"Hazúr, all things are in readiness."
"It is well. Scatter ashes on the fire, and call me at dawn."
And as he slipped into the sheep-skin bag, his whole heart echoed the words, "It is well." Let him only win his way back to the wife whose spirit called to him across the silence and the miles, and all would be well indeed!
Ten minutes later, the candles were put out; the glow of the fire quenched; while outside the temperature fell steadily, and a sky heavy with threatening cloud brooded over the sleeping camp.
Lenox woke before dawn to find a creditable snow-peak piled above his dead fire, while flakes as large as plucked feathers whirled and fluttered down upon it through the generous hole in the roof. The three natives had vanished, sleeping bags and all; and the Ladaki cook, with the astounding patience of his kind, had coaxed into life a fire large enough to make his master a cup of tea from the few remaining spoonfuls of the magic leaf, more priceless to the mountaineer than brandy.
It was a bad beginning. Even the Gurkhas looked grave, and shook their heads. The sky, low and heavy with tumbled cloud, was a study in greys and indigoes; the earth a still, uncharted waste. No whisper of wind or trees; no sound of life; no break of colour anywhere, from the level plain to the galaxy of peaks and rounded shoulders tossed aloft like a frozen tempest. Only at intervals, far up the mountain-sides, black specks—that were grazing yaks—suggested a Khirgiz encampment cunningly hidden in the folds of the hills. Presumably the sun was up, though the east showed as lifeless and unpromising as any other quarter of the heavens.
A detailed investigation of the commissariat department—revealing a serious shortage of tea, cocoa, and rice, to say nothing of minor essentials—proved no less discouraging than the aspect of earth and sky. Only by the most stringent economy could the little store be persuaded to last out four days, by which time they hoped to be over the pass. Lenox, as usual, blamed himself.
"Extra work on siege rations is about our programme!" he remarked with grim humour to his devoted ally the little Havildar. "We must manage the first three marches in two days if possible. But I'm sorry to have let you all in for a risk of this kind."
"All right, Sahib," the Gurkha answered with a brisk salute. "We be Frontier soldiers. It is not the first time. And 'when sparrows have picked up the grain where is the use of regret?' If there be enough for your Honour all is well. The black man can tighten his belt, and forget that the stomach is empty!" He tightened his own on the spot; and went off to bid his brothers do likewise on pain of dire penalties.
Stepping down, undismayed, from the voiceless, trackless Roof of the World, they were met by a desolating wind; the feathered snow-flakes changed to a storm of sleet,—stinging, saturating; and only the knowledge that twenty-four hours delay might mean a blocked pass and another six months of isolation from his kind, induced Lenox to urge his men forward in the teeth of it.