At that hour Subhan came to me, and said it had cleared up, and I should be better above. I obeyed. The clouds were still heavy and lowering, shifting up and down, breaking and allowing us occasional and most welcome glimpses of the sun, or rather, sunshine. The effect was striking and grand in the extreme. This rugged, wild gorge enveloped in ever-shifting, varying vapours of different degrees of density—now one peak visible, but to be obscured, and another to be ushered on the scene—it appeared as if all above was commotion, silent commotion, the clouds and mountain-summits playing at hide and seek.
We took a final warm at the fire: I threw off my overcoat, and, shivering in my scanty shooting dress, started off over the tract of snow campwards, the shikarries ever looking about for game.
We had advanced within a mile or two of the new site for the bivouac, when Mooktoo, this time, who was in his usual place behind me, exclaimed that animals were in sight. The spyglass was put in request, and sure enough, said Subhan, there were some ten or twelve keyl (ibex) disporting themselves on a distant mountain. It was long ere I caught sight of them, looking at the wrong place. But at last I did see them plainly: two were rearing up on their hind legs, fighting.
Well—we sat there hopelessly gazing, until the snow, on which we were squatting, produced the natural effect, and, penetrating my frame, set my teeth chattering: so on we went, but some way further we came in sight of another flock of ibex, much nearer, though on the same mountain. They were plainly visible to the naked eye, and with the glass their horns and relative proportions were distinctly seen, and commented upon.
This was an exciting sight. "Could nothing be done?" I asked anxiously. "Nothing this evening," was the reply. So, on we trudged, I submitting patiently to the fiat, and casting many a side glance upwards, causing me many a trip and stumble in my rough path. As we came more under the mountain on which the ibex were, a change of position on their part effected a change in the minds of the shikarries who, calling a halt, held a brief consultation together. Then, their eyes sparkling with excitement, they uncovered the guns, and off we started.
I little thought, as I hastily followed the active Subhan, what work I had cut out for me. The place the ibex were in did not appear high up, nor did the ground appear very difficult from the distance; but when I began to breast it, I found out my mistake, both as to incline and altitude. I strove and struggled, scrambled and clawed my upward path, until quite breathless and exhausted, and found I was but at the very commencement of the ascent. Having gained breath, I went through the same severe efforts, to find apparently the same prospects, but with this terrible difference that, by my own exertions, I had now created a precipice below me, fearful to look upon.
Subhan now suggested giving up the attempt: but a sort of infatuated obstinacy seized me. As well as the heaving of my distressed lungs permitted, I articulated, with an upward glance, 'Go on.' Indeed, I felt at the time a sort of necessity to move upwards, in spite of all difficulties, so appalling was the aspect of the descent now necessary; so clinging to the surface, embracing, as it were, as much of the mountain as I could clasp, and helping myself occasionally with my spiked staff, I still struggled upwards, coming to bare smooth places that I thought it impossible to climb over. At times, pausing at such critical spots, I felt my head wavering, my courage waning, and my nerves unstrung, my hold relaxing, my feet slipping, and then a sort of frenzy seized me, and, summoning every energy I possessed, I recklessly dashed on, on all fours, feeling that to hesitate for one moment, to keep hand or foot a second on one spot, would inevitably plunge me into the abyss below.
The shikarries, each carrying a gun in one hand, made their way with extreme difficulty, and, I believe, not without trepidation. But they possess a clutch, and a tenacity, and adhesion of toe, peculiar to this variety of biped, which gives them firmness and confidence anywhere. It was a very different thing for me.
At length, we gained the top of this spur of the mountain, which actually offered no footing, the ridge being sharp, and the other side not only precipitous, but hollowed out. Here lying, holding on tooth and nail, we observed the ibex, which had taken the alarm, and were rapidly moving away; and even had they remained, we could not have got at them. So all our trouble, and the horrible ordeal of fear I had undergone, were utterly thrown away.