They followed the endless steps as they rose, zig-zagging to and fro across the mountain wall: sometimes the precipice was less sheer, and then in the water-worn gullies the steps gave place to a hacked-out path. This was a great relief, but the paths were short and few, and nearly always it was the perpetual upward climb.
At noon they came quite suddenly out of the cloud, and there far above them they saw the lamasery. Beyond that there were the peaks, black and white against the pure blue of the sky: below them rolled the impenetrable clouds, layer after layer of them, stretching out as far as the eye could see. They were nearing the snow-line, but still the mountain towered over them: it seemed to be just as high as it had been when they started.
‘Is this going on for ever?’ wondered Derrick, hitching his pack up on his shoulders. He had barked his shins several times on the high steps, there was a blister forming on his heel, and he was sore all over from the weight of his load and the gruelling climb. Chang whined in sympathy, and Derrick grasped his thick fur to help him up the awkward rise.
The only one who was enjoying himself was Professor Ayrton. He had always spent his holidays in the mountains, and he was much more at home on a steep slope than in the saddle of a horse. Furthermore, the light had revealed the presence of rock-carvings, ruined shrines and inscriptions all the way up the pilgrims’ way to the lamasery, and the combination of mountaineering and ancient inscriptions rejoiced the Professor’s heart. The carvings were quite recent – a mere thousand years or so – but they made the Professor’s day. Often, as they mounted, he would ask Olaf to make a back, and he would scramble up to inspect the deep-cut writing, still clear after all the centuries. But at last, when they were just below the snow, Olaf struck.
‘Ay don’t care if it’s double-Dutch,’ he said, ‘and anyway, Ay reckon it only says “Do not spit” or maybe “Ole’s Beer is Best”. But even if it was poetry, Ay reckon the son of a sea-cook would of wrote it at a proper level if he wanted it read,’ and he stumped obstinately away.
‘I wonder that he should speak so petulantly,’ said the Professor to Derrick, ‘he is usually such an obliging fellow. How could he suppose that it was an advertisement? It reads, “The thrice-born bearer of enlightenment …”’ But Derrick trudged on without waiting for the end.
They were none of them as cheerful as the Professor. Sullivan was moody and thoughtful: he was in a new country, not sure of his bearings and worried. Ross, habitually silent, was more taciturn than ever, for his fever was rising, and the lance-wound in his thigh was hurting cruelly. He had received it in the battle of the ravine, but he had not mentioned it, and he had thought it was healing well; but now it throbbed and ached so that every step was a torment.
Slowly the lamasery crept nearer, and by the evening they were at its gates. The roof had fallen long ago, but they found shelter enough and a few low shrubs to make a fire. The next morning saw them up and over the pass. Before them lay a great valley, sloping gradually upwards towards the south and reaching a great height at its farther end. In the extra-ordinarily keen and transparent air they could see the whole length of it, dazzling white, without a living thing.
‘It is a good thing that we are carrying enough food,’ said Sullivan, looking at his rough map. ‘We must go the whole length of this valley, and then at the far end we shall find a branch leading down to the west. We take that and come to a pass that leads down to the village of Hukutu. There is a glacier about half-way down, but once we are across that we drop to Hukutu, and there we should be able to get food, yaks and a guide.’ He checked the loads of food, and said, ‘Yes, I think we should have enough if we press on. Professor, you have buried your bronzes? Good, then we must get moving.’
Twice, as they made their journey along the southern valley, they saw ibexes, but neither time could they get a shot, and they had no time, with their limited rations, to spend half a day in stalking a group of them that they saw on the ridge to their left. The travelling was not too hard, once they had got used to the unaccustomed exercise of walking with heavy loads – an exercise which called muscles into play that were quite unused on horseback – and going along the southern valley they made good time. But when they came to the western branch they met a bitter wind that pierced them through and through, a more biting, cutting wind than the icy blast of the steppe. All the time they were climbing higher and higher, and in the rarefied atmosphere their ears and their noses bled; they soon became exhausted, and they grumbled almost to the point of mutiny as Sullivan urged them on. The bitter wind that never stopped cut the heart out of them, and the sun, while it heated them too much whenever they found shelter from the wind, served most of the time only to send a blinding glare from the snow below them and on either side.
The glacier proved very difficult: it was hatched all over with profound crevasses, and without ropes or proper boots they were often on the brink of disaster. Had it not been for the Professor’s knowledge of the high mountain they would never have crossed it; but they reached the top, and there they rested. It had been painfully slow, nearly a whole day for a pitifully short distance, but it had been shockingly arduous, and they felt that they deserved their rest.
‘We had better camp just under the steep slope, and keep that to warm us up in the morning, don’t you think, Ross?’ There was no reply, and he looked round. Ross was not there. They called and shouted, but there was no answer.
They found him at last, half-way down the glacier, creeping on his hands and knees along the edge of a crevasse, still trying to find a way across. It was a narrow crevasse, but he could not see to jump it: he was completely snow-blind, and he was very ill.
Now that they knew the way up the glacier it was easier, and they brought him up to the top before nightfall: their packs stood at the foot of a steep slope of old, hard snow; it seemed a wretched place for a sick man to spend the night, but he was at the end of his strength, and they could not go on.
‘Ay got an idea,’ cried Olaf, pointing to one of the Mongols’ swords. The Mongol gave it up, with a wondering stare, and Olaf began to cut great blocks from the hard snow. ‘We done this when Ay was a whaler,’ he explained, arranging them in a circle. ‘It ban a snow house.’ He raised the circle while the others cut and carried snow, raised it layer by layer, each layer forming a narrower circle until the whole thing was a dome. He cut the door, pommelled the arch that he had made, gave it a kick or two to make sure that it held, and crept in. They heard him thumping the inside, and then he called, ‘All ship-shape, Cap’n. Sling him in.’
They helped Ross in through the low arch and laid him on their sheepskin coats. There was room for them all, huddled close and sitting round the wall, and soon the place began to warm. To be out of the wind was already a huge advantage, and to be warm as well was bliss, in spite of the drops that fell from the roof. Ross started to feel very much better: he ate a strip of horse-flesh, and shortly after fell into a profound sleep.
In the morning he still could not see anything at all, but he insisted that he was perfectly fit otherwise, and that he could carry his pack. They all felt wonderfully refreshed for a night’s sleep in comparative warmth, and they faced the climb to the pass with renewed strength. Sullivan bent the end of the Mongol’s sword over at right angles, and the Professor went ahead, cutting steps in the packed snow: Olaf led Ross, and slowly they mounted to the pass.
‘At the top we should reach our highest point,’ said Sullivan, ‘and I think we ought to see straight down to Hukutu, or at least into its valley.’
Up and up they went. The wind died at noon, and they came up out of the deep shadow of the ridge into the hot sun as they reached the pass.
But there was nothing there. No village below them, no valley: not even a descent. There was only an unending waste of snow and rock that rose, after a short plateau, on and on as far as they could see. It was heart-breaking: they stopped all together,
