When the sun set the wind increased in strength, and heavy clouds spread up from the south-west. At seven o’clock it was pitch dark all round, not a star shone out, not a trace was visible of the outline of the shore and of the snowy mountains, and the sea was buried in the shades of night. But an hour later the wind fell, the air became quite calm, but the waves beat in a monotonous rhythm on the bank. The smoke of the camp fires rose straight up into the air.
Then I gave orders to set out. The baggage was stowed and the mast stepped to be ready if we had a favourable wind. Provisions for two days were put in the boat. I wore a leathern vest, Kashmir boots, and an Indian helmet, and sat on a cushion and a folded fur coat on the lee side of the rudder, on the other side of which the sounding-line with its knots lay ready on the gunwale. The log, Lyth’s current meter, was attached to the boat to register the whole length of the course, and compass, watch, note-book, and map sheets all lay close beside me, lighted by a Chinese paper lantern, which could be covered with a towel when we did not want the light. I used the towel after every sounding to dry my hands. Rehim Ali took his seat forward, Shukkur Ali in the stern half of the boat, where we were cramped for room and had to take care that we did not get entangled in the sounding-line.
Tsering took a sceptical view of the whole adventure. He said that the lake was full of wonders, and at the best we should be driven back by mysterious powers when we had rowed a little way out. And a Tibetan agreed with him, saying that we should never reach the western shore though we rowed with all our might, for the lake god would hold our boat fast, and while we thought that it was advancing it would really remain on the same spot, and finally the angry god would draw it down to the bottom.
Robert had orders to wait at camp No. 212 for our return, and when we put off from the bank at nine o’clock all bade us farewell in as warm and gentle a tone as though they thought that they had seen the last of us. Their spirits were not raised by the lightning which flashed in the south and might portend a storm. The darkness, however, was not so intense, for the moon was coming up, though it was still covered by the hills rising behind our camp. But its light threw a weird gleam over the lake, and in the south Gurla Mandatta rose like a ghost enveloped in a sheet of moonshine, snowfields, and glaciers.
At my command, the boatmen took a firm grip of the oars and the boat glided out from the beach, where our men stood in a silent thoughtful group. Our fires were seen for a while, but soon disappeared, for they were burning almost on a level with the water. Robert told me afterwards that the little boat sailing out into the darkness was a curious sight; owing to the lantern and the reflexion of the light on the mast the boat was visible at first, but when it reached the moon-lighted part of the lake it appeared only as a small black spot, which soon vanished.
The great lake was dark and mysterious in the night, and unknown depths lurked beneath us. The contours of the hills on the shore were still visible behind us, but we had not gone far before they were swallowed up by higher mountains farther off, which gradually came into view. After twenty minutes’ rowing we stopped and let down the line, sounding 135 feet. The roar of the surf on the beach was the only sound in the silence of night, except the splash of the oars and the voices of the oarsmen singing in time with their strokes. At the next sounding the depth was 141 feet. If the bottom did not fall more rapidly our line would be long enough. Every hour I recorded the temperatures of the air and the water. Now the god of sleep paid us a visit; Shukkur Ali yawned at every ninth stroke, and every yawn was so long that it lasted three strokes.
The air is quite still. A long, smooth swell causes the boat to rock slightly. All is quiet, and I ask myself involuntarily if other beings are listening to the splash of the oars as well as ourselves. It is warm, with a temperature of 46.9° at eleven o’clock. The next two depths are 143 and 164 feet. My oarsmen follow the soundings with deep interest, and look forward to the point where the depth will begin to decrease. They think it awful and uncanny to glide over such great depths in the dark night. Again blue lightning flashes behind Gurla Mandatta, which stands forth in a pitch black outline, after appearing just before in a white robe of moon-lighted snowfields. A little later all the southern sky flames up like a sea of fire; the flashes quickly follow one after the other, and shoot up to the zenith, seeming to stay a moment behind the mountains, and it becomes light as day, but when the glow dies out the darkness is more intense, and the sublime, poetic solemnity of the night is enhanced. By the light of the flashes I can see the faces of the two men, who are startled and uneasy, and do not dare to disturb the awful stillness by their singing.
When I let down the line at the fifth point, the two men asked permission to light their water-pipes. The depth was 181 feet. A slight south-westerly breeze rippled the surface. The cry of a water-bird broke shrilly on the silence of the night, and made us feel less lonely. A slight hiss of the surf breaking on the south-eastern shore was audible. In the south the clouds gathered round the summit of Gurla Mandatta, the breeze fell. We glided slowly over the inky black water, and between the wave crests the path of moonlight wound in bright sinuosities; the depth increased slowly 183.4 feet, 189.3, 192 and 212.6. The temperature was still 45.9°, and I did not want my fur coat.
The queen of night, with diamonds in her dark hair, looks down upon the holy lake. The midnight hour is passed, and the early morning hours creep slowly on. We sound 203, 200, 184, 184, 180, and 190 feet, and it seems therefore as if we had passed the deepest depression. Leaning on the gunwale I enjoy the voyage to the full, for nothing I remember in my long wanderings in Asia can compare with the overpowering beauty of this nocturnal sail. I seem to hear the gentle but powerful beat of the great heart of Nature, its pulsation growing weaker in the arms of night, and gaining fresh vigour in the glow of the morning red. The scene, gradually changing as the hours go by, seems to belong not to earth but to the outermost boundary of unattainable space, as though it lay much nearer heaven, the misty fairyland of dreams and imagination, of hope and yearning, than to the earth with its mortals, its cares, its sins, and its vanity. The moon describes its arch in the sky, its restless reflexion quivering on the water, and broken by the wake of the boat.
The queen of night and her robe become paler. The dark sky passes into light blue, and the morn draws nigh from the east. There is a faint dawn over the eastern mountains, and soon their outlines stand out sharply, as though cut out on black paper. The clouds, but now floating white over the lake, assume a faint rosy hue, which gradually grows stronger, and is reflected on the smooth water, calling forth a garden of fresh roses. We row among floating rose-beds, there is an odour of morning and pure water in the air, it grows lighter, the landscape regains its colour, and the new day, July 28, begins its triumphal progress over the earth. Only an inspired pencil and magic colours could depict the scene that met my eyes when the whole country lay in shadow, and only the highest peaks of Gurla Mandatta caught the first gleam of the rising sun. In the growing light of dawn the mountain, with its snowfields and glaciers, had shown silvery white and cold; but now! In a moment the extreme points of the summit began to glow with purple like liquid gold. And the brilliant illumination crept slowly like a mantle down the flanks of the mountain, and the thin white morning clouds, which hovered over the lower slopes and formed a girdle round a well-defined zone, floating freely like Saturn’s ring, and like it throwing a shadow on the fields of eternal snow, these too assumed a tinge of gold and purple, such as no mortal can describe. The colours, at first as light and fleeting as those of a young maiden in her ball-dress, became more pronounced, light concentrated itself on the eastern mountains, and over their sharp outlines a sheaf of bright rays fell from the upper limb of the sun upon the lake. And now day has won the victory, and I try dreamily to decide which spectacle has made the greater impression on me, the quiet moonlight, or the sunrise with its warm, rosy gleam on the eternal snow.