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.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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—but the Professor stated that he felt very like a war-horse, or at least like a convalescent war-horse; and a little while after the others had been trying to persuade him to ride and not to walk so much, with his own hands he shot a snow-leopard. They had risen for days to the last high pass before Tanglha-Tso, and they were just descending again towards the snow-line when a thar dashed across their path, leaping madly over the rocks: immediately behind it came a snow-leopard, gaining on it fast in huge bounds. The Professor, who was in front, whipped up his rifle and fired. The snow-leopard seemed to check in mid-air. It fell awkwardly on its side, staining the snow with scarlet blood. It gave a great coughing roar and came straight for them. The Professor was fumbling at his spectacles: he had knocked them sideways as he fired, a
nd the others could not shoot without hitting him. But five yards from the Professor’s maddened pony the leopard fell, rolled, twitched and lay still. Chingiz, racing through the line of plunging, panicking yaks, put a bullet between it eyes for good measure, but the great beast was already dead. Chingiz ran forward to take its whiskers for a charm, and the others gathered round it. Lying there on the snow it looked unbelievably large, with its thick yellowish fur and its long, deep-furred tail.
“Big, big, big,” cried Ngandze in admiration, stretching out his hands: he bent, cut off an ear and ate it with every appearance of appetite.
“What an extraordinarily bold creature,” said the Professor, who was still a little flustered.
“They are very bold,” said Sullivan. “I suppose it is because so few of them are killed.”
“Professor,” murmured Ross in his ear, “you were not aiming at the thar, were you?”
“I cannot deny it,” replied the Professor, with a blush, “but they were very close together, you know, and I assure you that I did fire on purpose.”
DOWN THEY WENT, below the snow-line again and to the high pastures where the yaks were grazing by the small summer settlements of the herdsmen, down to the racing, ice-cold river and the hardy trees, and after three days more they saw the village of Tanglha-Tso, dominated by its high, white-walled monastery. It looked like a morning’s ride, but in that high, clear air they knew very well by now that distances were deceptive, and it did not surprise them to find that three days elapsed before they reached the little, dirty, huddled village.
This was the first inhabited lamasery that Derrick had seen, and he asked his uncle whether he could go up and look into it: he also asked whether it was not dangerous for them to stay there.
“Didn’t you say, Uncle, that we were going to avoid lamaseries?” he asked finally.
“If I had asked my Uncle Paddy half so many questions,” said Sullivan, “he would have kicked me from Connaught to the city of Cork, and if I had asked my Uncle Murtagh—but I am a quiet, civil-tempered man and mild to a fault. In the first place, if we were to go through Tibet without passing any villages with monasteries, we would have to have wings and feed on the air, like birds of Paradise. In the second place, this is not a Red-Hat monastery: it is a small place, of no great importance, and from what I hear the abbot is a good, gentle creature. And in the third place, if I catch you peering about that lamasery, I’ll have the hide off you with a rope’s end. We must not offend their religious ideas in any way at all, and until you know their habits there’s no telling what may upset them. The Professor is going up with the Tibetans to pay his respects: he doesn’t want the whole ship’s company hanging around and gaping like a lot of stuck pigs.”
In the evening the Professor came back. “I cannot tell you how charmed I am with this place,” he said. “Nothing could have exceeded the friendliness of my reception. The abbot was delighted with our little offering, and he sends you each a scarf. It was extraordinarily fortunate that we arrived today, or I should have been deprived of the pleasure of his conversation: he and all his monks are to go on a pilgrimage to the Gompa Potala early tomorrow morning.”
“Did you say conversation, Professor?” asked Ross. “You must have done very well with your Tibetan vocabulary.”
“That was the most delightful thing about it: the abbot speaks Chinese. He spent years in Peking with the Teshoo Lama many years ago—he is an old man—and he is more fluent than I am myself. He told me a great many fascinating things, and he was kind enough to say that he bitterly regretted the necessity for his journey tomorrow. He is writing a book on the ceremonies peculiar to this part of Tibet, and he gave me a detailed account of the progress of his manuscript.”
“Did he tell you anything about our route?” asked Sullivan.
“Yes. But first I must give you a glimpse of the worthy abbot’s character. He astonished me by taking me for a Chinese.”
“It is hardly so very astonishing, Professor,” said Sullivan. “With your tinted glasses and in your present robes, I think you could very well pass for a Chinese of the taller kind, particularly among people who are not accustomed to Europeans.”
“Well, be that as it may, my command of the language is hardly that of a native of the country, and when I attempted to disabuse him, he would not listen to me. With what I at first took for an unexpected discourtesy he interrupted me, and repeated emphatically that I had come from China. I agreed, but before I could go on, he said, ‘For all practical purposes, those who come from China are Chinese.’ He then added that it would be a great pity if he or his monks were to spread it abroad that foreigners had illegally come into the land and were travelling about it without permission; whereas if it were known that a Chinese scholar was moving from point to point in a peaceable manner, no notice would be taken: the Chinese, you know, have a vague suzerainty over Tibet. I understood his meaning in time, and I thought it not improper to acquiesce in the innocent deception. I am afraid that I went so far as to describe you all as barbarian porters for whose almost-human good behavior I could vouch. ‘Oh, as for the outlandish slaves,’ says he, ‘nobody will take any notice of them, so long as you govern them strictly.’ ”
“Almost human, sir?” said Derrick.
“I thought it necessary to flatter you, my boy,” said the Professor kindly, “And seeing that I had already committed myself to deception, I felt that I might as well go on to the limit of credibility.”
“I hope,” said Sullivan gravely, “that it has not strained the abbot’s power of belief beyond all repair. But we must comfort ourselves with the reflection that he has never seen Derrick. But tell me, Professor, what did he say about our route?”
“He was very encouraging, except for one matter; and he gave me a highly detailed map. Here it is . . .” The Professor felt in his robes. “Bless me,” he exclaimed after a minute, “I must have left it behind.”
“Perhaps sitting upon?” suggested Li Han deferentially.
“Why, how very extraordinary,” said the Professor, rising, “so I was. Well, here we are, you see, just by the mouth of this benign scarlet dragon. It is not, perhaps, quite as clear as your charts, but he assured me that it is accurate. No, one should hold the north to the right, thus.” They leant over the map: it was beautifully decorated with phoenixes, dragons of different colours, and fiends, and at first it conveyed very little; but when they got used to the curious shifting scale and the various symbols, it made thoroughly good sense.
“This is an absolute treasure,” said Sullivan, with keen approval. “But what was the discouraging point he spoke about?”
“The Red-Hats,” replied the Professor. “He advised us at all costs to avoid their villages, and he has marked all the places where they are likely to be met—here, you see, and here. But there are two places where we cannot avoid them without a very long detour, and a third where it is impossible to get by without climbing a ridge that must, from his description, closely resemble the precipice that we all remember so well—only this one is higher, and the entirety of it is perpetually coated with ice. He suggested that we should so arrange our journey that we pass by this place at night by the light of the moon.”
“That is a very sensible idea,” said Ross. “I think your abbot must be a decent sort of a body.”
“He is the most swollen of guys, I assure you,” said the Professor. “It is the world’s pity that we cannot stay here a week—that is, if he were staying too—in order to become better acquainted. But, of course, we must not forget that the highest passes, here and here on the map, and here, are likely to close very early. The abbot kindly said that he would continually pray for a late winter for us.”
“But what about this valley?” said Sullivan, who had been studying the map intently. “It is surely far more direct, and it cuts off the worst Red-Hat place.”
“Oh, yes. I had meant to ask him about that. He has, as you see, drawn his pen across the end of it—the map i
s very old, by the way, and he has made several alterations and additions to it here and there—and I was just about to ask him why he did so when we were interrupted.”
“I suppose it must be blocked by an impassible ice-fall, or something of that nature,” said Sullivan. “Yet it might be worth exploring: it is so very much more direct.”
He returned to this subject in the morning. “Do you think, Professor,” he said, “that you could send a note up to the abbot asking him about that valley?”
“But I am afraid that he is already gone. Did you not hear the horns and the gongs at the first light this morning?”
“Yes. I couldn’t very well avoid hearing them. But Li Han could ride after him. They won’t be going very fast. And that would have the advantage of giving the other monks the impression that this is really a Chinese affair—he could be the overseer of the barbarian slaves.”
“Of course. We could send a note. I had not thought of that. Now wait a moment: how had I better phrase it?”
Li Han hurried after the lamas with the note and a supplementary present, and before noon he came back with the answer.
“What does he say?” asked Sullivan eagerly.
“Well,” said the Professor, looking thoughtfully at the paper. “I am by no means sure. I am very much afraid that the dear man’s knowledge of Chinese is largely confined to the spoken language. As you know, one can speak Chinese perfectly without being able to write a single word or read one solitary character—that is the case with Derrick, for example, and the vast mass of the Chinese peasantry. Indeed, it is said that the proportion of illiteracy——”
“But the message, Professor?” urged Sullivan gently.
“Yes. The message. Let us be business-like. Now the beginning is clear enough—a conventional greeting—and so is the end, which is a conventional blessing. But the middle contains a number of unrelated characters of which I can make out this one, which means impossible, and this, which resembles the character for ‘kwei’—that is, ‘devils or fiends.’ Or perhaps I should say malignant demons. Then we have ‘pu hsing,’ which means ‘it would not work’ or, to use a colloquialism, ‘no go.’ Then the character for impossible, with an emphatic reduplication.”