Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain (19 page)

Junk tried to respond but was quickly interrupted by Cooper yelling “Enough!” and having the Americans placed in the hold, where they were to stay for one week. They would be let out after that time only if they agreed to never question the captain again.

The week in the hold was horrible for everyone. There were only two small portholes letting in natural light. The floors and walls were made of metal. There were only two chairs and no beds or cots. Wooden crates full of unknown contents shared limited space with their own climbing equipment and clothing. The remainder of the room, perhaps half of its total size, was left for them to exist. “I suspect solitary confinement is preferable to shared confinement. We started out well, commiserating about our condition, but soon were bickering over everything; where to sleep, how best to manage the rats, and whether or not we should negotiate an early release. Our response to McGee’s sickness turned from sympathy to frustration. Every wretch was met with grumblings about the stench and the need to request more cleaning supplies from the pirates.

Junk was especially dismayed by the turn of events. The last thing he needed was a team prematurely at odds with one another before they had even reached their destination. He had a deck of cards and a pair of dice in his pocket so he organized games of chance to keep people active and friendly. River Leaf would have nothing to do with it, so she spent almost every waking hour reading Morrow’s research papers and Junk’s copy of
Don Quixote
. The rest of the team shot craps and played poker.

When the games of chance became tiresome and bickering began again, Junk pulled out a roughly sketched map of Fumu – copied from another roughly sketched map that had been drafted by a surviving member of Hoover’s expedition - so they could return to the plan. After two days of tireless discussion, interrupted only by the pirates delivering food, they believed they had a strategy for Qila Pass. They decided they would not risk the more novice climbers’ lives this early in the ascent. They would build a platform about six feet by four feet with ropes attached to all four corners. The ropes would rise at roughly a 30-degree angle and meet each other above the board. Then a 50-yard length of rope would be tied to those lesser ropes. They would then have their entire Sherpa team - estimated count of 30 - climb first. After ascending about forty yards above the rest of the team, these Sherpa would grab the free end of the long rope and pull the rest of the team up one by one on the makeshift “lift.” It would be the lift passenger’s responsibility to ensure the board did not become snagged on any rocks or ice. They would have to continually push away from the mountain as the Sherpa pulled them up. The idea was imperfect, but it seemed like it would improve their odds of making it to the mountain proper.

River Leaf interrupted the men. “Your idea is broken” she said forcefully. Pointing to Junk’s pad of paper, she asked “May I?” Junk handed her the pad. River Leaf liked the idea of a lift, but she recommended an alternative structure. The one the men had proposed would only work if the grade of the pass was always perfectly vertical, which it was not. Any decrease of the angle to, say, eighty-five degrees, would cause the lift to drag along the mountain face. Those on the lift would have to use all of their energy – like an endless push-up - to continually keep the board away from the rock face. As an alternative, River Leaf proposed more of a sleigh. The big board of the sleigh would now slide up the face. A smaller board, big enough for two people to stand on, would stick out at a ninety-degree angle from the big board. The people on the sleigh would stand, back to the rock face and the big board, on the smaller board. Ropes would pull the big board from its “top” corners. Now the passengers of the sleigh would only need to use their strength if the big board became stuck under a protuberance in the rock face. Also, like a sleigh, they could easily fashion runners under the board to minimize the amount of surface touching the mountain.

Cole tut tutted, as if he were about to discredit the timid Indian girl’s idea. But nothing came. The men were all silent. River Leaf was right. Junk gently took his pad back, thanked River Leaf, and suggested they begin discussing where to set up Base Camp beyond the Qila Pass.

Near the end of the week, distant rumblings of artillery became audible in the distance. Soon they were surrounded by mortar concussions and yelling from the deck above. The ship rocked violently in man-made waves. They heard British voices over loudspeakers coming from ahead of them, the words impossible to make out over machine gun fire. A scream was heard above them and then the sound of something the size of a person breaking the surface tension of the sea. Chaos was all around them, but impossible to see.

Gibraltar.

“
Junk banged on the door, demanding exit” Morrow wrote. “No one responded. My stomach was churning and my heart was racing. I felt every minute was our last. We would meet our maker and it would be Churchill who introduced us. The distant gunfire and yells of pain from on deck continued. I kept praying the Brits would board the ship and find us captive instead of simply blowing us from the water.”

Cole wrote “Poor McGee. He lay in a corner of the room near our pile of packs and tents, curled up into a ball. Useless. River Leaf was sitting not far from McGee, but her eyes were closed and she seemed totally calm (Why the two of them ended up on this voyage is beyond me). The rest of us stood by Junk as he banged on the door and simply listened to every sound.”

Running footsteps were heard on the other side of the door and then a chair being pulled out. A radio crackled to life - something they had not heard the entire time they had been at sea. A pirate’s voice was then heard speaking in German. None of the Americans spoke German, but they were able to make out series of numbers and letters. Perhaps coordinates. German voices responded in kind. The conversation went on for only a moment and then was over. The chair was kicked out and the footsteps ran away.

Moments later, enormous explosions were heard in the distance followed by cheering from the pirates. The explosions were followed by distant gun fire and then more explosions. The pattern continued but gradually became more distant and seemed to be coming from aft. Then there was silence save the creaking of the ship on gentle waves. Someone approached the door of the hold. The lock was turned and the door opened. Cooper stood at the threshold, a streak of blood on his shirt but otherwise quite presentable. He had his arm around the young girl who was visibly shaking. In his journal, Fenimore quoted Cooper as saying, “Gentlemen, and pretty Indian woman, welcome to the Mediterranean. You are welcome to wander the ship again provided you keep your mouths closed.”

The team exited the hold. Everything was in disarray. Life vests, ammunition shells, and blood-tainted seawater covered the floors. Furniture was knocked over. Upon reaching the deck, they hoped to be greeted by fresh Mediterranean air. But that sensation was compromised by the smell of gunpowder and burning oil. In the distance, off the stern, they could just make out burning ships in the night.

“
We’re lucky they did not waste air support on us” Cooper said. “The U-boats may not have been able to tackle such a threat.” It became clear to the Americans in that moment they were in the hands of “the enemy,” although each of them had been so indifferent to the war that sides meant little. Cooper told them not to worry. He was not about to tell the Germans about the revenue-generating American cargo he had on board. He was on any side that paid him.

Quite unexpectedly, the remainder of the ocean voyage – through the Mediterranean, along the Suez Canal, down the Nile, through the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean – was calm. German ships and planes passed quietly. The sounds of waves, seagulls, and the
Souls At Sea
’s engines dominated. The weather remained relatively calm. The air was hot, varying in humidity with each leg of the voyage, but always forgiving at night.

The Americans did not challenge Cooper’s judgment after Gibraltar, not even Junk. With the exception of McGee and River Leaf, the Americans spent the remaining weeks at sea planning the rendezvous with the Sherpa team in Calcutta, the land journey to Fumu, and the climb itself. River Leaf spent her time reading novels in silence. McGee wiled away the hours throwing up.

Upon passing Sri Lanka, the ship turned northward. Morrow wrote:

Less obvious to their senses was the fact the city before them was caught in a large maelstrom trapped within an even larger maelstrom: Civil unrest had been plaguing Calcutta for years as many Indians began to clash with their British colonizers. Now that conflict was getting swept up in the British engagement in World War II. Given Cooper had been in the employ of the Axis powers, he and his ship were not welcome here at all. But Cooper was aware and prepared. He had made some deal in advance with local government sympathizers of Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian independence movement, allowing the ship, crew, and passengers safe access to a slip. There was not a British soldier within several hundred feet of the ship when they threw their lines to the dockworkers. The expedition members walked off the Souls at Sea for the first time in weeks. In the case of McGee, unlike Cooper before him, he did not care what land he was on or who inhabited it. He was just happy to be touching land. That feeling would quickly dwindle once the long hike to Nepal commenced.

Junk was back in the city he had last seen on the Everest voyage. It likely brought back memories of injury and defeat. This time would be different, he likely told himself. This time, the name Aaron Junk would become as holy as a prayer upon the lips of mountaineers for centuries to come. And if all went well, William Hoyt’s name would be exiled to a footnote in an out-of-print book in some failed author’s cellar.

Chapter Eight: The Lord High Executioner

Journal: September the 1st, 1941

I write now to you, dear Journal, because Wizzy has left me. She has grown overly concerned about the climbing, especially when it is being driven by an obsession for vengeance. She claims to still love me, and she hopes I do not die. But beyond that, she says she ‘just doesn’t know anymore.’ She is staying with the rest of the Dodge clan on the Upper East Side. So until this business is over, it is you and me. I trust you are as good a listener as she was.

I am writing this from our camp on a moraine at the bottom of the Qila Pass, waiting for our Sherpa to arrive. Behind the pass is a mountain so menacing I cannot find the words to do it justice. Glaciers crack and grumble, rocks fall, streaks of ash hundreds of yards long taint pristine snow, overhanging limestone cliffs block routes, and above it all, a cloud looms. Its shape is impermanent but it is ever-present. We already hear distant thunder constantly. It is likely not thunder at all, but small eruptions from on high. Without a view of the peak, I cannot ‘read’ the mountain. It is like a giant Mohamedan woman, the cloud her veil and the volcanic explosions her ululations. Mysterious. Terrifying.

As nauseating as the future looks for my crew and me, there is no turning back now. The journey to arrive here was grueling. We have crossed the Rubicon. We are going up.

Yours,

W.J.H.

The journey to get to Fumu was indeed grueling for Hoyt’s team, and especially for Hoyt himself. The difficulties began right after the meeting with Junk in New York, when he had to tell Wizzy of his plans. She had tolerated the Everest expedition two years earlier, but when he told her of his plans to take on another Himalayan mountain, she raised her voice at her husband for the first time in their marriage. She called him unstable and suggested that perhaps William had inherited his mother’s insanity. She said that he had lost his religion, his family, and his bearings. His need to climb and his need to compete with Aaron Junk were distracting him to the point where family was an afterthought. “For William” Wizzy wrote a dear friend just before the Fumu ascent, “remembering to spend time with me has become like remembering to pay the taxes. Now he is planning some far-flung adventure about which I am to have no information. This can only further isolate him from his sons and me. The boys do not know their father. Before they went off to college they knew him only as some hulking figure that was sometimes in the house, mumbling at the newspaper, telling them not to slurp their soup, or snoring too loudly. Now he is someone they only see at Thanksgiving and Christmas because those holidays do not fall during his normal climbing season.” The war in Europe was a blessing for Wizzy because it kept William at home except for a few weekend excursions. But now not even a global conflagration could stop him from climbing.