Doctor Wood. Modern Wizard of the Laboratory: The Story of an American Small Boy Who Became the Most Daring and Original Experimental Physicist of Our Day-but Never Grew Up

Baedeker said its summit had been recently made “accessible to experts”. It rose abruptly from a green hill only a few hundred yards from the hotel, and I decided to have a look at it after lunch. It was about a hundred and fifty feet in diameter at its base and perhaps three hundred feet high, the walls being practically perpendicular. Finding a place with a slight incline from the perpendicular I commenced to crawl up, finding numerous toe and finger holds. About half way up I found myself standing on a narrow ledge possibly ten inches in width, and faced by a smooth perpendicular wall about six and a half feet high. A bit of rope hung over the edge, and I could see that the other end was fastened to an iron spike driven into the rock of a second ledge above me. This evidently represented Baedeker’s “recently made accessible”. Clinging to a crevice with my left hand, I took hold of the rope with my right and gingerly pulled. As I pulled harder, it broke at the point where it was in contact with the sharp edge of the rock. I nearly let go with my left hand, but managed to keep my hold. I looked down. The grass looked pretty far away, and I began to doubt whether I could find the toe holds for descent. Finally I decided to climb on to the top and be rescued by the fire department. I managed to pull myself to the next ledge by means of the iron spike, and from here on to the top found the climbing easier. A group of Germans on a neighboring hill raised their hats on their Alpine stocks and shouted Hoch! Hoch! when I appeared on the summit, but I was too much shaken to do more than give an indifferent wave in return. I managed to get down by a slightly less difficult path. It was comic-opera mountaineering in miniature.

We had planned to walk back to Interlaken, but Gertrude was tired and elected to go by train. I had observed that I could save a long walk around the edge of the mountain if I walked through the railway tunnel. There was a large sign saying that traversing the tunnel on foot was “strengthily undersaid” and punishable by a heavy fine. It got darker and darker in the tunnel, and I could walk straight only by trailing the bottom of my Alpine stock along one of the rails. Then I heard behind me the chug-chug of the little locomotive, which carried no headlight. I was really scared, and hurried along stumbling over the ties in the darkness. I seemed to be holding my own with the little engine, however, and presently emerged from the tunnel — almost into the astonished arms of two uniformed guards or policemen. I tried to pass with a cheery “Guten Abend”, but one of them seized me, swung me around, and said I was under arrest.

There was a high perpendicular cliff on one side of the track and an exceedingly steep declivity of loose stones or talus on the other. As the policeman released his hold on my arm and began talking excitedly to his companion, I said angrily, in my best German, “I am in a great hurry and have no time to be arrested”, and leaped over the edge of the embankment astride my Alpine stock. Holding the top in both hands and trailing the rest behind me, and paddling with both feet, I slithered down at terrific speed, like a witch on a broomstick, followed by an avalanche of loose stones. Reaching the bottom of the talus slope where the pine forest commenced again, I glanced back and saw the train had stopped and the two policemen were climbing on board. Realizing I was now a fugitive from justice as well as a tunnel “crasher”, I ran down the mountain, cutting across the zigzags of the trail and jumping over logs and boulders. I reached Interlaken well ahead of the train, and sought the sanctuary of my hotel.

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Wood was present as a friend at the last successful glider flights made by Otto Lilienthal, which took place only a few days prior to the crash that caused the inventor’s death. I scarcely need to tell you that Wood himself insisted on making a flight in the glider too — and did so successfully. Lilienthal was the first man to navigate the air for any distance without the aid of a balloon. Wood made the last photos ever taken of his flights, and still has the letter Lilienthal wrote on Saturday, August 8, 1896, inviting him to come along next day — which proved to be the ill-fated day on which the glider crashed.

Wood wrote an article for the Boston Transcript on this experience, from which he has prepared the following account.