He saw Anderl move cautiously along his ledge to attend to Jean-Paul, who had not yet stirred. A little later Anderl set to the task of brewing tea on the spirit stove, which he placed for balance against Jean-Paul's leg.
Jonathan looked around. The warmth of the foehn had melted the surface snow, and it had frozen again with the arrival of the cold front. An inch of ice crusted the snow, slippery and sharp, but not strong enough to bear a man's weight. The rocks were glazed with a coat of frozen melt water, impossible to cling to, but the crust was too thin to take an ice piton. In the growing light, he assessed the surface conditions. They were the most treacherous possible.
Karl moved. He had not slept, but like Anderl and Jonathan he had been deep in a protective cocoon of semiconsciousness. Pulling himself out of it, he went smoothly and professionally through the task of checking the pitons that supported him and Jonathan, then he exercised isometrically to return circulation to his hands and feet, after which he began the simple but laborious job of getting food from his kit—frozen chocolate and dried meat. All through this he did not speak. He was humbled and visibly shaken by the experiences of the night. He was no longer a leader.
Anderl twisted against the rope holding him into his nook and stretched up to offer Jonathan a cup of tepid tea. "Jean-Paul..."
Jonathan drank it down in one avaricous draught. "What about him?" He passed the metal cup back down and licked the place where his lip had adhered to it and torn.
"He is dead." Anderl refilled the cup and offered it up to Karl. "Must have gone during the storm," he added quietly.
Karl received the tea and held it between his palms as he stared down at the rumpley and ice-caked form that had been Jean-Paul.
"Drink it," Jonathan ordered, but Karl did not move. He breathed orally in short, shallow breaths over the top of the cup, and the puffs of vapor mixed with the steam rising off the tea.
"How do you know he is dead?" Karl asked in an unnaturally loud, monotonic voice.
"I looked at him," Anderl said as he refilled the small pot with ice chips.
"You saw he was dead! And you set about making a cup of tea!"
Anderl shrugged. He did not bother to look up from his work.
"Drink the tea," Jonathan repeated. "Or pass it over here and let me have it before it gets cold."
Karl gave him a look saturated with disgust, but he drank the tea.
"He had a concussion," Anderl said. "The storm was too much. The man inside could not keep the man outside from dying."
For the next hour, they swallowed what food they could, exercised isometrically to fight the cold, and placated their endless thirsts with cup after cup of tea and bouillon. It was impossible to drink enough to satisfy themselves, but there came a time when they must move on, so Anderl drank off the last of the melted ice and replaced the pot and collapsible stove in his pack.
When Jonathan outlined his proposal for action, Karl did not resist the change in leadership. He had lost the desire to make decisions. Again and again his attention strayed and his eyes fixed on the dead man beneath him. His mountain experience had not included death.
Jonathan surveyed the situation in a few words. Both the rock and the snow were coated over with a crust of ice that made climbing up out of the question.
A frigid high, such as the one then punishing them with cold could last for days, even weeks. They could not hole up where they were. They must retreat.
To return down Karl's chute was out of the question. It would be iced over. Jonathan proposed that they try to get down to a point just above the Eiger-wand Station Window. It was just possible that they might be able to rope down from there, despite the beetling overhang. Ben, waiting and watching them from the ground, would realize their intention, and he would be waiting with help at the Window.
As he spoke, Jonathan read in Anderl's face that he had no great faith in their chances of roping down from above the Station Window, but he did not object, realizing that for reasons of morale, if nothing else, they had to move out. They must not stay there and face the risk of freezing to death in bivouac as, years before, Sedlmayer and Mehringer had done not a hundred meters above them.
Jonathan organized the rope. He would lead, slowly cutting big, tublike steps in the crusted snow. Karl would be next on the rope. A second, independent line would suspend Jean-Paul's body between them. In this way Karl could belay and protect Jonathan without the additional drag of Jean-Paul, then, when they were both in established stances, they could maneuver the load down, Jonathan guiding it away from snags, Karl holding back against gravity. As the strongest in the party, Anderl would be last on the rope, always seeking a protected stance in case a slip suddenly gave him the weight of all three.
Although the dangers of the descent were multiplied by bringing Jean-Paul with them, no one thought of leaving him behind. It was mountain tradition to bring your dead with you. And no one wanted to please the Eiger Birds by leaving a grisly memento on the face that would tingle and delight them at their telescopes for weeks or months until a rescue team could retrieve it.
As they packed up and tied Jean-Paul into the sleeping bag that would act as a canvas sled, Karl grumbled halfheartedly against the bad luck that had kept them from bagging the mountain. Anderl did not mind retreating. With surface conditions like these, it was equally difficult to move in either direction, and for him the challenge of climbing was the point of it all.
Watching the two men at their preparations, Jonathan knew he had nothing to fear from his sanction target, whoever it was. If they were to get down alive, they would have to cooperate with every fiber of their combined skill and strength. The matter would be settled in the valley, if they reached the flat land intact. In fact, the whole matter of his SS assignment had the unreal qualities of a fantastic operetta, viewed in terms of the grim presence of the mountain.
The descent was torturously slow. The frozen crust of the snow was such that at one step the surface was so hard the crampons would take no bite, but at the next the leg would break through to the softer snow below and balance would be lost. The snow-field clung to the face at an angle of 50°, and Jonathan had to lean out and down from the edge of each big step to chop out the next with his ice axe. He could not be content with those stylish toe steps that can be formed with two skillful swings of the axe; he had to hack out vast tubs, big enough to hold him as he leaned out for the next, and big enough to allow Anderl to take a belaying stance at each step.
The routine was complicated and expensive of energy. Jonathan moved down alone for one rope length, belayed from above by Karl who, in turn, was held by Anderl. Then he cut out an especially broad stance from the protection of which he carefully guided Jean-Paul's body down to him as Karl let the burden slip bit by bit, always fighting its tendency to tear itself from his grip and fly down the face carrying all of them with it. When the canvas bundle reached Jonathan, he secured it as best he could, driving Jean-Paul's ice axe into the crust and using it as a tie-off. Then Karl came down to join him, moving much more quickly down the big steps. The third phase of the pattern was the most dangerous. Anderl had to move down half the distance to them, where he could jam himself into one of the better steps and set his body to protect them through the next repetition of the cycle. Anderl moved essentially without protection, save for the "psychological rope" that regularly slackened between him and Karl. Any slip might knock his fellow climbers out of their step or, even should his line of fall miss them, they would have very little chance of withstanding the shock of a fall twice the length of the rope. Anderl knew his responsibility and moved with great care, although he continually called down to them cheerfully, grousing about the pace or the weather or any other trivial matter that came to mind.