In the midst of our difficulty, another of those violent storms fell on us, accompanied with hail, that was blown painfully against man and beast. It was impossible to struggle on against such adversity—a stiff ascent and a blinding storm. Even this came to an end, when we slowly breasted the hill again. By nightfall we had come out victorious; we had descended again the other side, and had encamped close to the river. We knew, though, that we were not sufficiently strong to overcome many more obstacles such as we had just surmounted. A wet morning of mist and rain followed this event. When we were able, we marched off again along the banks of the river till we found it was joined by another river coming from the north. This we had to cross with care.
On the other side, some distance off, I saw a yak, and set out ahead to shoot it. I wounded him grievously, and feeling certain that he would not go very far, I waited for the caravan to arrive, so that a man could come after me to bring along some meat. He gave me a longer chase than I had anticipated, but the last bullet told, when he rolled over on his back and kicked violently with all fours in his final struggles. He was a very fine fellow, as the man with me remarked, "Pahar ke muafic" (like a mountain), and his horns were over three feet long.
Laden with meat, I walked on in search of our camp, and was beginning to get a little uneasy at not having seen any signs of which way they had gone, for the sun was setting, when two very faint shots announced their whereabouts. That night we fared sumptuously, for Malcolm too had slain a yak near camp, as he thought it quite possible that the one I had gone after might have escaped altogether, which would have meant no supper.
We were aroused early by moans from Lassoo. We found him lying on his back and groaning, and argued that he must have been suffering from indigestion. We had been anxious to make an early start, but Lassoo's sickness and a thick, wetting mist quickly dispelled this wish. By midday Lassoo was relieved by administering warm flannel and Cockle's pills, and the mist, too, by the cheering sun. On the march I shot a goa with my shot-gun. He was very tame, never attempting to run away more than twenty yards from me. Later on two yak came charging down upon our caravan, within fifteen yards. Had they come much nearer we should have had to shoot them in self defence; yet we had no wish to, for we had abundance of meat for the time being, as much as we could manage to carry.
AN ENORMOUS YAK.
Although Colonel Prjevalsky writes that "wild yak shooting is as dangerous as it is exciting, for a wounded beast, especially an old bull, will often attack the pursuer," yet, personally speaking, I never found a yak attempt to charge, wounded or not, and consider there to be absolutely no more danger in shooting a yak than an antelope.
Towards evening, when we were thinking of calling a halt, we found another important river running in from the north, and which we should have to cross. We elected to do so that same evening, for we doubted being able to get the men to face the icy water the first thing in the morning. Both Lassoo and Shukr Ali were sick, so we only had Shahzad Mir and Esau to help us.
In first attempting to find a crossing, the current carried me off my legs, for the water was waist deep at this spot. By making more trials we found we could manage higher up the river, by crossing in a diagonal direction with the current. Here the river was twenty-five yards across, with the water up to the thighs, and the bed was uneven with big boulders.