The Escape

The hall of the Hotel at Wasdale in Cumberland, where men go to climb the crags of Scafell and Great Gable, is too full of wet boots and stockings and ropes to be a satisfactory place to sit in after dinner, so that on returning to the hotel, after physiological satisfaction and meteorological speculation, it is usual to turn to the left and open the first door on the left hand side of the passage. It is a small room, but has been big enough to hold nearly every man whose name is famous in the annals of mountain-craft in England.

On Easter Sunday a few years ago the two chairs next the fireplace were occupied, one by a man of nearly fifty years of age, with a well-established black beard—the other by a man some twenty years his junior, with a beard of about three days' growth. The stockinged feet of both formed an attractive overmantel. Both were dressed untidily even for Wasdale. Both were of great stature, with features expressing unusual sternness and resolution.

The elder seemed an incarnation of strength, the younger of agility. The older was occupying himself with a notebook and pencil in an endeavour to express the number 113 by the figure 4 used 4 times with the assistance of conventional mathematical signs. It would have been impossible to guess what the younger man was doing; the phrase 'doing nothing' expresses a species of activity which would have amounted to libel upon his idleness. The rest of the room was occupied by a number of petulant youths, whose conversation was excessively afflicting to the three or four elder men who were compelled to listen to it.

Two or three of the least distinguished of the company were breathlessly recounting those of their exploits which appeared to them the most heroic. They did not seem at all embarrassed by the fact that three of the men present were university professors of European reputation, and that two of the men by the fireplace shared between them practically all the world's mountaineering records, and had climbed more peaks than the youngsters knew the names of.

"Well, when I got out under the chock-stone," said the egregious Phelps, "I found that the left wall of the gully was absolutely perpendicular, and not a ledge one could get one's little finger on, and I was too far out in the gully to be held if I came off. So I got the second man up under the stone, so that he could hold my foot on the wall while I tried to get an arm over the jammed stone, and after about half an hour, I wriggled up, somehow. It was a devil of a climb. I hope some of you chaps will go out tomorrow and try it—quite a jolly little piece of work." He really meant that he thought no one else could get up.

The rain beat incessantly on the window, and the conversation in the room continued with neither variableness nor shadow of turning, though towards ten o'clock it had loosened slightly from mountaineering shop to the discussion of less specialised dangers, such as drowning and burglars.

The two men by the fireplace had all this time posed as statues of silence, when suddenly the younger man, without shifting his attitude or altering as much as the expression of his eyes, came into the conversation like a mammoth into a market-place. He was interrupting at least three people, and he spoke with the certainty of an archbishop.

"The tightest place I was ever in," he began, removing an enormous briar pipe from his mouth, "was in Chihuahua.

"There were four of us, Gibson, Andrews, Mackenzie and myself. My own name is Dillon."

On this announcement he replaced the pipe, relighted it, and puffed solemnly, but no one ventured to interrupt.

"We were riding," he pursued, "from San Juan de Cordilla to Zacatlán. The distance is a hundred and fifty miles, and for a hundred and twenty of these miles the track lies through a plain of alkali. There is no water, except at forty miles from Zacatlán where a stream runs down from the Sierra de los Cojones, and loses itself in the desert. The journey itself is therefore severe, and a trifling accident might render it dangerous, but we had good horses, and were well provided.

"Before leaving San Juan, however, we heard that a number of bad Indians were out. It was far from likely that we should run across them, and did we do so we were well armed. Every one of us was a crack shot, and we felt that we could hold our own against ten times our number.

It was at dawn on the tenth of April 1901 that we left San Juan, and we had every expectation of camping by the stream to which I have previously referred. Misfortune, however, dogged us almost from the start. Before we had ridden forty miles, Mackenzie's bronco went lame, and it was two hours before we were able to resume the trail. There were two further accidents of a minor nature, which delayed us still further, and only just as night fell did we see on the horizon the peak of the Sierra.

"We decided to camp, as we had plenty of water, and resume the journey when the moon rose, which would be some time after midnight. We hobbled the horses, made the fire, ate our bacon, and lay down to rest.

"Andrews, who was keeping watch, woke me at about ten o'clock to call my attention to the uneasiness of the horses. We listened long and keenly, but could make out no cause, but almost as we had decided to lie down again, I thought I heard a cry in the distance. It was sufficient for us to wake the others, and the fire was hastily extinguished by one of us, while the others saddled the horses. Andrews, with his wonderful sight, watched the horizon in the direction of the fancied sound. He swore that a star had been momentarily occluded.

"Silently we got to horse. As ill luck would have it, the supposed Indians, although not between us and the mountain, were sufficiently near to that line to make it advisable for us to diverge considerably from it. Moonrise therefore found us no nearer to the Sierra than before. Worse, by its light Andrews was able to make sure that the Indians had really divined our presence and were following. He thought, however, that it was only a small party.

"By four o'clock it was light enough to see that there were only six of them, and that they were about two miles away. Gibson and I wanted to turn and fight, but we decided first to draw such a circuit that we were between them and Zacatlán in case we wanted to make a running fight. We therefore continued our route at top speed.

"About half an hour later Andrews, standing in his saddle, uttered a low curse. Directly in our path was a large and well-mounted body of savages.

"There was only one thing to be done; and that was to strike straight for the Sierra, though to do this would bring us easily within shot of the first party. Even as we turned, the larger body perceived us and gave chase. Riding hard we passed within five hundred yards of the first body, who had swerved to cut us off, firing as we went. We dropped two of them, and the others hesitated, and lost sufficient ground to give us a closer passage towards Zacatlán. The larger body in full pursuit, were about three miles away.

"At six o'clock we had gained ground on the pursuers, and almost counted ourselves saved when, mounting a rise in the ground, the last fagged-out end of a spur of the Sierra, we saw ourselves confronted at a distance of barely a thousand yards by over a hundred mounted men in full war paint.

"On seeing us, they shouted, brandished their rifles and their tomahawks, and galloped to meet us. Only one course was open to us: to mount the Sierra and endeavour to find amongst its rocks some species of natural fortress, which we might hold until the rurales came out to round up the brigands.

"Here fortune for a moment favoured us: a small valley ran into the mountain, and an excellent winding track was visible. The Indians would not dare to follow armed men at full speed along it, and in any case they would be obliged to adopt single file. We gained this path in safety, and were soon in the mountain, temporarily protected by its precipices. Gibson turned at the first corner and emptied his magazine at the pursuers, in order, if possible, to delay them for a few moments.

"The sun had now risen, and was becoming very hot, but we had gained over a thousand feet in height, and were on the borders of the forest which fringed the mountain. It now seemed to us practicable to strike over the shoulder of the mountain, and so on to Zacatlán, but hardly had this hope been formulated in our minds when, turning a corner, we found the path completely blocked by a giant Sequoia which had fallen across it. There was nothing for it but to leave our horses, and climb over the trunk. So enormous, however, was its girth, that this was only to be accomplished by making a live pyramid of four men. The leader got hold of a branch; No. 2 clung to his ankles, and No. 3 to the ankles of No. 2, while No. 4 clambered up the human ladder into safety.

"A descent on the other side proved easier. But we had been forced to abandon, not only our horses, but also our rifles and provisions. We had nothing left but our revolvers. The Indians, however, were likely to be delayed even longer than ourselves, and we had every hope of finding a cave or some other easily defensible place where we might hold out a little longer.

"We toiled on for over two hours under the burning sun, the valley becoming ever narrower and steeper and the track rougher. We had passed out of the region of trees, and the precipices above and below were so steep that no diversion from the track would have been practicable. The Indians were now about a mile away and once or twice the leaders, catching sight of us, risked shots. They had left their horses, of course, but had managed to bring over their rifles.

"Suddenly, turning the corner of great escarpment of precipitous rock, we found that the track consisted only of a rough bridge so steeply sloping downwards as to be almost like a ladder. Nothing would be easier than for us to cross it and destroy it behind us. It might take the pursuers many hours to find a way round.

"This we did without difficulty, and plunged on with lighter hearts. About half an hour later, the final misfortune occurred. The track ended suddenly, and a sheer wall as smooth as glass cut us off from advance. We spent ten minutes in endeavouring to find a way out—There was none. At the end of this time we heard renewed shots. The Indians had either improvised a ladder to cross the gap, or had managed to jump it. As the land lay, the last hundred yards of the path was on an inward curve. We could see the Indians crouching opposite, uttering loud whoops of triumph as they came into view.

"There was a moment's pause; then simultaneously we opened fire."

Dillon, for the first time, shifted his position, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled it very deliberately, and lighted it again.

"The Indians were astonishingly bad marksmen; but at the end of an hour Mackenzie had a flesh wound in the shoulder, Andrews had the bone of his arm broken, and Gibson had an artery cut. He was only keeping alive by an improvised tourniquet. I alone was unwounded. On our part, we had killed fourteen of them outright. But we had no more ammunition for our revolvers—we had not even kept the final shots, by which so many preferred to save themselves from death by torture."

Dillon's pipe was burning very badly, and he relighted it with great attention.

"At the last moment, we had only to roll over the edge of the precipice," continued Dillon, as though wearily.

"Well, gentlemen, that was our situation. Four men disarmed, all but one wounded too seriously to resist attack, on an exposed ledge, from which there was no escape, and within two hundred yards of them, some six score well-armed savages, thirsting for their blood.

The pipe went out again—tobacco claims too much attention to coexist with memories so poignant. But the pause was so long that Phelps breathlessly enquired:

"Well, what happened?"

Dillon grew even more sombre; with slow emphasis he replied:

"They killed us every one."

"Suppose," said the man at the corner of the fire, putting away his notebook, "that we have a last pipe in the open, before turning in?"

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