The Road to Samarcand Read online

  “They are probably riding slowly not to make any dust,” said Ross. “But it looks as though the Professor had done his business very well.” He pointed to the northern horizon, and there they saw the familiar shape of a dust-storm looming over the desert.

  “That will cover their tracks before the morning,” said Sullivan. “They were relying on you for a wind, Professor.”

  The Professor violently disclaimed any magic powers, but Chingiz and the two Mongols looked at him with marked respect, whatever he might say. He felt so strongly about it that he made Derrick translate his words to Chingiz.

  “The Professor says that he has no control over the winds,” said Derrick. “He says it is all nonsense and superstition. He says you mustn’t believe what they say about him.”

  “All the best magicians say that,” said Chingiz. “It is part of their magic.”

  They slept that night on a platform three hundred steps higher up, and in the morning they awoke in a vague world of cloud. There was white cloud below them and above, and when the morning breeze tore them, they could see nothing but the frightful precipice plunging down into vacancy, and black rocks dripping in the wet. The steps were slippery, and the temperature had dropped nearly to the freezing point. Ross was shivering with fever, but he climbed silently with the others.

  They mounted blindly: they could not see twenty yards above them, nor twenty yards below. The whole world seemed to be confined within the narrow walls of the cloud: the desert below might never have existed, nor the pass above. They followed the endless steps as they rose, zigzagging 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 extraordinarily 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, without a word.

  “What is the matter?” asked Ross, as he stood, holding on to Olaf’s shoulder.

  “It is not important,” replied Sullivan, after a moment’s pause. “It is just that I underestimated the distance a little. I misread the map, and said that we were at the pass before we had really reached it. It is some way farther on.”

  He took a compass bearing, and said cheerfully, “We will make for that ridge, and then I dare say we shall see our valley.”

  But no one believed him. They had all seen the map, and it clearly showed the pass and the fall to the valley as being just beyond the head of the glacier. Either Atakin, the Mongol who had drawn the map, had forgotten the way, or they had climbed on the wrong side of the glacier. Before them lay the enormous stretch of country between the Kunlun range and the Himalaya, hundreds of miles of it, with a cold death in every single mile. They had been so certain of the map that they had eaten well in the snow house, and in the morning they had used almost all their fuel. Food and fuel sacks were nearly empty.

  Derrick felt a kick behind that shot him a yard forward. “Don’t mooch along with a dismal face, boy,” said his uncle, walking along to the head of the line and whistling as he went. But his whistling could not restore the expedition’s heart. They had made a great effort, and now, some of them at least, felt so hopeless that they trudged slowly, unwillingly, without any spirit left. It was not that each of them was not a brave man in his own place, at sea or on the dusty steppe, but here they were dealing with enemies they did not understand, the altitude had given each of them the mountain-sickness to some degree, and for the Mongols there was the added fear of their inherited beliefs.

  Olaf resisted well enough, but it was the Professor who behaved the best of all. He was as nearly sure as Sullivan that the map had been mistaken, and he knew perfectly well that if they did not find Hukutu or some other human habitation in the next few days they would be in a very serious position, for there was no going back; but he exclaimed on the excellence of the snow-crust and the pleasure of walking on it, he even made Li Han run, and he encouraged them all by singing a discordant Tyrolean song. And it was he who discovered the hidden valley that lay on their right just before the midday halt: it was a narrow cleft between two snowy slopes, and as its end ran parallel to their route it had escaped the notice of the others. Even when he pointed it out, they scarcely saw it, for the white of its near side merged so perfectly with the white of its far side that it was nearly invisible.

  “While the banquet is being prepared,” he said, “I think I will just go over and look down that little valley.” He had already left the line to explore several others, and they watched him apathetically while Li Han unpacked the meagre store of food. They were squatting there when a shadow passed over the snow, and two choughs landed a little distance from them.

  “Who would have expected to find them up here?” exclaimed Sullivan, shooting them both. “They were extraordinarily tame,” he said, bringing them back. “I hope they will taste better than they look.”

  They were still eating and discussing the birds when the Professor rejoined them: he sat down and ate his three pieces of meat, and when they were getting up again Derrick asked him if he had seen anything in the valley.

  “Why, yes,” he said, in a conversational tone, “I looked down on a village that I take to be Hukutu. It is remarkable in that there appears to be no lamasery there, whereas I had——”

  “You saw Hukutu!” exclaimed Derrick. “Where? Is it far?”

  “—whereas I had been led to suppose,” continued the Professor, “that there was hardly an inhabited place in Tibet without its monastery. It is directly below us, as you always maintained, Sullivan. I should say that it is about seven thousand feet lower than we are, but I fear that the descent may present some difficulties.”

  With twice the speed of their morning’s march they hurried to the narrow valley. Here the snow lay loose and drifted, and they plunged in knee-deep. It was sweltering work under the noon-day sun, trapped as it was between the narrow walls, but their fresh hope—doubly strong after such a disappointment—carried them through in the Professor’s tracks, and very soon they were staring down a dark precipice that dropped a sheer two thousand feet, ice-coated here and there with ice that trickled now in the sun, but which would freeze again that night. Below the precipice there stretched the snow, but no longer unending snow, for it stopped five thousand feet below them, and then came a brown bar of naked earth, cut by streams that shone white in the distance. Below the brownness there was green, the green of pastures, and then the whole sweep of the broad valley, a river, a few dark patches that might be trees and even the tiny squares of fields, as small as postage stamps from that vertiginous height.

  “Where is Hukutu?” asked Sullivan.

  “You will have to lean out and look down to the left to see it,” replied the Professor, “but for heaven’s sake do not go too near the edge. This is only a snow cornice, and it might give.”

  Sullivan lay down and began to creep out, but the Mongols, who understood only the Professor’s pointing finger, walked boldly to the edge and peered out.

  “Take care,” cried the Professor, and as he spoke the jutting out rim of snow gave way. The two Mongols vanished with a cry and Chingiz hurled himself on his back, but half his body was over the edge and his hands clawed in vain for a split second in the snow for a hold. Derrick hurled himself forward, flat on his stomach, and grabbed Chingiz’s right hand as it went. There was a low moan from below, and Derrick felt the grip of the fingers slacken in his own: he held with all his force, gritting his teeth, and in a moment he felt Chingiz’s left hand come up and grasp him by the wrist.

  Sullivan had Derrick by the feet. “Have you got him?” he cried.

  “Yes. But pull me back. The snow is giving under me.” He felt himself slide back, and then the edge of the snow, windblown out from the precipice and overhanging it, gave way. A piece stretching from his chin to his stomach fell. He saw it hit Chingiz, who gave a grunt, and then Sullivan had pulled him farther back.

  “Hold on,” called Sullivan. “Olaf’s coming alongside of you.”

  Olaf edged himself rapidly against Derrick’s side: his long arms reached down to Chingiz’s elbows, raised him, took him by the neck and brought him up.

  Derrick crawled backwards on to the firm snow and saw Chingiz sitting with his back to a rock. His face looked terribly strange and drawn, but he smiled.

  “This will hurt,” said Sullivan, picking him up and layin
g him on his back. “His arm went backwards as he fell,” he said to Derrick, “and he was hanging by it with his shoulder dislocated.”

  He put his foot under Chingiz’s armpit, took his hand and pulled. The Mongol kept his face expressionless: he got up, moved his arm and nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and walked carefully towards the edge again.

  They all peered down the shocking drop, but there was no sign of the two tribesmen. There was a tumble of huge boulders, flecked with snow, that hid their bodies: there was no sort of hope at all.

  “They were good men,” said Chingiz, getting up at last.

  The others said the same, and they moved slowly back into the narrow valley. There was one thought in all their minds, but no one uttered it: the Mongols had been carrying the food and the fuel.

  “What do you suggest, Professor?” asked Sullivan. “We have got to get down there somehow. Two more nights up here would kill Ross, and I don’t think we’d last much longer ourselves without food. And I think it’s coming on to blow.”

  “Ice is what I am 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.”