Zyarulla responded by a gleam of teeth as he followed his master to the camp fire of roots and scrub, on whose summit 'dinner' was served steaming hot; a delectable mass of mutton and rice; eaten straight from the copper cooking vessel, lest the ice-bound breath of the mountains freeze it before it could reach its destination. The fire itself was small, and gave out little heat: for in the heart of the glaciers, sixteen hundred feet up, fuel is scarce, and even more precious than food.
The five human forms, crouching close to it, had been Lenox's sole companions through three months of hardship and danger, sweetened by the exhilaration of conquering such difficulties as brace a man's nerve and fortitude to the utmost. Four of them were Gurkhas,—a Havildar and three men; short, sturdy hill folk of the Mongol type, with the spirits of schoolboys and the grit of heroes. The fifth was a Pathan from Desmond's regiment, told off to act as orderly and surveyor; a man of immovable gravity, who shared but two qualities with the thick-headed, stout-hearted little soldiers from Nepal:—courage of the first order, and devotion to the British officer, for whom any one of them would have laid down his life, if need be; not as a matter of sentiment or heroism, but simply as a matter of course. The Gurkhas had, in fact, settled it among themselves before starting, that if any harm came to the Sahib none of them were to disgrace the name of the regiment by returning without their leader.
Now, as he neared the fire, looking bigger and broader than usual in his sheep-skin coat and Balaklava cap,—his jaw and throat protected by a beard black as his hair,—all five stood up to receive him: and the quivering light showed that they also were muffled to the eyes.
"It is a burra khana[1] to-night, Hazúr," the Havildar informed him with a chuckle; his slits of eyes vanishing as his teeth flashed out. "In a treeless country, the castor-oil is a big plant! And the cook, having three handfuls of flour to spare, hath made us three chupattis; one for your Honour, and one to be broken up among ourselves."
"No, no, Havildar; fair play," Lenox answered, smiling. "We will divide the three."
But seeing that insistence would damp their childish spirit of festivity, he accepted Benjamin's portion; and satisfied his conscience by sharing it with Brutus, the inevitable, who snuggled contentedly under a corner of his poshteen, and thanked his stars he was not as other dogs, a mere loafer round clubs and cantonments. It was bad to be cold and hungry; to plunge shoulder-deep through snow, and slither across hideous slopes of ice; but it was uplifting to share your master's dinner and your master's bed; and there are few things more sustaining than a sense of one's own importance in the general scheme of things!
The fire was their mess-table, round which they dined together, to save time and trouble in cooking; and also because community of hardship and danger links men to one another with hooks of steel; dispels all minor distinctions of colour and creed; reveals the Potter's raw material underlying all.
And while they so sat, enjoying their one-course dinner as no gourmet ever enjoyed a city feast, night and frost crept stealthily, almost visibly, over the stupendous snow-peaks and pinnacles of opaque ice that towered on all sides, breathing out cold; and contemplating, as if in silent amazement, these atoms of 'valiant dust' who dared and were beaten back, and dared again; who day by day pushed farther into their white sanctuary of silence, in search of a pass whose existence was guessed at rather than known. At sunset there had been a brief burst of colour,—green and opal and rose; but by now the mountains shimmered grey and hard as steel under the tremulous fire of the stars; and every moment the grip of frost tightened upon half-melted glacier, upon man and beast. For behind the little group of servants, who sat apart, enjoying their own meal in their own fashion, stood twelve apathetic Kashmiri ponies,—unconsidered martyrs to man's lust of achievement,—who endured to the full the miseries of mountaineering, and reaped none of its rewards.
Dinner over, the fire must be allowed to die down. A pipe over the embers, and a sheep-skin bag shared with Brutus, was the evening's unvarying programme on this detached expedition into the hidden core of things; tents and lesser luxuries having been left with the heavy baggage in charge of two Gurkhas at the foot of the pass.
While Lenox sat smoking, and encouraging the fire to keep alive as long as might be, his men vied with one another in discovering sheltered corners for the night. The Havildar was in high spirits after his morsel of chupatti, washed down with a mouthful of rum; and the laughter of his comrades echoed strangely among the ghostly peaks.