CHAPTER LIX
IN THE SNOW
The storm howled round us all night long, and our thin tent canvas fluttered in the blast. Gulam awaked me with the information, “It is nasty weather to-day; we can see nothing.” Even the nearest mountains were hidden by the snow, and if I had not already taken a bearing along the valley in the direction south, 35° E., we could not have set out. This day, January 30, we had to keep together, for the driving snow obliterated the tracks immediately. We had two leaders, and I rode last along the trail, which at first was marked as a black winding line, but farther on, where the snow lay 2 feet deep, no ground or rubbish could be seen. A brown horse which carried no burden lay down and died in the snow. We could see the snow making ready its grave before it was cold. It vanished behind us in the dreadful solitude.
We move forwards at a very slow pace through the snowdrifts. The fury of the storm carries away the warning shouts from the lips of the guides and they do not reach our ears; we simply follow the trail. Lobsang goes first, and he often disappears in the dry loose snow and has to seek another direction. In the hollows the snow lies 3 feet deep, and we can take only one step at a time after the spades have cut us a ditch through the snow. One or other of the animals is always falling, and the removal of his load and readjusting it causes a block, for all must follow in the same furrow. All, men and animals, are half-dead with fatigue and labour for breath. The snow sweeps round us in suffocating wreaths; we turn our backs to the wind and lean forwards. Only the nearest mules are plainly visible, the fifth is indistinct, and those at the front are seen only as slight shadows amidst the universal whiteness. I cannot catch a glimpse of the guides. Thus the troop passes on a few steps till it comes to the next block, and when the mule immediately in front of me moves on again it is only to plunge into a hollow filled with snow, where two men wait to keep up its load. The direction is now east and the ground rises. A few such days and the caravan will be lost (Illust. 312).
At length we come to a low pass (18,268 feet high). Even at sea-level such a journey would be hard enough, but how much worse it is in a country which lies some hundreds of feet higher than Mont Blanc, and where there is nothing but granite. On the eastern side of the saddle the snow lay 3 feet deep in some places, and it seemed as though we should be stuck fast in the snowdrifts; and what had we to expect then? For the provender was coming to an end, and we must go on if we would find pasture. Now we went gently down, the snow became a little less deep, and we came to an expansion of the valley where there were stretches of ground swept bare by the blast. On the right appeared a slope where Abdul Karim thought he saw blades of grass sticking up out of the snow, and he asked permission to camp. It was difficult to set up the tents that evening. At dusk the two sick men came up, their faces blue and swollen.
A miserable camp! The storm increased to a hurricane, and nothing could be heard but its howling. When I looked out of my tent I could see nothing that was not white, and there was no difference between the ground, the mountains, and the sky—all being alike white. Not even the men’s tent could be distinguished in the driving snow. The fine particles penetrated into the tent and covered everything with a white powder. It was impossible to look for fuel, and at three o’clock the temperature in the tent was 1.4°. I could see nothing living outside, and I might have been quite alone in this wilderness.
| 311. Lost beyond Recovery. |
My trusty Gulam comes, however, at length with fire, for Lobsang and Sedik have found some brushwood. Gulam says that Sonam Kunchuk is ready to lay himself down on the snow and die, but I advise him to take a good dose of quinine instead. Late at night the tones of the hymn to Allah reach my ears, sounding softer and sadder than usual amid the raging of the storm. We are moving towards a dark destiny, I have attempted too much, and any moment the catastrophe may come. We are snowed up here, the animals must die of starvation and I myself—well, it is but a question of time.