afraid of,’ said the Professor. ‘We have been very lucky in meeting so little so far. Ice …’ he paused. A distant thunder away to their left mounted, surged into a roar that made the still air tremble, and died away. ‘Ice and that,’ he said.
‘What was it?’
‘An avalanche. A still, warm day like this will bring them on wherever the snow hangs steep. In a way it would be better if the temperature were to drop – it might be better, I mean, if the wind were to start again, however unpleasant it might be for us.’
They stood thinking, and on the face of the valley opposite to them, a mile away at the most, there was a puff of powdery snow, then the deep rumble, and the side of the mountain appeared to shift. A vast expanse of snow moved slowly, and then with enormously increasing speed, rushing down the slope, breaking into an almighty rolling wave under a cloud of spray-like powder-snow it hurled itself down into the floor of the valley. They could hardly hear themselves speak under the roaring thunder. Behind them, an ice-pinnacle, quivering in the vibration, fell with a metallic crash.
‘One starts another,’ observed the Professor. ‘It is undoubtedly of the first importance to get down out of these narrow and steep-sided valleys. But the question is, how? I need not waste time pointing out that if we had ropes and crampons it would be much easier. No.’ He stroked his chin. ‘I am of the opinion,’ he said slowly, ‘that the best thing is for us to build a shelter for Ross and that unfortunate young Chingiz, who must be suffering agonies, and to leave them with Derrick, while we separate and explore this ridge in each direction. The path certainly exists: I have no doubt of that. The trouble is to find it.’
‘From the map it should be to the west-nor’-west.’
‘Then if you will go along the ridge in that direction, I will go in the other. I suggest that we meet at the camp at sunset.’
But when they met again, they had found nothing: nowhere was there a fault in the sheer plunging cliff, nowhere a hint of a path. The shadow of the night fell across the valley, and instantly the cold began again. With the setting of the sun the wind that Sullivan had prophesied sprang up, and although they were in the shelter their breath froze on their faces.
In the morning they looked out into driving snow. It looked like the end, but in an hour or two it stopped, and the Professor, Sullivan, Olaf and Li Han went out. It was beyond all words frustrating to be within sight of salvation and yet to find no way down, but although they searched all day they found nothing but one valley far to the west that might, if it were followed, and if it turned to the left, lead below the snow. At least it did slope down, and they moved the camp to there. Sullivan shot another chough, and they cooked it over a fire made from fragments of a lacquered box that Li Han carried in his pack.
They were all very silent, but at the end of their brief meal Olaf said, with a laugh, ‘Ay reckon Ay was right when Ay stowed away all that duff with Hsien Lu.’
Sullivan said nothing, but Derrick saw him look thoughtfully at Chang.
In the morning they drank the snow-water that they had melted overnight, and they went on: Chingiz could not carry a pack, and now Ross could hardly walk. The valley did descend, sometimes so sharply that the climbing down was hard, and Sullivan and Olaf had to carry Ross; but it twisted and wound, and in spite of their compass bearings they could no longer be sure that it would ever join the valley of Hukutu. That valley seemed so distant now: Derrick remembered it with an effort as he tried to distract his mind from the awful gnawing hunger that worked in his stomach like a living thing and made him shiver all the time, whether he was in the sun or not; he remembered how they had looked down into it, and how strange it had been to see that down there it was summer.
He was walking steadily behind Olaf, slowly but steadily, chewing on his leather belt. Suddenly he bumped into Olaf’s back, for Olaf had stopped.
Olaf stood still, staring down and to the left. He put his hands up to his mouth, drew a deep breath and hailed with all the force of his lungs. ‘Ahoy!’ he roared, and from the rocks the echo came back, ‘Ahoy!’ But after the echo had died, there came from far over the snows an answering hail, quavering and long-drawn, the call of a Tibetan.
They had staggered into Hukutu more dead than alive, but they left it fit, strong and fat, with four Tibetan guides and a little train of yaks. Only the Professor was not well: after having survived the bitter days above the precipice, the hunger and the wicked cold, he came down with dysentery after two days in the village. All of them had it, more or less, except Chingiz, who was salted from birth against such ills, but all of them, save the Professor, got over it quite soon: he remained weak, thin and pale, and when they left he rode the only pony that the place could provide. Ross’s fever yielded to the vile grey brew that the old woman who ruled the village forced down his throat, and his sight came back. By the time they left he was as strong and formidable as ever.
Several times on the way over the mountains Sullivan had cursed the weight of gold in his money-belt; he had even been tempted to throw it away as an encumbrance that might lose him his life; but now he was glad of it. A handful of the mixed coins – sovereigns, twenty-dollar pieces, louis d’or and even gold mohurs – bought all that the village could afford to sell. It was not much, for the Tibetans there had little more than their bare subsistence, but there was food and warmer clothing – Tibetan furs and mountain boots – as well as yaks and the solitary pony, which would suffice to carry them westwards to Tanglha-Tso, where they could buy more provisions.
They set out as soon as the Professor could ride, for they had three high passes to cross before they reached Tanglha-Tso, and an unknown number beyond that point to the distant pass that would let them down to the Mongols’ land beyond the Takla Makan. Every day counted, for it was already harvest-time, and soon the early Tibetan winter would come on and close the passes; it would close them with impassable walls of snow, and guard them with the howling tempests of wind that no man could survive. Go they must, and quickly, for not only might the passes close, but if they lingered there would be trouble: they knew very well that Tibet was a forbidden land, and if once the authorities, knowing of their presence, caught up with them, there was no telling what would happen. The best that they could hope for was interminable delay. They pressed on, therefore, and although they were kept to no greater speed than the mild walking pace of the yaks, who would not and could not be hurried, yet they covered a surprising distance in their first week.
They had been lucky in finding two men in Hukutu who had enough Mongol to understand something of what they said, and one of them, Ngandze, was a widely travelled, intelligent man. He knew the country intimately as far as Tanglha-Tso, and he spent hours with Sullivan drawing a map: they chose their route with great care to avoid the bigger lamaseries, and in one place they decided on a detour of no less than twenty miles over bad country to avoid a monastery of the militant Red-Hat lamas, for an encounter with them would be dangerous to a high degree.
The days went by peacefully, one after another: they travelled through long, empty valleys, with plenty of fuel and game, roe-deer, maral, thars and a few birds like white quail. Their shooting did not please the Tibetans, who were devout Buddhists, and killed nothing whatsoever; but this did not prevent them from coming, one by one, around the pot when Li Han was cooking one of his excellent stews.
Once they were on the march the Professor recovered his health, and he plunged with characteristic enthusiasm into the compiling of a list of Tibetan words: he was still weak, and now Li Han carried all the jade sewn into his padded clothes or into a long cummerbund which he wrapped about his middle and never took off – an inner sash that gave him the girth of a mandarin and made him waddle like a duck
