Hardly had we gone twenty miles before the first rain-clouds of the season raced across the sky. The velocity of the wind was so great that it ripped off one of the sails of our boat. Seeing that there was no time to be lost, I opened the cage and released the three pigeons. As they struck the wind they vaulted right over and flew very low, almost falling into the water. They flew thus close to the surface of the river for a quarter of an hour, making very little headway against the hard wind. But they persisted and another ten minutes saw them safely tacking and flying landward. Just about the time they had reached the string of villages on our left, the sky grew pitch black, a torrential cloudburst blotted everything out, and we saw nothing but inky sheets of water through which the lightning zig-zagged and danced the dance of death. I gave up all hope of finding my pigeons again. We were almost ship-wrecked ourselves, but fortunately our boat was beached on the shore of a village. Next morning when I came home by train I found two wet pigeons instead of three. Gay-Neck's father had perished in the storm. No doubt it was all my fault, and for the few days that followed our house was given up to mourning. The two pigeons and I used to go up on the roof whenever the rain left off a bit in order to scan the sky for a glimpse of the father. Alas, he never returned.
CHAPTER IV
GAY-NECK IN THE HIMALAYAS
ince the rain and the heat in the plains proved excessive, my family decided to take us to the Himalayas. If you take a map of India you will find that in its northeast corner is a town called Darjeeling, standing almost face to face with Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world. After travelling, not too fast, by caravan, several days from Darjeeling, my family, myself and my two pigeons reached the little village of Dentam. There we were ten thousand feet above sea level. At such a height an American mountain or the Alps would have at least some snow, but in India, which is in the tropics, and on the Himalayas, hardly thirty degrees north of the equator, the snow line does not commence under ten thousand feet, and the jungle of the foot hills abounding with animals is so cold after September that all its denizens migrate southward.
Let me give you just a slight picture of our setting. Our house of stone and mud overlooked small valleys where tea was grown. Beyond, between serried ridges that stuck out in harsh but majestic curves, were valleys full of rice-fields, maize, and fruit orchards. Further on rose the dark evergreen-clad precipices over which reared thousands of feet of pure white ranges, the Kanchinjinga, the peak Makalu, and the Everest ranges. In the first flush of dawn they looked white; but as the light grew in brightness and the sun rose higher, peak after peak defined itself, not far off in the horizon, but piercing the very middle of the sky whence poured a flood of crimson light like the very blood of benediction.
One usually sees the Himalayas best in the early morning for they are covered with clouds during the rest of the day. Hindus, who are religious people, get up in good time to behold the sublime hills and to pray to God. Can there be a better setting to prayers than those mountains most of whose peaks yet remain unexplored and untrodden by man? Their inviolate sanctity is something precious, which remains a perpetual symbol of divinity. Heights like that of the Everest are symbols of the highest reality—God. They are symbolic of God's mystery, too, for with the exception of the early morning they are as I have said, shrouded with clouds all day. Foreigners who come to India imagine they would like to see them all the time, but let no one complain, for he who has beheld Everest in its morning grandeur and awe-inspiring glory will say "It is too sublime to be gazed at all day long. None could bear it continually before his eyes."
In July those early morning views of the Everest are not vouchsafed us every day, for it is the month of rain. All the ranges lie in the grip of the most devastating blizzards. Once in a while above the battle of storms and driven snow the peaks appear—a compact mass of hard ice and white fire. They glow intensely in the sunlight, while at their feet the snow clouds whirl and fall like fanatical dervishes dancing frenziedly before their terrible God.
During the summer my friend Radja and our teacher in jungle lore, old Ghond, came to visit our home. Radja was about sixteen years old, already a Brahmin priest, and Ghond we always called old, for none knew his age. Both Radja and I were handed over to that most competent of hunters for the purpose of studying under his guidance the secrets of jungle and animal life. Since I have described them in my other books, I need not repeat myself here.