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A KILLING JOURNEY. 321
unbridled fury of the blast. At length its deafening roar
was pierced by the saddening clang of the bells and the
warning cries of the men. The first of the string emerged
like spectres out of the darkness, and like spectres they
glided away again into the gloom of the falling snow.
Slowly-—painfully slowly—the long string of the caravan
defiled past me over the summit of the pass. I counted
them as they came. Thank God ! that is thirty out of
our thirty-four camels. Two had given up even before
reaching the actual ascent to the pass, and two had fallen
just under its crest. Amongst those that were missing
were the oldest of the young ones and its mother—
a
good thing that they were not divided in their deaths
!
The horses, mules, and sheep all stood the ascent remark-
ably well.
The descent on the other side consisted of one broad
flat pudding of soft clay, down which we had to zigzag
and make many detours to avoid sticking fast in the mire.
Although we were all dead tired, it would have been mad-
ness to think of encamping there : all the loads, boxes,
packages and what not would have been swallowed up
before morning. Long after dusk we continued to pick
our steps under the shade of those white unholy mountains.
All we wanted was a dry spot big enough for our camp.
No thought of grass or fuel ; who would be so foolish as
to dream of such things on the very verge of the endless
immensities of space ? At length we did discover a hard
gravelly slope, and there we pulled up for the night.
Turdu Bai and several of the other men failed to turn
up, nor did they come in until the night was far advanced,
leaving behind them finally four camels. At daybreak
next morning they went back to fetch them, taking some of
the horses with them, so that if things were at the worst
they might at any rate save the camels’ loads and the
straw in their pack-saddles. All four were, however, too
21
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