“This is much better,” said the Professor. “If this goes on, and a good cold wind follows the snow, we shall have a fine crust to walk upon.”
The next day it seemed to them that there was less falling, and that the snow that still filled the air was mostly driven from the enormous drifts by the wind, which had changed its quarter to a little east of north. Still they could not get out, and Sullivan spent his time copying the map that had been destroyed and tunnelling towards the slaughtered yak. It was exhausting work, but to some degree it kept them from thinking of the fate of Olaf and Li Han. They reached the yak at last, and Chingiz cut it into strips in the Mongol fashion. The flesh was stiff, and it would keep as though it were in a refrigerator.
“At least we shall not have a repetition of the heights above Hukutu,” said Sullivan, as he arranged the strips into solid packs and roped them down.
The snow stopped. It stopped suddenly, as if it had been turned off, and it was succeeded by a night of the most appalling wind, a wind that reached the intolerably high shrieking note of a hurricane in its last tremendous gusts as it blew itself out a few hours before the dawn.
In the morning they dug themselves out and stood on the hard, firmly frozen snow, under a pure sky, a great blue bowl with the sun already shooting up rays of light into it from the east: there was no wind at all, only a limitless silence all around them.
They instantly organised a search for Olaf and Li Han, but after the first hour or so they had very little hope. The vast face of the glacier was one smooth, unbroken table of fresh snow: not one of the deep crevasses could be seen. Chang did his best: he knew very well what they were looking for, but he could not pick up a hint of scent, not the slightest vestige of a trail.
For three days they went on, although time was so pressing and they knew that every hour was essential if they were ever to cross the high pass alive. Already they had lost a week with the blizzard and the search: they knew that they must either pursue their journey or stay for ever. Yet it was with heavy hearts and unwilling minds that they left their camp at last and set their faces to the west.
They left markers, a copy of the map, a compass, as much food as they could possibly spare and a letter in which Sullivan wrote that they would leave clear signs all the way along their route.
“They have probably got snowed up,” he said as they left, “and it will take them some time to dig their way out. I know that they would have had time to catch up with the yak, and they will have all they need. We shall see them soon enough, I am sure.” But his words had a very hollow ring, and as Derrick looked back at the glacier for the last time he felt the tears running down his face and freezing as they ran.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT WAS TWO DAYS now since Ross had gone, and they were still marching. How many days it was since they had left the camp by the glacier Derrick could no longer tell. He had kept count once, but now he concentrated all his energy on putting one foot in front of another. He watched nothing but the ground, deep snow, thin snow, ice or rock, before him, for he knew that if he stumbled and fell it would need a great effort to get up, perhaps more of an effort than he could ever manage again. He stared at the ground and at Chang, moving slowly just in front of him.
They had lost Ross two days before, when they were crossing a maze of tumbled boulders. Sullivan had led him through successfully to the little scratching in the snow that they called their camp: he had brought him through, although the last half-mile took him nearly two hours. For Ross’s feet had gone with the cold. He had suspected that they were frost-bitten some days after they had weathered out the blizzard, and when, by himself in a hidden corner of the rocks, he had managed to wrench off his frozen boots, he saw that they were already black, he had known that it was only a question of a little while before he would be unable to go on. But he kept up with them in their slow and painful race for the high pass, a race against the winter snow, until he saw that with all his efforts he was still holding them back and that they were making preparations to carry him.
Sullivan brought him into the camp that night, but in the morning he was not there. There was his rifle, his ammunition, his meagre rations for the next few days—there was no more after that—and on top of the neat pile a note for Sullivan. Sullivan had read it and had gone out. Derrick had thought that he was searching for Ross, although a light fall of snow in the night would have made the search almost impossible, but he was not. He was sitting on a rock, out of sight of the others. He sat there for an hour, and then, with a face like death, he came back and slowly began arranging things for the morning’s march. Derrick had questioned him: he had not replied. Derrick had repeated the question, and Sullivan had knocked him down: Derrick had not questioned him again.
They all of them understood the agonising decision that Sullivan had made, and they respected it, for he alone knew what Ross had said in that last note that he had managed to scribble in the night.
But that was two long days ago, and since then the weather had been bitterly cold.
Two days, thought Derrick. And how many days before that had it been that they had first come in sight of the tremendous peak that soared up into the sky away over on their left? He could not remember: it must have been many days, perhaps a week by now. They had said that it must be the peak called the Silent One—it was shown on the map as not being very far away. Perhaps it was not very far away: but it never seemed to come any nearer, for now their day’s march was pitifully short, although they kept on and on and on, as if they felt that they would never start again if once they stopped. It was Chingiz, as much as anyone, who kept them going now. He had revealed a wonderful, inborn toughness, a resistance to hunger and cold, sorrow and disappointment: even now, as Derrick saw, looking up for a moment, he was helping the Professor along: the old man’s arm was on his shoulder, and Chingiz was guiding him over some icebound stones. He had a wonderful fund of deep courage, and Derrick, fighting against despair, tried dumbly to imitate him. The Professor was doing his very best: everyone knew that. But in these last few days he had aged very suddenly. He grieved for the losses they had sustained, and particularly for Li Han. They talked very seldom now, but some nights back, before Ross had gone, the Professor had said, as they lay huddled in what coverings they had in the shelter of two sharply-angled rocks, “I had meant to take Li Han back with me. He had a deep and genuine love for learning—a disinterested love—and a very real capacity for it. With all his amusing and endearing ways, he had a true scholar’s soul: we would have worked together. . . .” He broke off, and when Sullivan had tried, rather clumsily, to comfort him and had said that Li Han and the jade—for Li Han had been carrying it all, and had done so ever since the Professor’s illness—were not lost, that they would both turn up together, the Professor had burst out passionately, “I would have given every last scrap of that wretched stuff, I would have smashed it all with a hammer, to have prolonged my young friend’s life. And when I think that perhaps it was the weight of that miserable treasure that might have caused his loss, I . . .” He could not finish.
On and on. This was like the dreadful heights above Hukutu, except that there they had known that there was hope below them, and here they did not. But there, on the other hand, they had had no food; while here they did have a very little still—more than a very little, since Ross’s sacrifice.
On and on. It was a good thing, thought Derrick, that there was no wind today, for they were walking high on the side of the valley, not in its bed as they usually did, and a wind, with that slope on the right, would have been very dangerous. They were high up on the valley’s side and climbing in order to cross the distant col that might mark the highest point before their descent: it was possible that that was the high pass itself, but they had very little hope of it. However, they kept on as though it were: there was nothing else to do, except to lie down and give up hope—an easy solution and a very tempting one to utterly exhausted men, but Sullivan would not allow it for a moment. He
did not persuade now: he hit.
For a long time the valley had been widening; it still wound and twisted, but it was less enclosed, and although it held the silence of the everlasting snows, it was no longer the oppressive valley that they had once known. Ever since that frightful day when they had lost the yaks they had travelled on unattacked; they had seen none of those ominous and terrifying tracks, and occasionally they had seen a few birds. They had all known, without being able to say how they knew it, that the things that had haunted them were no longer there. It had been a strange relief at first, but with time, growing weakness and weariness beyond exhaustion, Derrick, for one, no longer cared very much whether the things were there or not. If one had stood in his path he would have plodded blindly on, straight for it: there was only one thing that was important now, to keep his feet moving, to keep on and on; not to let the others down, but to go on, go on, even if it were for ever.
He was tired as he had never been, as he had never believed that it was possible to be tired. It was so long now since they had eaten properly—they dared not let themselves run out of food—that their energy had drained to its very last reserves. Derrick looked up again, and his heart, already low enough, fell farther still: the southern sky was dark with snow-clouds, and the somber, impenetrable mass was surging towards them. They could never survive another heavy fall. He looked forward to the Silent One, and high on its southern ridge he saw the flurry of the coming wind that tore a great twisting pillar of snow high into the air, like a plume. “Get on,” snapped his uncle from behind. Derrick jerked into movement again, swayed and almost fell. Sullivan gripped and steadied him. “Easy does it, boy,” he said, in his old, kind voice.
Derrick went on. He passed Chingiz and the Professor, who were changing places. They did not speak, but gave him an encouraging look.
Now Derrick was in front, and he had to make the first steps in the snow. It was not difficult, fortunately, and he went on with a steady pace over the good, firm crust. The direction was easy enough, too: for a long time now they had been following what must have been a natural fault in the rock that led straight for the col. It looked exactly like a path, and they prayed that it might not peter out before the col and leave them with steps to cut or steep slopes to climb: these natural faults that looked like paths so often did that.
On and on. He kept his head down and went down. There was very little weight on his shoulders now, little more than his sleeping fur: the food only occupied a small corner of it: but still it felt like a great burden, and it was easier to walk bowed. On and on. One of the curious things about this altitude—and now they were very high—was that it played tricks on your eyes when you were very tired, he reflected. Only a little while ago he had thought that he saw a windmill on its back on a sort of natural platform in the side of the valley: it was just one of those illusions like the string of yaks that he could have sworn that he had seen early in the morning. They were rocks, of course, but he had been so utterly certain that he saw them move even when he was so close that he could touch them.
On and on. There was no point in taking any notice of those things: they only excited you and made you lose the rhythm of your steps. Chang was whining and looking into his face. “Oh, shut up, Chang,” he murmured wearily. He must not break the rhythm, or he would stop and fall.
The first flakes began to fall quite gently, hissing with a tiny noise as they touched the ground. It was getting very dark. He did not look up, but he knew that the sky was a menacing grey.
“Shut up, Chang,” he said, rather louder, but the dog would not be quiet. He whined insistently, ran ahead, came back and whined again.
Derrick did not look up. He was turning a corner to the left, and with the great drop below him on his right he needed all his attention. Chang whined and whined: at last he barked, and Derrick looked up. The small dark man on the path before him waved his umbrella. Derrick took no notice. These illusions, he thought: how absurd they are. This one is a man dressed in yellow cotton robes and carrying an ordinary umbrella—an umbrella, of all things. On and on: get back the rhythm of your steps. Then suddenly he thought it strange that Chang had seen it too. He looked up again. The man was within a few yards of him, looking apprehensively at Chang, who was baying so that the valley rang.
“Are you a man?” asked Derrick, in a dull, toneless voice. He was too tired to think in anything but English, yet he was not surprised to hear the man reply, “Yes. Please call off your dog.”
THEY WERE SITTING in a small, bare room in the lower buildings of the lamasery before a glowing fire. “I don’t know what to make of it at all,” said Sullivan, looking at his bandaged hand: he spoke in a low voice, not to be heard outside.
“Does it hurt?” asked the Professor.
“No, I don’t mean my hand—it doesn’t hurt in the least—but the whole situation. How does it look to you, Professor? Are they going to keep us here, or is it something else they have in mind?”
“Well, I am not sure of the answer to that. But the general position as I see it is this. We are in a lamasery of the strictest, most ascetic order in Tibet: that is why we have never been taken to the higher building, which is where the masters live—the Great Silent Ones, as Sita Ram calls them. They dislike our presence, of that I am sure. Sita Ram, who is, within certain limits, our friend, mentioned that they had been very much disturbed by the coming of that unfortunate refugee in his flying-machine; and when I asked what had happened to the man, he became evasive, and replied that he did not know, that he thought he had been removed. What he meant by removed, I do not know. But it appears that Sita Ram has no authority to make a decision—he is not allowed even to speak to the Great Silent Ones—until the arrival of another Hindu, whose name is Coomaraswarmy.”
“You have the impression that these are genuinely ascetic lamas?”
“I am sure of it. In my walk yesterday I wandered up in that direction, and I saw one of them sitting motionless in the snow: he was dressed in nothing but a thin fold of cotton. Furthermore, the extreme isolation of this place is a proof that they wish to live utterly retired from the world. These are very strange people indeed, Sullivan.”
“That’s true enough. But if they are all they appear to be, surely they could not have any evil intentions—though I must admit that it looks as though they had.”
“It does not follow at all, I am afraid. There is no trusting to this crazy piety. I have never thought highly of men who run to extremes, whether it is an alleged Christian who spends thirty years on top of a pillar or a fanatic who lies on a bed of spikes: in my view—though I may be mistaken—it has nothing to do with religion whatever, and such people, however austere they may be, are just as capable of cruelty as other men; perhaps even more so. But it all depends on this Coomaraswarmy.”
There were steps outside, and they stopped. In the long stone passage they heard voices, one loud and bullying, the other soft and apologetic.
“The quiet one is Sita Ram,” whispered Sullivan.
The door opened, and a tall, burly man walked in, followed by Sita Ram. The big man looked sharply round the room: the whites of his eyes were bloodshot, and his dark face was congested. It was obviously he who had been talking so angrily, but now he mastered himself and smiled.
“Professor Ayrton?” he said, advancing into the room.
“Good afternoon,” said the Professor, rising. “Mr. Coomaraswarmy, I believe.”
The Hindu was about to reply when Chingiz’s long, evil-looking dagger caught his eye as it lay on the bench. He turned to Sita Ram with a flow of angry words, and then he said, “I must ask you to give up all these things. I wonder that it has not been done before. They have no place in a house of peace.”
“Before we go any further,” said the Professor, handing them over, “I should like to ask you, with the utmost urgency, to let a party be sent down the valley to search for one of our number who had to be left behind. He may still be alive if your people use the
greatest dispatch.”
“Which way did you come?”
The Professor described their route. “No, no. You are lying,” cried the Hindu with an insolence that made the Professor redden.
“I am not in the habit of lying,” he said, in an even voice.
“I have seen the English in India,” said the big Hindu, “and I know when to believe the oppressors of my country. They all lie. You say you are Professor Ayrton. I know it is false. I know Professor Ayrton: he is in Hyderabad: you are not the same man.”
“You are thinking of my brother, the mathematician,” said the Professor, keeping his temper admirably.
“The gentleman is Professor Ayrton,” murmured Sita Ram. “I often saw him at Oxford.”
“Well,” said Coomaraswarmy, “that may be true. But he is lying when he says he came up the forbidden valley.”
“If you mean that we could not have come up because of the things you have placed there,” said Sullivan, striding up to him and glaring down into his eyes, “I tell you that you are mistaken.”
The Hindu dropped his eyes and stepped back.
“And tell me, Coomaraswarmy,” said Sullivan, unable to keep the rasp out of his voice, “are those things that you employ down there fit agents for a house of peace?”
“They kill nobody,” faltered the Hindu. “They have their orders . . . they are only guards. The Great Silent Ones love their peace.” Suddenly he dodged out of the door, and they heard him running down the corridor, with their weapons clattering as he ran.
“I should never have spoken,” muttered Sullivan, furious with himself.
Sita Ram was still standing there. He was pale, and he wrung his hands with distress. “Oh, what a pity it is,” he cried. “Mr. Coomaraswarmy does not like you.”
“We gathered that,” said the Professor. “I do not think we liked him, either.”
“But what will he do? What will he do?” said Sita Ram. “The lower men are to come over the pass tomorrow, and then what will he do? There are only a few attendants now, but tomorrow there will be many—very many. And what will he do?”