August 25, 2025 • 29 mins
A horror and fantasy anthology series that delves into the eerie and the unknown, offering stories that unsettle and provoke thought. Its minimalist production enhances the chilling narratives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quiet Please, Quiet Please.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
The mutual broadcast Sea says some prevents, Quiet Please, which
is written directed by Willis Cooper and with teachers Ms
champells Quiet Please for the night is called.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
How Beautiful upon the Mountains.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I don't say that Mount Everest will never be successfully climbed.
I don't say that at all. What I do say, however,
is that no one will ever successfully climb Everest and
come back. Yes, I know they said that about the
matter Horn, and Edward Whimper climbed it. Whimper was the
man who first stated what many mountain climbers insists as
a creed of their arduous calling. You don't know that, well.
(01:12):
It was many years ago, after we've made the first
successful ascent of the matter Horn. Someone asked him why
he could not see a mountain without wanting to climb it.
His reply was simple, and it's become historic because it's there,
he said, And mountain climbers the world over will solemnly
assure you that that.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Is their reason too. I beg to differ.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I think there's another reason, a compouchion in the hearts
of certain brave men and.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Women that has existed since the beginnings of.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Time, a compulsion that they very probably never realize. Is
there a compolch that is revealed only to a rare
few of those that lift up their.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Eyes to the hills.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I think it is because the mountains have always in
the earthly abiding place of divinity. I think it's because
certain mortals are consumed by a subconscious cosmic curiosity to
find the abode of the gods, my urge to seek
in an overpowering hope to find naked divinity at last
mconic on the roof of the world. But these divinities
(02:22):
do not welcome human intrusion. Men have walked upon the
peak of Mount Olympus, where Zeus and Era, Pallas, Athena and.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Aphrodite dwelf, and have not found them.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Cathalcaadl has departed from the high peak of the Mexican Cordiers,
for men have vainly sought him there. And though the
specter of the Bakan sometimes appears today, the traveler knows
it to be only the magnified image of himself. But
still the ancient secret compulchion exists, and men climb mountains
to cause of it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
In all the recorded history of the world, no known
man has ever conquered Everest. Well.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
They speak of unclimbable walls, of the lethargy that comes
from lack of oxygen. They speak of insufferable cold, of
howling winds and sudden storms, of impassable crevasses, and monstrous avalanches.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And these things are true. I've experienced them myself.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
But there are avalanches in crevasses, and winds, and snow
and coal on other mountains, and men have climbed them.
Could it be that the gods are tired of retreating
and are set a barrier on this, their last refuge.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Against the men of the plains.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No man has ever looked upon the summit of Everest,
more than five miles above the level of.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
The distant Sea.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Many men have flown near Everest, hoping for a glance
at the highest spot on Earth, but Everest has evaded them.
In the motion picture that the Marcuts of Tridesdale made
more than fifteen years ago, when he became the first
man to fly over the mountain, they eternal. The plume
of Everest reached out and covered the peak. You haven't
(04:06):
heard of that, Well, if you ever have an opportunity
to see those pictures go.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Perhaps what you see will help convict you to my
way of thinking.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Ceaselessly, day in and day out, in sunshining and storm,
A great plume of ice crystals and powdered snows streams
out from the crest of the mountain, a terrible white
banner that can instantly become a great whip to lash
down at the mountain's own slength, as if to drive
off some intruder twiling empty, incredible slopes.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
To the Virgin's sun. Yes, I have seen that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Others have seen it too. Irvine and Leigh Mallory saw it.
The two men who came closest to the top, and
the others of their party saw the plume snatch at
them as they struggled upward, and when it lifted again,
they had disappeared. No man has seen them since. They
did find the ice acts Lee Mallory carried. They found
(05:06):
it far down the slopes from where the plume snatched
the two men away, and it was curiously bent and
twisted the steady high tension speeler.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I met John Shanders.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
When I was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford's. We became
great friends who are mutual interest in mountain finding. I
wish you could have seen John Shanders standing before the
mantel in my rooms at Oxford on a bleak, rainy
day in early autumn. I've fed to the teeth here
with this place. Never chuck it and go somewhere, tin
am on and nobody else's time.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, what about little boy?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Well tevers by choice, m you got fifty thousand pounds.
I could get it, all right, let's go, I mean it,
I could get it where Never mind? Well, now, look,
would you come?
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Were you serious? I'm serious? Oh I wish you were.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I'll tell you who I am, because you know it'll
probably be the end of it. But I haven't bad
way and drying up by bit Enoxford.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Wouldn't you I would? Yes?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Then I have no sense a shilling. I mean you
won't need it. I've got plenty. Well why Everest, look, friends,
old boy. Ever since I was a child, I've had
won only one ambition to see the top of Everest.
And I'm going to come along, dude, Why nothing else?
(06:45):
That's not just a casual way you put it. Let's
go see the top of Everest. You and I half
the world away five miles straight up. Dozens of menut
died and disappeared trying it. Let's go see the top
of Everest.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
I'm not going to do it one day, you know, Yes,
that's true. Well shall we be the one?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And on that casual basis, the Shandross Brant Mount Everest
Expedition began.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
We left Oxford, We left.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
England after purchasing thousands of pounds worth of equipments hence
windproof clothing, weapons and photographic equipment, dehydrated foods, pecan dice axes,
cases of brandy, miscellaneous equipment by the hundredweight. And at
last we were in Darjeeline, talking to men who knew
they were for the world, learning the names of obscure
villages where we might find guides.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
To lead us to the upper reaches of the Great
White Mountains.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And a day came when our preparations were completed, when
a great deal of money spent, and we set out
a motor cars to the final.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Take off spot where no motor.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Could go, and only the feel of men had walked before.
The native guides, as hard bit of a crew as
ever I saw, gathered around their tiny fires.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
We sat before our little.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Tents and smoked and drank hot sweet tea against.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
The morning.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Glad Ah, Brent, Yes, and we not going to be
pleasantle Oh, it won't be too bad for a while
till we get up really high.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
No, no, no, worse than some places I've been. I
won know what's up there.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Can't tell much from the photograph, can wear dof dice
and snow and.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Rock cramped, plenty of it quite you know.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I was wondering something today, what I was wondering if
any of these native chaps have been up there front top.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yes, you liked them, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
To be laughing at the silly white men coming halfway
around the world to be the first man on top.
But all the time old Bungo and his never will
be up there to do time.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Good joke.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
I doubt it, Champus, So do I really.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
But you know, hey, cheps not, I haven't seen any
too enthusiastic about going up.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
None of you go by the pay they'd insisted on.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Well, you know, Everest is some kind of a god,
is something to them?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Hmm is to me too?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
What?
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Why?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I know it sounds toa But maybe we're being sacriligious
or something. Maybe nobody's supposed to climb up there.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Not getting cold feet.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I am, oh, no, not at all, the quite warm
bankm oh, all of your American flag.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
No, I've not got the window, if that's.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
What you mean.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
But superstition, I was thinking. I mean, I wonder what
is waiting for us for us up there, oh, slow
and ice thinner.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Besides that, what do you mean. I'm remembering what that chap.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Wrote about Vine and Lee Mallory and the plume up there.
Down it came, he said, like a stension thing, like
the hand of a god, and swept them away before
my very eyes. Now, look, you begin to worry about
giants and things up there, you'd better stay here.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Oh I'm not worried, Brent.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I'm just curing somehow. I'm excited, like a chap who's
waiting to meet his bride at the church and his
wedding day. I say that's being a bit idiotic, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Look at her up there, cold and white.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
And beautiful, not caring about us at all. We're coming
up after you, old girl, if we die in the attent. Then,
as I lay there in the firelight, listening to the
quiet music that came from the shadowy groups of guides
and barriers. The strange thought forms in my mind. Shouldn't
(11:01):
John Chandos have said? And and die in the attempt?
And the sound of the little flute went on in
the cold twilight, and presently we went to our tents
and slept, and I dreamed of a woman's face, a
bride's face, and a high mountain, and somehow the face
(11:23):
was the mountain itself, and the mountain was a face,
and it was cold, icy cold. And the voice said
in my ear something that I dimly remembered from my
Bible from Isaia, how beautiful upon the mountain. And the
music of the flute dissolved, and there were great crashing cords,
(11:48):
and I awoke trembling in the blackness of a frigid morning.
I need not tell you of the next few weeks
of the ascent of the camp of twenty three thousand feet,
hardly a mile below the Summits.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
If you have climbed mountains, you will know it to
be an endless nightmare.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Of traversing great rocky slopes, of scaling precipitous walls, of
making our way cautiously across the ice bridges that span
crevatt is as deep as infinity. Days of twiling upward
rope together, sometimes only to find a way blocked by
a new fall of darker or snowslide, our guide to forgotten,
the inching our way up rock chimneys, hammering up the
(12:27):
times laboriously into the face of the living rock, and
climbing a foot at the time up walls where one misstep,
one missed grip would have sent both our bodies tumbling
to a hard advent a thousand people below. Days of
clawing our way through sudden snowstorms, or the biting flakes
so thick that we'd lose each other at ten feet distance.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And then then they.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Halts, the gulp scalding tea rope down a bar of chokluts,
and then rise and go on again, and behind us,
the diminishing string of quarters carrying our flies, dropping off
at regular intervals to set up camps against all return
if we should return, And then the agony of the.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Last few thousand feets.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
But those heights, of course, exhaustion was our greatest enemy.
The oxygen are twenty thousand.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Feet is pitifully thin. Each upward steps a lifetime, and.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
The brain reels up there in the ratified atmosphere that
man is not meant to believe. We made the twenty
six thousand foot camp, and we climbed another thousand feet.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I'm not sure whether the way grows.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
More difficult as one goes higher. Perhaps the rock formations
are no more forbidding at that elevation than they are
at the lower levels. But here the strain, unlined and
muscle and heart is so magnified. But the slightest setback
is enough to cause a strong man to fall down
and leak loud, freezing tears.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
The frustration.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I remember that our guides would go over, but I
always struggled off with alone. That one morning, and at
the end of the day we were a bare two
hundred feet above them.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
It seemed to take half the night to get.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
On tense Pi, and I have little doubt it actually did.
And I sank into delicious sleep, and again I dreamed.
I dreamed of the woman, a surpastorally beautiful woman with
eyes like.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
The crystal of the ice that made up our world.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And about her hair she wore a great height scar
the kind of comes me because it were a living scene.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Building out over her shoulders.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Never still, seeming not to be blown but a wind,
but to control the wind itself.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
And I knew happening about.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
The thin hollo. My tired mind could not remember what
it was I knew. And I tried to look into
her eyes, but she was looking beyond me, and oh
my dream, I couldn't. And I knew she was looking
at John Chandlers, and on his face was a look
(15:09):
of enoff for the laboration. Then when I turned to
gaze at her again, the same look of love was
in her eyes. And the veil and the plume whipped around,
and I thought it brushed my face like an icy lad,
and it reached out and encircled John Chanders and and
(15:32):
I awoke. And when John Chanders he spoke of a dream.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
He had had.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
The most amazing dream of a bier, dreamed of the
most beautiful woman I'd.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Ever seen it.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Plack a bride had a great white veil.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Blowing in the window my left man, most real dream
I ever had.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
She looked back for getting hold of color and the
veil that stock around me, not the guy nothing. And
he crawled out of the turnt into the clear, crowed
on of the high altitude, and in a moment I
heard him calling.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Then Banto boy, fantaca, come out, and what's up? Come out?
I found something.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I crawled out with great effort find him on his
knees at the side of the tent, staring at something in.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
The hard packed smoke.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
What is it, I asked?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
He pointed, look.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
There, and I looked. There in the snow were a
woman's buff.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
A woman's bare footprints in the age old snow where
no human being had ever been before.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
On my knees, I examined the cavern.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Woman had stood there for a long time and then
turned away, and the footprints in the snow led upwards.
I lifted my head and looked up at the top
of the mountain, still fall above us in the rays
of the first time, and the veil the plume of
Everest fluttered coldly.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Against the dark blue of the sky.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
You said, superstition, when I talked about what was taking
got back.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Your knight blottings of petition you felt with a footdrinks
you saw have easiest.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But follow them this morning, you know the kind three
times of start today as we ever time before. She's
leading us to it. She wants us to come on
up to her. Do you remember the night.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Tress started when I spoke about going to meet my bride?
You remember band?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yes? I remember. I've not taken leave of my sense,
have I? Band?
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Not?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
As I have to.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
My name is John Tender. My family's coat of arms
is argent.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Is high given the days the week, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
That and we did see the footprints.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yes, we saw them.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Are you afraid here? Afraid? Yes? No, I'm not afraid,
not for me.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
But then I have the dream too.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Why did you say you're not afraid? We are? Because
in the dream she chose you. Yes, I know that.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
You're I'm not afraid. Why should I be afraid of
my bride? And then we slept again, and in the
morning we went.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Higher the way.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
It was more difficult for me, but Chanders seemed to
find it almost easy. We were on the very ledge
from which Leigh, Mallory and Irvine disappeared in the folds
of the broom. I recognized it dimly from the photographs
and motion pictures that Captain Nolan had made years before.
As the two men slowly made their way along the
rock wall. Not two thousand people on it. That scene
(19:47):
will never leave my mind, and I knew we were
almost in the exact spot where they had been snatched away.
At any second, I thought the cold caress of the
veil the plume would fall on us, and then the
silences returned. I was seized with a desperate desire to
(20:11):
turn back, but Chandals was munching on her head easily.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Well. I made most heavy going on it. They were
rolled together, and there was nothing to do but follow it.
I stumbled more and more frequently, and.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The last I could go my father.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I sag down, this though close beside the wall, with
a a sheer precipice at my elbow, and shadows came
back to me, having helped.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
The pull up the rope at his waist, not tud
like you. I. I can't make it. Well, I than
a high everything the thought look up. I looked up.
It was scarcely five hundred.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Feet to gold.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
My tired eyes to me, cant me five hundred feet.
I can't go on without me?
Speaker 3 (21:09):
No, I won't.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I can't go any farther tomorrow to then. No, Well,
ufer me do it. I'm going back. You don't do
that too? Yeah? Well, I'll go back down with you,
(21:31):
but let me s go on.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
I have touch up the moment. We're so close. Now,
let me see if I can go on enough to
the job like and it's like, can I will? Then
I'll come back and we'll both go back down.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
When don't let me do that? Yeah, and you're like,
you see you can go on? Not to do it?
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Ready to me this time?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Then turn back do what you like? Still stand y?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Huh?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I stayed here.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
I hid by heat a bit of chocolate. M But
why do you have to go and save me?
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I stopped to see if somebody there by it.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I was already pulling into a hat stupor as he
turned silt up the edge. Then for a little while
I slept, I think, alone on a sixteen inch edge,
five miles above the ground, and I remember confused dreams
of a beautiful bride with a veil of sparkling ice crystals.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
And it was strange music in my ears, and presently
it sounded Unhino's.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Voice and disappointment come on out.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
By going that done, there's no way to the top
of what do you mean? There's an absolutely.
Speaker 6 (23:19):
Unclimable walk just around that corner. No way, no whey boy,
no way at all.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
The rock face leaned out towards I looked at it
on every angle work. There's just no way, So come on.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
And as he as he left me to my feet,
there was the softest little round as of something dropping
into the snow beside us. I leaned against the wall
a shadows bent and picked it up. He looked at
it very curiously for a long moment, and finally I mumbled,
(24:15):
what is it? And he stretched out his hand to me,
and then it was a full blown, room stemmed white robe.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And when I took it.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
From him, the frozen thing shattered into a million glittering fragments.
And I looked at John Chandler's face, and it was
transfigured with a joy and a hope such as I
have never seen in any man. My gaze went on
beyond him, upward, upward, and against the darkening sky the
(24:52):
great veil. It screamed from the mountaintop, slowly wheeled around
and down toward us, and it pulled up like a
whip to lashes to an icy death, but like the
compassionate arms of a beloved woman stretched out to her level.
And then as this coldness envelopers. I heard the beginning
(25:13):
of an avalanche and roar above me, and it sounded
great birth of triumphant music.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I opened my eyes and it was morning. I lay
almost no.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
One hundred feet above my last camp, and by turning
my head I could see a tiny thread of so
rising from the tenth.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
And I rose slowly and looked upwards. The plume of.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Everest was still blowing wide and free from the time.
And with an effort I found my binocular and focused.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
On on the topmost peak.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Snow and ice and barrenness, snow and ice and barrenness,
and the man and the woman, a man in mountain
climber's dress, the woman in a bride flowing white gown,
and a veil floating from her hair, a veil that
(26:25):
dissolved into the great streaming banner of ice crystals flung
across the sky above the roof of the world. Mm
(26:46):
Wyatt be Fortnite was called How Beautiful upon the Mountains.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
It was written and directed by Willis Cooper.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
The spoke he was Ernest Campell's and John Chandos was
played by Roy Irving.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Later, the Dublin Gate Theater.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Music was played by Albert Burman as usual, who Walter
composes the special music heard on Clia Fleas. Now for
the word about next week, quiet leaves and his usual
little insearch in my good friend Willis Cooper.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
The two principal characters in the Night's Client.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Please there's Clutch spectatious and Sprang to mature life, and
the keyboard of my typewriter. So I don't think there
anybody you ever knew. Then I'm client. Plays for next
week will be called there are shadows here, and so
(27:45):
until next week at the same time, and there are
shadows here. I am quietly yours, Ernest Chappel, ask yourself
this question, do I practice prejudice.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
In any way?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
You know your answer is very important, because, after all,
you simply can't hold a grudge against any of your
fellow Americans and be a good American yourself. In this
country today, the forces of bigotry and intolerance are definitely
at work, undermining the principles of our freedom and equality.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Upon which this nation was founded.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
If you help these forces and group hatred, you enlist
yourself on their side and against America itself. You also
do help these forces every time you seek out against
your neighbors because he attends a different church, or if
he had ancestors of a different religion. Remember, your personal
behavior can encourage respect for other races, power, and for
(28:48):
other religions.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So don't betray this.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Country by spreading the doctrine of hate and prejudice against
fellow Americans.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Do your part to make freedom a living reality.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
This is a mutual broadcasting system.
Quiet Please, Quiet Please.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
The mutual broadcast Sea says some prevents, Quiet Please, which
is written directed by Willis Cooper and with teachers Ms
champells Quiet Please for the night is called.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
How Beautiful upon the Mountains.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I don't say that Mount Everest will never be successfully climbed.
I don't say that at all. What I do say, however,
is that no one will ever successfully climb Everest and
come back. Yes, I know they said that about the
matter Horn, and Edward Whimper climbed it. Whimper was the
man who first stated what many mountain climbers insists as
a creed of their arduous calling. You don't know that, well.
(01:12):
It was many years ago, after we've made the first
successful ascent of the matter Horn. Someone asked him why
he could not see a mountain without wanting to climb it.
His reply was simple, and it's become historic because it's there,
he said, And mountain climbers the world over will solemnly
assure you that that.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Is their reason too. I beg to differ.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I think there's another reason, a compouchion in the hearts
of certain brave men and.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Women that has existed since the beginnings of.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Time, a compulsion that they very probably never realize. Is
there a compolch that is revealed only to a rare
few of those that lift up their.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Eyes to the hills.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I think it is because the mountains have always in
the earthly abiding place of divinity. I think it's because
certain mortals are consumed by a subconscious cosmic curiosity to
find the abode of the gods, my urge to seek
in an overpowering hope to find naked divinity at last
mconic on the roof of the world. But these divinities
(02:22):
do not welcome human intrusion. Men have walked upon the
peak of Mount Olympus, where Zeus and Era, Pallas, Athena and.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Aphrodite dwelf, and have not found them.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Cathalcaadl has departed from the high peak of the Mexican Cordiers,
for men have vainly sought him there. And though the
specter of the Bakan sometimes appears today, the traveler knows
it to be only the magnified image of himself. But
still the ancient secret compulchion exists, and men climb mountains
to cause of it.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
In all the recorded history of the world, no known
man has ever conquered Everest. Well.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
They speak of unclimbable walls, of the lethargy that comes
from lack of oxygen. They speak of insufferable cold, of
howling winds and sudden storms, of impassable crevasses, and monstrous avalanches.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And these things are true. I've experienced them myself.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
But there are avalanches in crevasses, and winds, and snow
and coal on other mountains, and men have climbed them.
Could it be that the gods are tired of retreating
and are set a barrier on this, their last refuge.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Against the men of the plains.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No man has ever looked upon the summit of Everest,
more than five miles above the level of.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
The distant Sea.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Many men have flown near Everest, hoping for a glance
at the highest spot on Earth, but Everest has evaded them.
In the motion picture that the Marcuts of Tridesdale made
more than fifteen years ago, when he became the first
man to fly over the mountain, they eternal. The plume
of Everest reached out and covered the peak. You haven't
(04:06):
heard of that, Well, if you ever have an opportunity
to see those pictures go.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Perhaps what you see will help convict you to my
way of thinking.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Ceaselessly, day in and day out, in sunshining and storm,
A great plume of ice crystals and powdered snows streams
out from the crest of the mountain, a terrible white
banner that can instantly become a great whip to lash
down at the mountain's own slength, as if to drive
off some intruder twiling empty, incredible slopes.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
To the Virgin's sun. Yes, I have seen that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Others have seen it too. Irvine and Leigh Mallory saw it.
The two men who came closest to the top, and
the others of their party saw the plume snatch at
them as they struggled upward, and when it lifted again,
they had disappeared. No man has seen them since. They
did find the ice acts Lee Mallory carried. They found
(05:06):
it far down the slopes from where the plume snatched
the two men away, and it was curiously bent and
twisted the steady high tension speeler.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I met John Shanders.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
When I was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford's. We became
great friends who are mutual interest in mountain finding. I
wish you could have seen John Shanders standing before the
mantel in my rooms at Oxford on a bleak, rainy
day in early autumn. I've fed to the teeth here
with this place. Never chuck it and go somewhere, tin
am on and nobody else's time.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, what about little boy?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Well tevers by choice, m you got fifty thousand pounds.
I could get it, all right, let's go, I mean it,
I could get it where Never mind? Well, now, look,
would you come?
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Were you serious? I'm serious? Oh I wish you were.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I'll tell you who I am, because you know it'll
probably be the end of it. But I haven't bad
way and drying up by bit Enoxford.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Wouldn't you I would? Yes?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Then I have no sense a shilling. I mean you
won't need it. I've got plenty. Well why Everest, look, friends,
old boy. Ever since I was a child, I've had
won only one ambition to see the top of Everest.
And I'm going to come along, dude, Why nothing else?
(06:45):
That's not just a casual way you put it. Let's
go see the top of Everest. You and I half
the world away five miles straight up. Dozens of menut
died and disappeared trying it. Let's go see the top
of Everest.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
I'm not going to do it one day, you know, Yes,
that's true. Well shall we be the one?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And on that casual basis, the Shandross Brant Mount Everest
Expedition began.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
We left Oxford, We left.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
England after purchasing thousands of pounds worth of equipments hence
windproof clothing, weapons and photographic equipment, dehydrated foods, pecan dice axes,
cases of brandy, miscellaneous equipment by the hundredweight. And at
last we were in Darjeeline, talking to men who knew
they were for the world, learning the names of obscure
villages where we might find guides.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
To lead us to the upper reaches of the Great
White Mountains.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And a day came when our preparations were completed, when
a great deal of money spent, and we set out
a motor cars to the final.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Take off spot where no motor.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Could go, and only the feel of men had walked before.
The native guides, as hard bit of a crew as
ever I saw, gathered around their tiny fires.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
We sat before our little.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Tents and smoked and drank hot sweet tea against.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
The morning.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Glad Ah, Brent, Yes, and we not going to be
pleasantle Oh, it won't be too bad for a while
till we get up really high.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
No, no, no, worse than some places I've been. I
won know what's up there.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Can't tell much from the photograph, can wear dof dice
and snow and.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Rock cramped, plenty of it quite you know.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I was wondering something today, what I was wondering if
any of these native chaps have been up there front top.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yes, you liked them, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
To be laughing at the silly white men coming halfway
around the world to be the first man on top.
But all the time old Bungo and his never will
be up there to do time.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Good joke.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
I doubt it, Champus, So do I really.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
But you know, hey, cheps not, I haven't seen any
too enthusiastic about going up.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
None of you go by the pay they'd insisted on.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Well, you know, Everest is some kind of a god,
is something to them?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Hmm is to me too?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
What?
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Why?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I know it sounds toa But maybe we're being sacriligious
or something. Maybe nobody's supposed to climb up there.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Not getting cold feet.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I am, oh, no, not at all, the quite warm
bankm oh, all of your American flag.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
No, I've not got the window, if that's.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
What you mean.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
But superstition, I was thinking. I mean, I wonder what
is waiting for us for us up there, oh, slow
and ice thinner.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Besides that, what do you mean. I'm remembering what that chap.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Wrote about Vine and Lee Mallory and the plume up there.
Down it came, he said, like a stension thing, like
the hand of a god, and swept them away before
my very eyes. Now, look, you begin to worry about
giants and things up there, you'd better stay here.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Oh I'm not worried, Brent.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I'm just curing somehow. I'm excited, like a chap who's
waiting to meet his bride at the church and his
wedding day. I say that's being a bit idiotic, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Look at her up there, cold and white.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
And beautiful, not caring about us at all. We're coming
up after you, old girl, if we die in the attent. Then,
as I lay there in the firelight, listening to the
quiet music that came from the shadowy groups of guides
and barriers. The strange thought forms in my mind. Shouldn't
(11:01):
John Chandos have said? And and die in the attempt?
And the sound of the little flute went on in
the cold twilight, and presently we went to our tents
and slept, and I dreamed of a woman's face, a
bride's face, and a high mountain, and somehow the face
(11:23):
was the mountain itself, and the mountain was a face,
and it was cold, icy cold. And the voice said
in my ear something that I dimly remembered from my
Bible from Isaia, how beautiful upon the mountain. And the
music of the flute dissolved, and there were great crashing cords,
(11:48):
and I awoke trembling in the blackness of a frigid morning.
I need not tell you of the next few weeks
of the ascent of the camp of twenty three thousand feet,
hardly a mile below the Summits.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
If you have climbed mountains, you will know it to
be an endless nightmare.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Of traversing great rocky slopes, of scaling precipitous walls, of
making our way cautiously across the ice bridges that span
crevatt is as deep as infinity. Days of twiling upward
rope together, sometimes only to find a way blocked by
a new fall of darker or snowslide, our guide to forgotten,
the inching our way up rock chimneys, hammering up the
(12:27):
times laboriously into the face of the living rock, and
climbing a foot at the time up walls where one misstep,
one missed grip would have sent both our bodies tumbling
to a hard advent a thousand people below. Days of
clawing our way through sudden snowstorms, or the biting flakes
so thick that we'd lose each other at ten feet distance.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And then then they.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Halts, the gulp scalding tea rope down a bar of chokluts,
and then rise and go on again, and behind us,
the diminishing string of quarters carrying our flies, dropping off
at regular intervals to set up camps against all return
if we should return, And then the agony of the.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Last few thousand feets.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
But those heights, of course, exhaustion was our greatest enemy.
The oxygen are twenty thousand.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Feet is pitifully thin. Each upward steps a lifetime, and.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
The brain reels up there in the ratified atmosphere that
man is not meant to believe. We made the twenty
six thousand foot camp, and we climbed another thousand feet.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I'm not sure whether the way grows.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
More difficult as one goes higher. Perhaps the rock formations
are no more forbidding at that elevation than they are
at the lower levels. But here the strain, unlined and
muscle and heart is so magnified. But the slightest setback
is enough to cause a strong man to fall down
and leak loud, freezing tears.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
The frustration.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I remember that our guides would go over, but I
always struggled off with alone. That one morning, and at
the end of the day we were a bare two
hundred feet above them.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
It seemed to take half the night to get.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
On tense Pi, and I have little doubt it actually did.
And I sank into delicious sleep, and again I dreamed.
I dreamed of the woman, a surpastorally beautiful woman with
eyes like.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
The crystal of the ice that made up our world.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And about her hair she wore a great height scar
the kind of comes me because it were a living scene.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Building out over her shoulders.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Never still, seeming not to be blown but a wind,
but to control the wind itself.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
And I knew happening about.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
The thin hollo. My tired mind could not remember what
it was I knew. And I tried to look into
her eyes, but she was looking beyond me, and oh
my dream, I couldn't. And I knew she was looking
at John Chandlers, and on his face was a look
(15:09):
of enoff for the laboration. Then when I turned to
gaze at her again, the same look of love was
in her eyes. And the veil and the plume whipped around,
and I thought it brushed my face like an icy lad,
and it reached out and encircled John Chanders and and
(15:32):
I awoke. And when John Chanders he spoke of a dream.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
He had had.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
The most amazing dream of a bier, dreamed of the
most beautiful woman I'd.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Ever seen it.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Plack a bride had a great white veil.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Blowing in the window my left man, most real dream
I ever had.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
She looked back for getting hold of color and the
veil that stock around me, not the guy nothing. And
he crawled out of the turnt into the clear, crowed
on of the high altitude, and in a moment I
heard him calling.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Then Banto boy, fantaca, come out, and what's up? Come out?
I found something.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I crawled out with great effort find him on his
knees at the side of the tent, staring at something in.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
The hard packed smoke.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
What is it, I asked?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
He pointed, look.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
There, and I looked. There in the snow were a
woman's buff.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
A woman's bare footprints in the age old snow where
no human being had ever been before.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
On my knees, I examined the cavern.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Woman had stood there for a long time and then
turned away, and the footprints in the snow led upwards.
I lifted my head and looked up at the top
of the mountain, still fall above us in the rays
of the first time, and the veil the plume of
Everest fluttered coldly.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Against the dark blue of the sky.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
You said, superstition, when I talked about what was taking
got back.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Your knight blottings of petition you felt with a footdrinks
you saw have easiest.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But follow them this morning, you know the kind three
times of start today as we ever time before. She's
leading us to it. She wants us to come on
up to her. Do you remember the night.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Tress started when I spoke about going to meet my bride?
You remember band?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yes? I remember. I've not taken leave of my sense,
have I? Band?
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Not?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
As I have to.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
My name is John Tender. My family's coat of arms
is argent.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Is high given the days the week, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
That and we did see the footprints.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yes, we saw them.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Are you afraid here? Afraid? Yes? No, I'm not afraid,
not for me.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
But then I have the dream too.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Why did you say you're not afraid? We are? Because
in the dream she chose you. Yes, I know that.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
You're I'm not afraid. Why should I be afraid of
my bride? And then we slept again, and in the
morning we went.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Higher the way.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
It was more difficult for me, but Chanders seemed to
find it almost easy. We were on the very ledge
from which Leigh, Mallory and Irvine disappeared in the folds
of the broom. I recognized it dimly from the photographs
and motion pictures that Captain Nolan had made years before.
As the two men slowly made their way along the
rock wall. Not two thousand people on it. That scene
(19:47):
will never leave my mind, and I knew we were
almost in the exact spot where they had been snatched away.
At any second, I thought the cold caress of the
veil the plume would fall on us, and then the
silences returned. I was seized with a desperate desire to
(20:11):
turn back, but Chandals was munching on her head easily.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Well. I made most heavy going on it. They were
rolled together, and there was nothing to do but follow it.
I stumbled more and more frequently, and.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The last I could go my father.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I sag down, this though close beside the wall, with
a a sheer precipice at my elbow, and shadows came
back to me, having helped.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
The pull up the rope at his waist, not tud
like you. I. I can't make it. Well, I than
a high everything the thought look up. I looked up.
It was scarcely five hundred.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Feet to gold.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
My tired eyes to me, cant me five hundred feet.
I can't go on without me?
Speaker 3 (21:09):
No, I won't.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I can't go any farther tomorrow to then. No, Well,
ufer me do it. I'm going back. You don't do
that too? Yeah? Well, I'll go back down with you,
(21:31):
but let me s go on.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
I have touch up the moment. We're so close. Now,
let me see if I can go on enough to
the job like and it's like, can I will? Then
I'll come back and we'll both go back down.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
When don't let me do that? Yeah, and you're like,
you see you can go on? Not to do it?
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Ready to me this time?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Then turn back do what you like? Still stand y?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Huh?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I stayed here.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
I hid by heat a bit of chocolate. M But
why do you have to go and save me?
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I stopped to see if somebody there by it.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I was already pulling into a hat stupor as he
turned silt up the edge. Then for a little while
I slept, I think, alone on a sixteen inch edge,
five miles above the ground, and I remember confused dreams
of a beautiful bride with a veil of sparkling ice crystals.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
And it was strange music in my ears, and presently
it sounded Unhino's.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Voice and disappointment come on out.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
By going that done, there's no way to the top
of what do you mean? There's an absolutely.
Speaker 6 (23:19):
Unclimable walk just around that corner. No way, no whey boy,
no way at all.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
The rock face leaned out towards I looked at it
on every angle work. There's just no way, So come on.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
And as he as he left me to my feet,
there was the softest little round as of something dropping
into the snow beside us. I leaned against the wall
a shadows bent and picked it up. He looked at
it very curiously for a long moment, and finally I mumbled,
(24:15):
what is it? And he stretched out his hand to me,
and then it was a full blown, room stemmed white robe.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And when I took it.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
From him, the frozen thing shattered into a million glittering fragments.
And I looked at John Chandler's face, and it was
transfigured with a joy and a hope such as I
have never seen in any man. My gaze went on
beyond him, upward, upward, and against the darkening sky the
(24:52):
great veil. It screamed from the mountaintop, slowly wheeled around
and down toward us, and it pulled up like a
whip to lashes to an icy death, but like the
compassionate arms of a beloved woman stretched out to her level.
And then as this coldness envelopers. I heard the beginning
(25:13):
of an avalanche and roar above me, and it sounded
great birth of triumphant music.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I opened my eyes and it was morning. I lay
almost no.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
One hundred feet above my last camp, and by turning
my head I could see a tiny thread of so
rising from the tenth.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
And I rose slowly and looked upwards. The plume of.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Everest was still blowing wide and free from the time.
And with an effort I found my binocular and focused.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
On on the topmost peak.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Snow and ice and barrenness, snow and ice and barrenness,
and the man and the woman, a man in mountain
climber's dress, the woman in a bride flowing white gown,
and a veil floating from her hair, a veil that
(26:25):
dissolved into the great streaming banner of ice crystals flung
across the sky above the roof of the world. Mm
(26:46):
Wyatt be Fortnite was called How Beautiful upon the Mountains.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
It was written and directed by Willis Cooper.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
The spoke he was Ernest Campell's and John Chandos was
played by Roy Irving.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Later, the Dublin Gate Theater.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Music was played by Albert Burman as usual, who Walter
composes the special music heard on Clia Fleas. Now for
the word about next week, quiet leaves and his usual
little insearch in my good friend Willis Cooper.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
The two principal characters in the Night's Client.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Please there's Clutch spectatious and Sprang to mature life, and
the keyboard of my typewriter. So I don't think there
anybody you ever knew. Then I'm client. Plays for next
week will be called there are shadows here, and so
(27:45):
until next week at the same time, and there are
shadows here. I am quietly yours, Ernest Chappel, ask yourself
this question, do I practice prejudice.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
In any way?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
You know your answer is very important, because, after all,
you simply can't hold a grudge against any of your
fellow Americans and be a good American yourself. In this
country today, the forces of bigotry and intolerance are definitely
at work, undermining the principles of our freedom and equality.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Upon which this nation was founded.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
If you help these forces and group hatred, you enlist
yourself on their side and against America itself. You also
do help these forces every time you seek out against
your neighbors because he attends a different church, or if
he had ancestors of a different religion. Remember, your personal
behavior can encourage respect for other races, power, and for
(28:48):
other religions.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So don't betray this.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Country by spreading the doctrine of hate and prejudice against
fellow Americans.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Do your part to make freedom a living reality.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
This is a mutual broadcasting system.
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