WASHINGTON: Hurry!

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The Rev. Thomas E. Jessett, vicar of a Seattle Episcopal chapel, took the phone call himself: his son Arthur, 20, a University of Washington junior, was trapped in a glacial crevasse on 9,671-ft. Mount St. Helens. The vicar's response: "You have to take risks when you climb mountains. I guess this is one of them." Then he added: "He'll want us there."

That night at the foot of St. Helens, 170 miles to the south, Jessett and his wife heard the story from their son's three companions. Crossing a glacier at the 8,000-ft. level, Arthur had shouted, "I'm slipping!" and then dropped through a snow bridge. With him went their only rope. Two boys set out for help; the third stayed at the scene. From the depths of the crevasse, young Jessett shouted that his arm was broken. The hours dragged by. "The snow is getting me all wet," Jessett called. "My fingers and toes are going numb. Hurry!"

Finally, the boys told the vicar, they found another party with a rope. One of them worked his way 60 feet down into the crevasse; that was as far as his rope would reach. He heard a groan from below and shouted; there was no answer. "There was light enough," he said, "but I couldn't see him. I think he was covered with snow." The boys had no choice but to go on down the mountain for the night. "If we could have gotten him out," one of them sobbed, "we would."

At dawn next morning a rescue party of experienced climbers set off up the mountain. It was mid-afternoon when they came back, pulling a lifeless, blanket-covered form on a toboggan. The vicar came out to meet them. Head bare, his overcoat collar turned up around his neck, he read from a prayer book: "Into thy hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend the soul of thy servant, now departed from the body . . ." Then he bent over the toboggan and wept.