Their ledge was so narrow that they had to sit hip to hip, their legs dangling out over the void. The climb had been fast and magnificent, and the view was breathtaking, so, when Anderl produced a bar of hard chocolate from his coat pocket and shared it with Jonathan, they felt exhilarated and contented, munching away wordlessly.
Jonathan could not ignore the sound that surrounded them as totally as silence. For the last hour, as they approached the mouth of the chute on a line a little to the right of it, the roar of rushing water had increased in volume. He imagined, although he could not see from his perch, that the chute was a cataract of melt water. He had climbed up through waterfalls like this before (the Ice Hose over on the normal route was no mean example) but his experience had not decreased his respect for the objective danger.
He glanced over at Anderl to see if his worry was shared, but the blissful, almost vacant smile on the Austrian's face was evidence that he was in his element, full of contentment. Some men are native to the mountain and, while they are on rock, the valley does not exist, save as the focus point for that patient and persistent gravity against which they hold out. Jonathan did not share Anderl's contented insouciance. So long as he had been climbing, the world had narrowed to the rope, the rock, the purchase, and body rhythms. But now, with a safe stance and time to reflect, lowland troubles returned to him.
For instance, it could be Anderl. Anderl could be the target. And a hunter in his own right now. At least half a dozen times in the past three hours, Anderl had only to cut the rope and give a slight tug, and Jonathan would no longer be a threat. The fact that he had not done so in no way excluded him as a possibility. They were too close to the base; there would be evidence, and a cut rope looks very different from a frayed rope. And too, they were probably being watched at every moment. From far down there, from the toy terrace of the miniature hotel there were probably half a score of eyes empowered by convex glass to observe them.
Jonathan decided he could rest easy. If it happened, it would be higher up, up where the distance made them little dots, barely distinguishable to the most powerful glass. Perhaps when cloud and mist descended to conceal them altogether. Up where the body and the severed rope would not be found for months, even years.
"What are you frowning about?" Anderl asked.
Jonathan laughed. "Morbid thoughts. About falling."
"I never think about falling. What's the use? If a fall wants to happen, it will happen without my thinking about it. I think about climbing. That requires thinking." He punctuated this simple philosophy by pushing the last of the chocolate into his mouth.
This was the longest speech Jonathan had ever heard Anderl make. Clearly, here was a man who came to full life only on the mountain.
First Karl's hand, then his head came into view over the outcropping of rock below, and soon he was in a stance just under theirs, steadily taking in the line that led down to Jean-Paul until he too had hoisted himself over the ridge, red-faced but triumphant. The new arrivals found a slim ledge for themselves, banged in protecting iron, and rested.
"What do you think of my route now, Herr Doctor?" Karl shouted up.
"So far so good." Jonathan thought of the roaring melt water above them.
"I knew it would be!"
Jean-Paul drew lustily at his water bottle, then rested out against the rope that was connected to his piton by a snap ring. "I had no idea that you gentlemen intended to run up the hill! Have pity on my age!" He laughed hastily, lest anyone imagine he was not joking.
"You will have time to rest now," Karl said. "We shall be here for at least an hour."
"An hour!" Jean-Paul protested. "We have to sit here for an hour?"
"We shall rest and have a little breakfast. It's too early to climb up through the chute."
Jonathan agreed with Karl. Although a climber on the Eiger must expect to be the target for fairly regular sniping by rock and ice fall, there is no sense in facing the veritable fusillade with which the mountain covers its flanks in midmorning. Stones and mountain rubble that are frozen into place through the night are released by the melting touch of morning sun and come arcing, bouncing, and crashing down from the vast collection trough of the White Spider, directly, although distantly, above them. The normal line of ascent is well to the west of this natural line of fire.
"We shall allow the mountain to dump out her morning garbage before we try the chute," Karl announced. "Meanwhile, let us enjoy the scenery and have a bite to eat. Yes?"
Jonathan read in Karl's artificial cheer that he, too, was affected by the roar of water rushing down the chute, but it was equally obvious that he would not be receptive to criticism or advice.
Nevertheless: "Sounds like we have a wet time ahead of us, Karl."
"Surely, Herr Doctor, you have no objection to a morning shower."
"It's going to take a lot out of us, even if it is a go."
"Yes. Mountain climbing is demanding."
"Snot."
"What?"
"Nothing."
Jean-Paul took another drink of water then passed the plastic canteen over to Karl, who returned it, declining to drink. After he had struggled the bottle into his pack, Jean-Paul looked out over the valley with awe and appreciation. "Beautiful, isn't it. Really beautiful. Anna is probably watching us through a telescope at this very moment."
"Probably," Jonathan said, doubting it.
"We'll take the chute in a rope of four," Karl said. "I shall lead: Anderl will bring up the rear."
Jonathan attended again to the sound of the water. "This route would be easier in winter when there is less melt."
Anderl laughed. "Do you suggest we wait?"
Ben heard a bustle of excited talk on the terrace beneath his window, and a distinctly Texan voice epitomized the multi-lingual dirge of complaint.
"Shee-it! How about that? I use my tickets up watching them sit on the rock, then as soon as my time's over, they start doing something. Hey, Floyd? How much was that in real money?"
Ben ran down from his room and into the meadow, well away from the hotel and the Eiger Birds. It took him ten minutes to set up his telescope. From the first, this long diagonal chute of Karl's had worried him more than any other pitch on the climb. The distant face sharpened into focus, then blurred past it, then emerged clear in the eyepiece again. He began at the bottom of the chute and panned up and right, following the dark scar up the face. There was a fuzz of spray at the outlet of the chute that told him it must be a veritable river of rushing melt water, and he knew the climbers would have to fight their way upstream through it, the flow tugging them away from their holds, all the while exposed to the hazards of rock fall that rattled through this natural channel. His palms were clammy by the time he picked up the lowest climber. Yellow jacket: that would be Anderl. And up the thin spider thread of rope to a white jacket: Jean-Paul. Above him was the pale blue windbreaker of Jonathan. Karl was out of sight behind a fold of rock. They were moving erratically and very slowly. That gush of water and ice fragments must be hell, Ben thought. Why don't they break off? Then he realized that they could not retreat. Once committed in a string of four to pressing up through the weight of rushing water they had to go on. The slightest easing off, the slightest cooperation with the downward flow, and they stood a good chance of tumbling down through the channel and arcing out through the fuzz of spray into the void.