‘I’ll get it for you,’ shouted Zaro, and hared off after it. We saw him stoop to pick up the moccasin before he had checked his forward impetus. Where the slope ended, as far as our view from above showed, Zaro slapped his behind down to try to brake himself. The next instant, sliding on his seat, he had disappeared from our sight.
Running more carefully than Zaro had done, I was first at the spot where he had vanished. The ground fell away in a long sweeping curve and at the upcurling end of it was Zaro, roaring with laughter and beating the snow off his trousers. Paluchowicz came down last to join us, hopping on one foot, to wave and call across to Zaro three hundred or more yards away.
‘Try it,’ bawled Zaro. ‘It’s the easiest way down.’
I sat myself down in Zaro’s track and let go. It was an exhilarating slide down with the wind whistling past my ears. I finished up like Zaro, bellowing with laughter. One after another, Kolemenos, Mister Smith and Paluchowicz came whizzing down.
The incident remains with me because it was the only part of the whole long journey we covered other than on our feet.
22. The Abominable Snowmen
TOWARDS THE end of March 1942 we were convinced that at last we were very near the sanctuary of India. Barring our way ahead reared the tallest and most forbidding peaks we had yet seen. We told one another that one final effort must bring us to the country where we were sure ultimate freedom, civilization, rest and ease of mind awaited us. Individually we needed all the assurances and encouragement we could get. I was tortured with the fear that the exertion of one more great climb would finish me. I feared the onset of the insidious sleep on the heights from which there was no awakening. All my fears were sharpened by that shared conviction that after four thousand miles we were near success. I could not now banish the spectre of bitter failure. With all of us the resources of body and mind were drawn out thin. One shining, incalculable asset remained — the tight, warm friendship of men together in misfortune. While we remained together hope could not be quenched. The whole, in terms of spirit and resolution, was greater than the sum of its parts.
We sat around a fire made of the last of our hoarded scraps of fuel and ate the last crumbs of our rations. We got out the rawhide rope, the axe, the knife, the wire loops, the slim spikes, examined them and tested them. We gave ourselves a couple of hours before dark for repairing footwear. When we had finished we were as well prepared for the last assault as we could be. The fire burned down and became ashes before midnight and we spent a pacing restless night until the first glimmer of dawn. Zaro wound the rope about him, took the axe from Kolemenos and started off. I was relieved to be on the move.
We were blessed with fair weather. The wind was cold, but the sun shone strongly enough to attack the top layer of snow so that it melted sufficiently to re-form in the freezing night temperatures into a skin of crisp, treacherous ice. We climbed more surely, more cautiously, than ever before, Zaro double testing every foothold and hand-hold as he led the way upwards, chipping away with the axe, steam issuing in little clouds from his nose and mouth beneath the mask.
At the beginning of the third day we were over the top, only to find ourselves confronted with another peak. It was the stuff of which nightmares are made. Always it seemed there was another mountain to block our way. Two days were spent scrambling down the south face from our exposed high perch and I found it more wearing on the nerves than the ascent. Down in the valley we made ourselves a snow shelter out of the whip of the wind and managed to get ourselves an uncomfortable few hours sleep in preparation for the next ordeal.
This next mountain was the worst in all our experience. From valley to valley its crossing occupied us six days and taxed our endurance to such a degree that for the first time we talked openly of the prospect that we might all perish. I am certain that one blizzard of a few hours duration would have wiped us out.
Two days up and the top hidden by swirling white clouds, I dug my knife into a crevice to give myself extra purchase in hauling myself up from a narrow ledge. With my body pressed close against the rock, I loosened each hand and foot in turn so that I could flex my cramped fingers and wriggle my stiff toes. Then I reached for the knife handle above me and began to haul on it with my right arm. Suddenly the knife sprang like a live thing, leapt from my hand and flew over my head with the steel singing. I took fresh hold and, digging in with fingers and toes, dragged myself to safety. The knife was gone. There was no sign of it. I felt as though I had lost a personal friend.
Near the summit on the third day the climbing became easier, but we began to doubt seriously whether we could make it. The cold was terrible, eddying mist dropped down about us and lifted, dropped and lifted again. The effects of high altitude were draining from us what slight reserves of stamina we still had. Every step was a fight against torturing lassitude, making one want to sit down and cry with weakness and frustration. I could not get enough air into my bursting lungs and my heart thumped audibly, hammering against my chest. Will-power became a flaccid thing. Any one of us, alone, could have given up thankfully, lay down happily, closed his eyes and drifted into death. But somebody was always crawling on, so we all kept moving. A final refinement of misery was nose-bleed. I tried to stop mine by plugging the nostrils with bits of sacking, but the discomfort of breathing only through the mouth was too much and I removed the plug. The blood poured down into my beard, freezing and congealing there.
We knew we should have to spend the night in this rarefied atmosphere and the knowledge did our spirits no good.
‘We must keep going while there’s light,’ Zaro said. ‘We must try to get over the top before dark.’
So we went on and on, painfully, like flies struggling through a pool of treacle. We made long traverses to right and left to avoid the impossible extra exertion of a frontal assault. I do not remember going over the summit. I remember only the point at which I noticed with vague surprise that Zaro, leading, was slightly below me. We climbed again a little and then we knew with certainty the descent had begun.
That night was the crisis of the whole enterprise. On a broad, flat ledge where the snow had drifted and piled, we axed through the hard crust of the surface and dug laboriously through a few feet of snow to make ourselves a barely adequate refuge against the rigours of the night. We had no fire. We were so bone-weary we could have slept literally standing up, but we knew it would be courting death even to attempt to doze.
It was the longest night of my life. We huddled there standing, with our arms about one another. Sleep lay on our lids like a solid weight and I found myself holding my eyes open with fingertips pressed against the eyeballs under my mask. Three times Kolemenos, the arch-sleeper, let his chin sag on his chest and began to snore, and each time we punched and shook him back to consciousness. Each man was his brother’s keeper, watching for drooping eyelids and the nodding head. At intervals we would stamp slowly around in a close ring. Even during this grotesque dance I began to swim down into beautiful, velvet sleep, but the American dragged me back by gently cuffing me, pulling my beard and shaking me. There came that awful pre-dawn period when fatigue and cold together combined to set me shivering in an uncontrollable ague from head to foot.
‘Let’s get going,’ said someone. ‘Let’s get down to some place where we can breathe again.’