Chapter Ten.
The Markhôr Cave.
“There is a large section of our fellow subjects that votes Alpine climbing the most incomprehensible form of lunacy known to science, on the ground that to spend half one’s life, and putting the whole of it in pawn, scrambling up rocks and ice and snow, for the sake of getting to the top of some pinnacle which a hundred people have already got to, and thousands more eventually will, is to place one’s self beyond the pale of ordinary intelligence. But I wonder what such would say of a being of mature age, and laying claim to the possession of ordinary intelligence, who skips up in the middle of the night, and under the guidance of an Asiatic whom he can’t understand, and who can’t understand him, spends several hours crawling over boulders and along blood curdling precipices, on the off-chance of one shot—and the certainty of a miss—at an infernal wild goat, which is of no earthly use to you when you get him, except to stick up his head and brag about it ever after. The Alp-climber would have to cede to him the proud distinction of prize imbecile, I guess.”
Thus mused Campian, as, following in the wake of Bhallu Khan, he wormed himself warily around an elbow of rock, between which and space, was a foothold just twenty inches as to width, and precarious as to stability, he bearing in mind the while two considerations—firstly, the desirability of refraining from dislodging so much as a pebble; secondly, the necessity of refraining from dislodging himself. The first grey of early dawn was just breaking upon the mountain world, and here he was spread-eagled against a cliff of dizzy height and well nigh perpendicular formation: raked by a piercing wind, and wondering whether he should eventually get off it by the ordinary tedious process of slow and sure progression or by the rapid one of a false step—leading to pulverisation. As to one consideration, however, he laboured under no ambiguity of mind. Nothing on earth should induce him to return by the way he had come, even if it must needs take a week to go round by some safer way.
In due course however, the situation improved. The rock face grew less perpendicular, the path wider, and finally they found themselves in a steep gully. Here the old Pathân, pointing upward began signalling vehemently, the gist of which Campian took to be that he must proceed more noiselessly than ever, and that the ridge above being gained, they would find markhôr.
A clamber of a hundred feet—one pebble dislodged with a clatter, bringing his heart to his mouth, and a reproachful glance from Bhallu Khan—and they were cowering behind the top of the ridge. Campian wanted a few moments to steady himself after their long, hard climb. He could not shoot straight in a state of breathlessness, he declared.
It was quite light up here now, but the sun had not risen above the eastern mountain-tops. As they peered over the ridge, the valley beneath still lay in the grey half-dawn. But between it and their point of vantage, on the rock-strewn slopes beneath, something was moving, and it needed not the touch on the arm from the old Pathân and the barely articulated whisper to set Campian’s nerves tingling. He had already taken the rifle from the forester so as to be in readiness.
“Markhôr,” he whispered.