Little Mother Up the Mörderberg

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Little Mother Up the Mortarberg by H. G. Wells. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Read by Christa Zeleski. Little Mother Up
the Mortarberg. I think I mentioned when I was telling

(00:21):
how I sailed my first airplane that I made a
kind of record at Arosa by falling down three separate
crevices on three successive days. That was before Little Mother
followed me out there. When she came, I could see
at a glance she was tired and jaded and worried,
and so instead of letting her fret about in the
hotel and get into a wearing tangle of gossip, I

(00:43):
packed her and two knapsacks up and started off on
a long, refreshing, easy going walk northward until a blister
on her foot stranded us at the Magnerub hotel on
the sneejuck. She was for going on blister or no blister.
I never met pluck like mothers in all my life,
but I said, no, this is a mountaineering in and
it suits me down to the ground, or if you

(01:06):
prefer it up to the sky. You shall sit in
the veranda by the telescope, and I'll prance about among
the peaks for a bit. Don't have accidents, she said,
can't promise that, little mother, I said, but I'll always
remember I'm your only son. So I pranced. I need
hardly say that. In a couple of days, I was
up loggerheads with all the mountaineers in that inn. They

(01:28):
couldn't stand me. They didn't like my neck with its strong,
fine Adam's apple, being mostly men with their heads jammed on,
and they didn't like the way I bore myself and
lifted my aviator's nose to the peaks. They didn't like
my being a vegetarian and the way I evidently enjoyed it,
And they didn't like the touch of color orange and

(01:50):
green in my rough serge suit. They were all of
the dingy school, the sort of men I called gentlemanly owls, shy,
correct minded creatures, mostly from Oxford, and a solemn over
their climbing as a cat frying eggs sage. They were
great head nodds, and I wouldn't venture to do a
thing like Thatdders. They always did what the books and

(02:11):
guides advised, and they clasped themselves by their seasons. One
was in his ninth season, another in his tenth, and
so on. I was a novice and had to sit
with my mouth open for bits of humble pie. My
style that rather, I would sit in the smoking room,
sucking away at a pipe full of hygienic herb tobacco.

(02:32):
They said it smelt like burning garden rubbish, and waiting
to put my spoke in and let a little light
into their minds. They set aside their natural reticence all
together in their efforts to show how much they didn't
like me. You chaps take these blessed mountains too seriously,
I said, their larks, and you've got to lark with them.
They just slewed their eyes round at me. I don't

(02:54):
find the solemn joy in fussing. You do. The old
style mountaineers went up with elpinstocks and ladders and light hearts.
That's my idea of mountaineering. It isn't ours, said one
red boiled hero of the peaks, all blisters and peeling skin,
And he said it with an air of crushing me.
It's the right idea, I said, serenely, and puffed at

(03:15):
my herb tobacco. When you've had a bit of experience,
you'll know better, said another, an oldish young man with
a small gray beard. Experience never taught me anything, I said.
Apparently not, said some one, and left me one down
and me to play. I kept perfectly tranquil. I mean
to do the Morderberg before I go down, I said, quietly,

(03:36):
and produced a sensation. When are you going down? Week?
Or so? I answered, unperturbed. It's not the climb a
man ought to attempt in his first year, said the
pealing gentleman. You particularly ought not to try it, said another.
No guide, we'll go with you, foolhardy idea mere bragg
like to see him do it. I just let them

(03:57):
boil for a bit, and when they were back to
the I dropped in pensively with very likely, I'll take
that little mother of mine. She's small, bless her, but
she's as hard as nails. But they saw they were
being drawn by my ill concealed smile, and this time
they contented themselves with a few grunts and grunt like remarks,
and then broke up into little conversations in undertones that

(04:20):
pointedly excluded me. It had the effect of hardening my purpose.
I'm a stiff man when I'm put on my metal.
And I determined that the little mother should go up
to Mordeberg, where half these solemn experts hadn't been, even
if I had to be killed or orphaned in the attempt.
So I spoke to her about it. The next day.
She was in a deck chair on the veranda, wrapped

(04:41):
up in rugs and looking at the peaks comphy, I said, very,
she said, getting rested. It's so nice. I strolled to
the rail of the veranda. See that peak there, mummy,
She nodded happily, with eyes half shut. That's the martar Berg.
You and me have gone to be up there the
day after time tomorrow. Her eyes opened a bit. Wouldn't

(05:03):
it be rather a climb, dearest, she said. I'll manage that,
all right, I said, and she smiled consentingly and closed
her eyes. So long as you manage it, she said.
I went down the valley that afternoon to Dakstam to
get gear and guides and porters, and I spent the
next day in glacier and rock practice above the hotel.
That didn't add to my popularity. I made two little slips.

(05:26):
One took me down at crevice. I've an extraordinary knack
of going down Crevis's, and a party of three which
was starting for the Kinderspits, spent an hour and a
half fishing me out. And the other led to my
dropping my ice axe on a little string of people
going for the Humpye Glacier. It didn't go within thirty
inches of anyone, but you might have thought from the

(05:46):
row they made that I had knocked out the collective
brains of the party. Quite frightful language they used, and
three ladies with them too. The next day there was
something very like an organized attempt to prevent our start.
They brought out the landlord, the remonstrated with mother. They
did their best to blacken the character of my two guides.
The landlord's brother had a first class row with them

(06:07):
two years ago. He said they lost their hair no
particular reason. I said, why you shouldn't keep yours on?
Is it? That settled him? He wasn't up to a
polyglot pun and it stuck in his mind like a
fishbone in the throat. Then the pealing gentleman came along
and tried to overhaul our equipment. Have you got this
it was? And have you got that? Two things, I said,

(06:29):
looking at his nose pretty hard. We haven't forgotten one's
blue veils and the other vasilene. I've still a bright
little memory of the start. There was the pass a
couple of hundred feet or so below the hotel, and
the hotel all name and windows, standing out in a
great desolate, rocky place against the lumpy masses of streaky
green rock, flecked here and there with patches of snow

(06:50):
and dark shelves of rhododendron, and rising perhaps a thousand
feet towards the western spur of the massif our path
ran before us, meandering among the bold down to stepping
stones over a rivulet, and then upward on the other
side of the stream towards the Manganaroo Glacier, where we
had to go up the rocks to the left, and
then across the ice wall to shelves on the precipitous

(07:12):
face on the west side. It was dawn, the sun
still had to rise, and everything looked very cold and
blue and vast about us. Everyone in the hotel had
turned out to bear a hand in the row. Some
of the de Abbelaz were disgraceful, and now they stood
in a silent group watching us recede. The last word

(07:32):
I caught was they'll have to come back. We'll come back,
all right, I answered, never fear. And so we went
our way, cool and deliberate, over the stream, and up
and up towards the steep snowfields and icy shoulder of
the Mortarberg. I remember that we went in absolute silence
for a time, and then how suddenly the landscape gladdened

(07:53):
with sunrise, and in an instant, as if speech had thawed,
all our tongues were babbling. I had won or two
things in the baggage that I hadn't cared for the
people at the inn to see. And I made no
effort to explain why I had five porters with the
load of two and a half. But when we came
to the ice fall, I showed my hand a little
and un slung a stout twine hammot for the mater.

(08:15):
We put her in this with a rug round her,
and sewed her in with a few stitches. Then we
roped up in line with me last but one and
a guide front and rear, and Mummy in the middle
carried by two of the porters. I stuck my alpinstock
through two holes I had made in the shoulders of
my jacket. Under my rucksack tea shaped to my body,
so that when I went down to crevass as I

(08:36):
did ever and again, I just stuck in its jaws
and came up easy as the rope grew taut. And so,
except for one or two bumps that made the maider chuckle,
we got over without misadventure. Then came the rock climb
on the other side, requiring much judgment. We had to
get from ledge to ledge as opportunity offered, and here
the little mother was a perfect godsend. We unpacked her

(08:58):
after we had slung her over the big fisher I
forget what you call it, that always comes between glacier
and rock. And whenever we came to a bit of
ledge within eight feet of the one we were working along,
the two guides took her and slung her up, she
being so light, and then she was able to give
a foot for the next man to hold by and
hoist himself. She said we were all pulling her leg,

(09:19):
and that made her and me laugh so much that
the whole party had to wait for us. It was
pretty tiring altogether doing that bit of a climb. Two
hours we had of it before we got to the
loose masses of rock at the top of the Euret.
It's worse going down, said the elder guide. I looked
back for the first time, and I confess it did
make me feel a bit giddy. There was the glacier

(09:40):
looking quite petty with the black gash between itself and
the rocks. For a time, it was pretty fair going
up the rocky edge of the Euret, and nothing happened
of any importance, except that one of the porters took
to grousing because he was hit on the shin by
a stone. I dislodged fortunes of war, I said, But
he didn't seem to see it, and I just missed

(10:00):
him with a second. He broke out into a long
whining discourse in what I suppose he thought was German.
I couldn't make hand or tail of it. He says,
you might have killed him, said the little mother. They say,
I quoted what they say. Let them say I was
for stopping and filling him up with a feed. But
the elder guide wouldn't have it. We had already lost time,

(10:21):
he said, and the traverse round the other face of
the mountain would be more and more subject to avalanches
as the sun got up, so we went on. As
we went round the corner to the other face, I
turned towards the hotel. It was the meanest little oblong
spot by now, and made a derisive gesture or so
for the benefit of anyone at the telescope. We did

(10:41):
get one rock avalanche that reduced the hindmost guide to
audible prayer, but nothing hit us except a few bits
of snow. The rest of the fall was a couple
of yards and more out from us. We were on
rock just then and overhung before and afterwards we were
edging along steps in an ice slope cut by the
foremost guide and touched up by the The avalanche was

(11:02):
much more impressive before it came in sight, banging and
thundering overhead, and it made a tremendous uproar in the
blue deeps beneath, But in actual transit it seemed a
mean show, mostly of stones smaller than I am. All right,
said the guide, toned up. I answered, I suppose it
is safe, dear, asked the little mother, safe as Trafalgar Square,

(11:24):
I said, hop along, mummikins, which she did with remarkable agility.
The traverse took us on to old Snow at last,
and here we could rest for lunch, and pretty glad
we were both of lunch and rest. But here the
trouble with the guides and porters thickened. They were already
a little ruffled about my animating way with loose rocks,

(11:44):
and now they kicked up a tremendous shindy because instead
of the customary brandy we had brought non alcoholic ginger cordial.
Would they even try it? Not a bit of it.
It was a queer little dispute high up in that
rarefied air about food valley and the advantages of making
sandwiches with nutter. They were an odd lot of men,

(12:06):
invincibly set upon a vitiated and vitiating dietary. They wanted meat,
they wanted alcohol, they wanted narcotics to smoke. You might
have thought that men like these, living in almost direct
contact with nature, would have liked nature foods such as plasmin, protisee, plobose, digestine,
and so forth. Not them. They just craved for corruption.

(12:29):
When I spoke of drinking pure water. One of the
porters spat in a marked symbolic manner over the precipice.
From that point onward, discontent prevailed. We started again about
half past eleven, after a vain attempt on the part
of the head guide to induce us to turn back.
We had now come to what is generally the most
difficult part of the Mordeberg ascent, the edge that leads

(12:52):
up to the snow field below the crest. But here
we came suddenly into a draft of warm air blowing
from the southwest, and everything the guide said was unusual.
Usually the edge is a sheet of ice over rock.
To day it was wet and soft, and one could
kick steps in it and get one's toes into the
rock with the utmost care. This is where hart Almisson's

(13:13):
party fell, said one of the porters. After we'd committed
ourselves to the edge for ten minutes or so, some
people could fall out of a four post bed. I said,
it'll freeze hard again before we come back, said the
second guide, And us with nothing but verdamic ginger inside
of us. You keep your rope hot, said I. A
friendly ledge came to the help of mother in the

(13:34):
nick of time, just as she was beginning to tire,
and we sewed her up all but the feet in
her hammock again and roped her carefully. She bumped a bit,
and at times she was just hanging over immensity and
rotating slowly, with everybody else holding on like grim death.
My dear, she said, the first time this happened. Is
it right for me to be doing this? Quite right,

(13:57):
I said, But if you can get a foothold presently again,
it's rather better style. You're sure there's no danger, dear,
not a scrap, and I don't fatigue you. You're a stimulant.
The view, she said, is certainly becoming very beautiful. But
presently the view blotted itself out, and we were in

(14:17):
clouds and a thin drift of almost thawing snowflakes. We
reached the upper snowfield about half past one, and the
snow was extraordinarily soft. The elder guide went in up
to his armpits frog it, I said, and spread myself
out flat into sort of swimming attitude. So we bored
our way up to the crest, and along it we

(14:37):
went in little spurts, and then we stopped for breath,
and we dragged the little mother after us in her
hammock bag. Sometimes the snow was so good we fairly
skimmed the surface. Sometimes it was so rotten we plunged
right into it and splashed about. I went too near
the snow cornice once and it broke open under me,
But the rope saved me, and we reached the summit

(14:58):
about three o'clock without further misas adventure. The summit was
just bare rock, with the usual cairn and pole, nothing
to make a fuss about. The drift of snow and
cloud Whisp had passed. The sun was blazing hot overhead,
and we seemed to be surveying all Switzerland. The megan
Rube Hotel was at our toes, hidden so to speak,
by our chins. We squatted about the cairn, and the

(15:21):
guides and porters were reduced to ginger and vegetarian ham sandwiches.
I caught and scratched an inscription saying I had climbed
on simple food and claiming a record seen from the summit.
The snow fields on the northeast side of the mountain
looked extremely attractive, and I asked the head guide why
that way up wasn't used, he said something in his
peculiar German about precipices. So far our ascent had been

(15:45):
a fairly correct ascent in rather slow time. It was
in the descent that the strain in me of almost
unpremeditated originality had play. I wouldn't have the rope returning
across the upper snow field because mother's feet and hands
were cold, and I wanted her to jump about a bit.
And before I could do anything to prevent it, she
had slipped, tried to get up by rolling over down

(16:07):
the slope instead of up as she ought to have done,
and was leading the way, rolling over and over and
over down towards the guide's blessed precipices above the lower
snow field. I didn't lose an instant in flinging myself
after her axe up ingulsating attitude. I'm not clear what
I meant to do, but I fancy the idea was

(16:28):
to get in front of her and put on the brake.
I did not succeed anyhow. In twenty seconds I had
slipped and was sitting down and going down out of
my own control altogether. Now, most great discoveries are the
result of accident, and I maintained that in that instant,
Mother and I discovered two distinct and novel ways of
coming down a mountain. It is necessary that there should

(16:49):
be first a snow slope above with a layer of
softish rotten snow on the top of ice. Then a
precipice with a snow covered talus, sloping steeply at first,
and then less steeply, then more snow slopes and precipices
according to taste, ending in a snow field or a
not too greatly fissured glacier or a reasonable not too

(17:10):
rocky slope. Then it all becomes as easy as shooting
the shoots. Mother hit on the sideways method. She rolled
with the snow in the adhesive state it had got into.
She had made the jolliest little snowball of herself in
half a minute, and the nucleus of as clean and
abundant as snow avalanche as anyone could wish. There was

(17:30):
plenty of snow going in front of her. And that's
the very essence of both our methods. You must fall
on your snow, not your snow on you, or it
smashes you. And you mustn't mix yourself up with the
loose stones. I, on the other hand, went down feet first,
and rather like a snowplow, slower than she did, and
if perhaps with less charm, with more dignity also I

(17:53):
saw more. But it was certainly a tremendous rush, and
I gave a sort of dulp when Mummy bumped over
the edge into the empty air and vanished. It was
like a toboggan ride gone mad down the slope until
I took off from the edge of the precipice, and
then it was like a dream. I'd always thought falling
must be horrible. It wasn't in the slightest degree. I

(18:16):
might have hung with my clouds and lumps of snow
about me for weeks, so great was my serenity. I
had an impression then that I was as good as killed,
and that it didn't matter. I wasn't afraid, that's nothing,
but I wasn't a bit uncomfortable. Whack we'd hit something,
and I expected to be flying to bits right and left,

(18:37):
But we'd only got on to the snow slope below,
at so steep an angle that it was merely breaking
the fall down we went again. I didn't see much
of the view after that, because the snow was all
round and over my head. But I kept feet foremost
and in a kind of sitting posture. And then I slowed,
and then I quickened again, and bumped rather, and then harder,

(18:58):
and bumped, and then bumped again, and came to rest.
This time I was altogether buried in snow, and twisted sideways,
with a lot of heavy snow on my right shoulder.
I sat for a bit, enjoying the stillness, and then
I wondered what had become of Mother, and set myself
to get out of the snow about me. It wasn't
so easy as you might think. The stuff was all

(19:18):
in lumps and spaces, like a gigantic sponge, and I
lost my temper and struggled and swore a great deal,
But at last I managed it. I crawled out and
found myself on the edge of heaped masses of snow,
quite close to the upper part of the Meganru glacier,
and far away, right up the glacier and near the
other side, was a little thing like a black beetle,

(19:40):
struggling in the heart of an immense split ball of snow.
I put my hands to my mouth and let out
with my version of the yodel, and presently I saw
her waving her hand. It took me nearly twenty minutes
to get to her. I knew my weakness, and I
was very careful of every crevice I came near. When
I got up to her, her face was a anxious

(20:01):
What have you done with the guides, she asked, They've
got too much to carry. I said, they're coming down
another way. Did you like it? Not very much, dear,
she said, But I dare say I shall get used
to these things. Which way do we go? Now? I
decided we'd find a snowbridge across the berg Shrund. That's

(20:21):
the word I forgot just now, And so get on
to the rocks on the east side of the glacier.
And after that we had an uneventful going right down
to the hotel. Our return evote such a strain of
hostility and envy as I have never met before or since.
First they tried to make out we'd never been to
the top at all, but Mother's little proud voice settled

(20:42):
that sort of insult. And besides, there was the evidence
of the guides and the porters following us down when
they asked about the guides. They're following your methods, I said,
and I suppose they'll get back here tomorrow morning. Someone
that didn't please them, I claimed a record. They said
my methods were illegitimate. If I see fit, I said,

(21:03):
to use an avalanche to get back by. What's that
to you? You tell me me and mother can't do
the confounded mountain anyhow, And when we do, you want
to invent a lot of rules to disqualify us, You'll say,
next one mustn't clissade. I've made a record, and you
know I've made a record, and you're about as sour
as you can be. The fact of it is, you

(21:26):
chaps don't know your own silly business. Here's a good
quick way of coming down a mountain, and you ought
to know about it. The chance that both of you
are not killed was one in a thousand. Nonsense. It's
the proper way to come down for any one who
hasn't a hide bound mind. You chaps ought to practice
falling great heights in snow. It's perfectly easy and perfectly safe,

(21:49):
if only you know how to set about it. Look here,
young man, said the oldest young man with a little
gray beard, you don't seem to understand that you and
that lady have been saved by a kind of miracle theory.
I interrupted. I'm surprised you fellows ever come to Switzerland.
If I were your kind, I'd just invent theoretical mountains

(22:09):
and play for points. However, you're tired, little mummy. It's
time you had some nice, warm soup and tucked yourself
up in bed. I shan't let you get up for
six and thirty hours, but it's queer how people detest
a little originality and of little mother up the Morgarberg