Cristallo glacier which we had crossed much higher up, but another and smaller glacier. Its black moraines showed quite clear against the snow. It was circled by ragged crests. There was no sign of a pass. There was also no sign of Mayne.
I was convinced then that he had led me off the proper track. This was borne out later when I had a chance to look at a map. The small glacier that I was looking down on to was the one under Monte Cristallino. After crossing the main Cristallo glacier, Mayne had swung hard to the right, away from the pass to Carbonin.
It was that freak change in the weather that decided my course of action, and incidentally saved my life. If it had remained thick, I should have gone on down the valley to the Cristallino glacier. And there I should have frittered away my energy until nightfall. And that would have been the end.
But that sudden lifting of the snow showed me that there was only one thing to do; retrace my steps to the main Cristallo glacier, cross the top of the pass under Popena and go down to Col da Varda the way we had come up.
It was a big decision to make, for it meant climbing more than a thousand feet. And if the snow came down again and I lost my way, I knew I should not have a hope. But at least I knew there was a way through and, even if it began to snow again, I might remember the contours of the ground sufficiently to find my way back. To go forward meant facing the unknown and possibly Mayne. And though I would have been glad to go down instead of up, I dared not risk meeting Mayne. He was too good a-skier. I should not have a chance.
So I turned and faced the long white slope down which I had come so easily and so fast. It took me two hours by my watch to climb that slope. I had to go slowly, with many halts, zig-zagging up in a series of gentle diagonals. It was past two by the time I reached the top and looked down on to a grey sea of cloud out of which distant peaks rose like islands. The snow had cleared from the mountain tops and lay like a dirty blanket on their slopes, filling the great valley fissures.
I will not record the details of that journey. There were times when I stood, my head bowed on my sticks, certain I could not go another yard. On these occasions, it was only by the greatest exercise of my will that I prevented my knees from folding under the weight of my body. All I desired was to relax and sleep. Once I was careless and fell. The muscles of my arms and legs barely had the strength to thrust me back on to the skis again. And, of course, the higher I climbed, the weaker I became, owing to the altitude.
The glacier seemed interminable. Twice, as I struggled across it, snow came down in a grey curtain from Monte Cristallo. But each time it drifted on, down into the valleys. The incline was gentle enough here. But, though my skis slipped easily through the powdery snow, it was a real effort to drag each ski forward. I used my sticks. But there seemed no strength in the thrust of my arms. The wind cut into my wet clothing and froze it, so that, despite my exertions, it became stiff and unyielding and as cold as the snow itself.
At length I reached the place where the smooth rock outcropped and took my skis off. Across my shoulders they were a dead weight. They cut into my shoulders and weighed me down so that I staggered rather than walked.
But at length I stood at the very top of the pass. The air was white — translucent with light as it had been when we had passed this point nearly five hours ago. The peak of Popena stood up, cold and black, and all around me was that world of angry-looking crests. The wind came up from Col da Varda with a violence that whipped the snow away from under my very feet. Everything was just as it had been before, except that Mayne was no longer with me.
I stumbled on from outcrop to outcrop until I stood on the rim of that white basin out of which we had climbed. I set my skis upended in a drift and stared unhappily at that frightening slope. The tracks we had made were still there, a line of hachures that rose to meet me out of the grey murk of snow that filled the lower reaches of the pass. The ski marks were faint and dusted with snow. But they were still visible, like a friendly signpost, marking the way back to warmth and safe sleep.
