Survivor: The Autobiography (42 page)

Lépineux, who had spent more time in the chasm than on the surface, understood the difficulty of my task. He never lost his kindly calm.

‘Hello! Lépineux. I’ve had to stop for a few moments to get breath. I can’t go on.’

‘That’s quite okay. Take it easy; don’t hurry,’ he answered quietly.

At last, at the end of two hours harassing toil, I was ready to resume my journey. My next ordeal would be the waterfall, and then that horrible spinning motion which Queffelec had predicted. From now onwards I would be suspended in mid-air at the end of a new steel cable which, so they said, was going to turn unceasingly. But I was so relieved to have completed the previous chore, and so eager to get to the bottom, that I was not greatly disturbed by the prospect of a cold douche and whirligig.

‘Hello, Lépineux, I’m just approaching the cascade.’

‘Are you? Is it running strong?’

‘No, it’s extraordinary – a mere trickle.’

Yes, in spite of the heavy winter snows and a rainy spring, the cascade which had caused us so much discomfort on previous occasions, was insignificant. My beautiful rubber cape, thank heaven, was unnecessary! Of course I got wet; the water rattled on my helmet and shoulders, but nothing like so heavily as last year.

Lépineux asked me: ‘By the way, are you spinning round?’

‘Me? No, not at all.’

‘Queffelec says you’ll jolly soon be doing so.’

‘Good, then I’ll occupy myself counting the turns.’

As a matter of fact, on reaching the point where gyration formerly began, I started turning, but slowly, very slowly, then more slowly still – and it was over. I had counted only a few turns as against hundreds the year before. This new cable, which had been expected to twist so much, was very well designed and quite anti-gyratory. One should really not anticipate misfortune! And with that comforting thought I landed amid the huge boulders of the Salle Lépineux.

‘Thanks, Queffelec, you’ve got me here in an armchair!’

The journey had taken me exactly three hours, and I was all in. I stumbled a few paces down to the bivouac, where I was at last able to relieve myself of my two bags and harness, and to exchange the ponderous flying helmet for my usual tin hat. I had entered again into possession of these halls which I had left twelve months ago.

At the foot of an enormous rock 65 feet high and 100 feet long, I found our reserve of tinned foods, calcium carbide, various accessories, and a few oddments. Nothing had changed, all was just the same as if we had been here a few days before. There was also a roll of telephone-wire; and I now attached one end of it to the terminal buckle of the cable, which would henceforward be in almost continual motion between the Salle Lépineux and the surface. These journeys necessitated constant vigilance. Members of the team were for the most part lowered and brought up without a hitch; but in past years we had had a deal of trouble with the loose cable owing to friction and fouling, and to prevent these delays we had to keep it taut. I was doing that now, paying out the wire a little at a time as the cable rose, and holding it straight.

While the cable was being wound up, my telephone was out of use; but as soon as that operation was finished I could unpack an instrument from my kitbag and connect it to the wire. Alas! last year’s mishap was repeated. I was carefully unrolling the wire, like an angler paying out his line, when I felt it go limp in my hand. That well-known whistling sound gave warning, and pierced me to the heart. The wire, of course, had broken; it fell at my feet looking like a tangled wig.

I was now cut off altogether. I wondered, too, whether the cable was continuing its upward journey, or was jammed somewhere in a crevice. I should have to kick my heels until the next man arrived; and he might be delayed for a host of reasons. All I knew was that my first companion would be Robert Lévi, than whom it would have been impossible to find a more strenuous and conscientious leader. He had insisted on coming down to consider the difficulties of exhumation, to take part in it, and to assess the problem of raising the container.

For want of something better to do, I started to unpack my kitbags, and was immediately grateful for Lévi’s solicitude and experience. There was a butane gas stove, a thermix heater, a telephone instrument (at the moment useless), and a heap of foodstuffs (‘iron rations’) . . . Suddenly I dropped everything and made a dive for the wall. I had caught sight of a magnificent amber-coloured beetle; it was scared, and moved rapidly, but I caught it in a matchbox. Not being an entomologist, I had none of the correct glass tubes. But lying on the ground was a used bottle of excellent Martinique punch left over from last year. Sufficient liquid remained in which to drown the insect. It was a splendid specimen of the extremely rare
Aphaenops Loubensi
which Prof. Jeannel of the Musée de Paris had classified in 1953 as a new species.

The disposal of my luggage and the capture of the insect was not enough to occupy my leisured solitude, so I decided to relax for a quarter of an hour and take a rest. I was suffering from fatigue and nervous tension, but the effect of stretching myself out on the floor was opposite to that which I expected. I became more than ever on edge; besides, the low temperature and dampness of the chasm is intolerable unless one keeps moving about. I got up and walked down to the tomb, and from there went on to the site of last year’s camp. The same bits and pieces lay scattered about; a battered helmet, a torn mattress, some empty tins, etc. . . . It was all very dreary, so I climbed back to the bivouac, stopping for a moment and holding my breath to listen for a voice or a falling stone in the great shaft. Nothing moved. I then decided to fill in time with a meal . . . Some lumps of rock came whistling down, and I ducked behind a large boulder. A mouthful of food had given me new heart, and those flying fragments told me that someone was coming down. It was 6 p.m.; I waited anxiously for the least sound, and felt glad that Lévi would soon land at my side.

But at midnight I was still waiting, and asked myself for the hundredth time that inevitable question: ‘What the hell are they doing up there?’

In desperation, I put on an extra sweater under my overalls, lay down on a slab of rock, extinguished my lamp, and tried to sleep. Lévi’s descent must have been postponed for some good reason until tomorrow.

At 2 a.m., as I tossed and turned on my rocky bed, there was a feeble cry far up in the shaft. Half an hour later Robert Lévi touched down. At last! I had been expecting him for fifteen hours, and had almost given up hope. He told me that he had been delayed time after time, but had determined to get down, no matter what the cost.

Sunday, 8 August
Returning to the bivouac at about 9 a.m., we were able to phone the surface; for the cable had not been wound up again since Lévi’s arrival. When the time came for its departure, we again unrolled the guide-wire. Again it broke, leaving us in isolation!

We were resigned to our situation, hoping the cable would reach its destination before long, and certain of our programme. Delteil was to come down next; he had volunteered for the delicate and unpleasant task of bringing down the metal coffin . . .

At about 8 o’clock that evening a small avalanche of stones informed us of Delteil’s approach.

Flushed with excitement after his memorable journey, Delteil was magnificent. He had battled all alone in the great shaft for three hours, and looked like a
poilu
at Verdun, with feverish eyes, his face lined with fatigue, his harness in disorder, his overalls torn, and one of his hands bleeding.

Our next job was to bear the coffin to the tomb. After slipping and stumbling from top to bottom of the slope, we got it into position ready for the exhumation, which was to take place as soon as we were joined by Dr Mairey and Louis Ballandraux, who would not be down until tomorrow. It was now 11 p.m. We had done enough for one day, and therefore withdrew, dead-beat, to a little tent which was scarcely large enough for three. Although packed like sardines, we were soon fast asleep.

Monday, 9 August
I awoke with a feeling that it was time to get up, and took a peep at my companions. Delteil, as usual was snoring hard, but Lévi, to judge by his breathing, was awake.

‘Lévi, what’s the time?’ I whispered, switching on my torch discreetly veiled in a handkerchief.

My neighbour stretched himself, looked at his wristwatch, and then put it sharply to his ear. ‘It says 11 o’clock, but it’s not going,’ he replied. ‘It must have stopped last evening.’

I had left my watch in a suit of overalls that were in my haversack, and this lay some distance from the tent which was too small to hold anything but us three. Having extricated myself from my sleeping-bag, I crawled out of the tent, pulled on my boots, and eventually retrieved my watch. Good heavens! . . . yes; the second-hand was moving, so the thing had definitely not stopped.

‘Guess,’ I said to Lévi.

‘It’s at least 8 o’clock in the morning,’ he answered.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ protested Delteil, who had just woken up. ‘It’s the dead of night!’

‘Dead dark, certainly,’ I rejoined, ‘but believe me or not, it’s midday!’

Neither of them would believe me at first; they thought I was joking. But it was a fact; down there in the chasm, where the temperature was no more than 7° Fahrenheit and the humidity 100 per cent, we had slept fully clothed in a tiny tent for thirteen hours! None of us had ever done anything like it, and we fell to discussing so memorable a feat. We were cut short by a formidable shower of stones.

‘Hark! there’s someone on the stairs,’ said Lévi quietly.

‘Another bloke dropping in for lunch,’ added Delteil.

We hurried immediately to the bivouac, where Louis Ballandraux had just touched down, carrying two outsize kitbags in addition to his normal load.

During the afternoon we were joined by Doctor Mairey, who brought his medicine-chest, several pairs of rubber gloves, and various accessories. We now prepared to carry out the work of exhumation, and were shortly afterwards gathered at the tomb. In that unstable mass of rock, it took us several hours to construct a horizontal platform on which to lay the container and walk about.

There were only four pairs of gloves, so it was agreed that Delteil, who had badly lacerated hands, should be excused from touching the body. At 6 p.m. we began demolishing stone by stone, the great tumulus beneath which Marcel had been lying for two years, arrayed, as he had fallen, like a medieval knight. He wore his helmet, and, in place of the sword, a torch lay on his breast.

At 9 p.m., exhausted with fatigue and emotion, we removed our gloves. Delteil screwed down the lid, and we put forth what was left of our strength and determination to drag the heavy coffin to a point immediately below the shaft where in due course it could be attached to the end of the cable.

We had fulfilled our task, and it was now the turn of those who were to prepare the shaft for the container’s upward journey. Lépineux and Bidegain went down to –257, Labeyrie and Rossini to –699. It had been calculated that their job would take two days.

The preparation of the balconies consisted in erecting near the rim of each a metal lattice girder 6 feet 6 inches long. These were meant to steer the container clear of overhangs, and thus avoid it becoming hung up or jammed in a crevice – events which might prove dangerous if not disastrous. Each girder was made of duralumin sections (another of Lépineux’s ideas), and was fitted at its base with a spindle enabling it to swing from side to side, and at the opposite end with a stout wooden pulley to facilitate the cable's passage. Numerous stays, carefully placed and tightly stretched, assured the firmness and rigidity of the girder. Driving
pitons
into the rocky walls, in situations no less perilous than inconvenient, was a job whose difficulty was increased by the fact that our men were obliged to work beneath small but icy-cold cascades, consequent upon a series of violent storms which had transformed the shaft into an aqueduct. It was even necessary on several occasions to interrupt the work and hurriedly bring up the teams – for fear of lightning, which is attracted by potholes. The long steel cable hanging in the shaft would prove a dangerous conductor. On the evening of the exhumation, after pitching a tent for Mairey and Ballandraux, we were roused from sleep at about midnight by the roll of thunder which grew minute by minute; and the cascade in the shaft, swollen by an exceptionally heavy downpour, allowed us a glimpse of its awful possibilities. At the same time, another sound, even more alarming, rose from the depths. This was the subterranean torrent in flood, growling below the chaos of rock. Hence the internal changes of the chasm – those traces of extensive flooding which we observed last year, and the collapse of boulders. The whole place roared, vibrated, and there were falls of stone. Pierre Saint-Martin was in labour; we were in a living chasm in full process of evolution.

Lying in absolute darkness, wrapped in our sleeping-bags under the frail and illusory shelter of our canvas tents, the consciousness of our weak and helpless state in the presence of this awful demonstration taught us an eloquent lesson of humility.

All things considered, we were lucky to escape with nothing worse than a restless night. Mairey and Ballandraux were in worse danger than the rest for their tent was pitched on a stretch of gravel, clearly the bed of a river which might at any moment have reappeared but was, in fact, absorbed by its own deposit before reaching our camp.

Tuesday, 10 August
At 9 a.m. I went up to the bivouac with Louis Ballandraux who had brought down a wireless transmitter and was anxious to establish communication with the surface, for the telephone was still cut off. He managed to converse with Fr. Attout, thanks largely to the cable, which had been lowered to –699 and served as a conductor for the waves between that point and the outside world. Among other things, we learned that Mauer would be joining us later in the day. He landed at noon, carrying another two kitbags and a large roll of telephone-wire. Lévi, as chief of the expedition, was now required on the surface; he went up trailing this after him, and we looked forward to re-establishing contact with those above.