We gave them another hour, but they seemed content to stay where they were. I got the uncomfortable feeling they were challenging us to continue our descent across their ground.
‘I think they are laughing at us,’ said Zaro.
Mister Smith stood up. ‘It occurs to me they might take it into their heads to come up and investigate us. It is obvious they are not afraid of us. I think we had better go while we are safe.’
We pushed off around the rock and directly away from them. I looked back and the pair were standing still, arms swinging slightly, as though listening intently. What were they? For years they remained a mystery to me, but since recently I have read of scientific expeditions to discover the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas and studied descriptions of the creature given by native hillmen, I believe that on that day we may have encountered two of the animals. I do insist, however, that recent estimates of their height as about five feet must be wrong. The minimum height of a well-grown specimen must be around seven feet.
I think that, in causing a deviation of route, they brought our final disaster upon us.
It was about midday that we set off to continue our descent. Everything went well and we made good time Our spirits were up in spite of our empty bellies. We found an almost ideal cavity among the rocks to spend the night, were greeted by another clear, fine April morning breaking through a thin, quickly-dissipated mist.
Two hours later it happened. Zaro and I had the rope’s end belayed around our two stout sticks at the crest of a slope. I was laughing at something Zaro had said about the two strange creatures of the day before. The slope was short and hardly steep enough to warrant the use of the rope, which lay loosely thrown out as a safety line in case Paluchowicz, crawling down backwards on all fours, should slip into an unseen crevice. Behind him were Smith and Kolemenos, well spaced out. All three were astride the limp rope without holding it.
I saw Paluchowicz reach the end of the slope. I turned to Zaro and in that instant saw the rope jerk about the sticks and become slack again. Simultaneously there was a brief, sharp cry, such as a man will make when he is suddenly surprised. Zaro and I swung together. It was a second or two before the awful truth struck me. Smith was there. Kolemenos was there. But Paluchowicz had vanished. Like fools we stood there calling out his name. No one answered. The other two, with their backs to Paluchowicz, did not know what had happened. They had stopped at our first shout and were looking up at us.
‘Come back,’ I called out to them. ‘Something has happened to Anton.’
They clambered back, I hauled in the rope and tied the loose end about my waist. ‘I am going down to see if I can find him,’ I said.
I reached the point where, from above, the slope appeared to fall gently away. Zaro took in the slack of the rope and I turned around as I had seen Paluchowicz do. The sight made me catch my breath. The mountain yawned open as though it had been split clean open with a giant axe blow. I was looking across a twenty-yard gap, the narrowest part of the chasm which dropped sickeningly below me. I could not see the bottom. I felt the sweat beading out on my forehead. Futilely I yelled, ‘Anton, Anton!’ I turned and went back, so shaken that I held tightly to the rope all the way.
They all talked at once. Had I seen him? Why was I shouting? Where was he?
I told them what it was like down there, that there was no sign of Paluchowicz.
‘We will have to find him,’ said Kolemenos.
‘We will never find him,’ I told them. ‘He is gone.’
Nobody wanted to believe it. I did not want to believe it myself. With difficulty we broke a way round to a new point from which we could look down into the abyss. Then they understood. We heaved a stone down and listened for it to strike. We heard nothing. We found a bigger stone and dropped that down and there was still no echo of the strike.
We hung around there a long time, not knowing what to do. The disaster was so sudden, so complete. Paluchowicz was with us and then he was gone, plucked away from us. I never thought he would have to die. He seemed indestructible. Tough, toothless, devout old Sergeant Paluchowicz.
‘All this way,’ said the American. ‘All this way, to die so stupidly at the last.’ I think he felt it more than any of us. As the two older men, they had been close together.
Kolemenos took his sack from his back and very deliberately tore it down the seams. We all stood silent. He put a stone in the corner and threw it out into space. The stone fell out and the sack floated away, a symbolic shroud for Paluchowicz. He took his stick and with the blunted axe chopped an end off and made a cross and stuck it there, on the edge.
We climbed on down, trying to keep in sight the spot from which Paluchowicz had disappeared, vaguely hoping we might find his body. But we never found the bottom of the great cleft and we never found Paluchowicz.
There were some quite warm days after this and we could look back and see the majesty of the mountains we had crossed. We were in terrible need of food and now that the supreme effort was over we could barely keep ourselves moving. One day we saw a couple of long-haired wild goats, which bounded off like the wind. They need not have been afraid. We hardly had the strength to kill anything bigger than a beetle. The country was still hilly, but there were rivers and streams and birds in trees.
We had been about eight days without food when we saw far off to the east on a sunny morning a flock of sheep with men and dogs in charge. They were too far off to be of any help to us and were moving away from us, but our hopes rose at the sight of them. Soon we must be picked up. We pulled some green-stuff growing at the edge of a stream and tried to eat it, but it was very bitter and our stomachs would not take it.
Exhausted, walking skeletons of men that we were, we knew now for the first time peace of mind. It was now that we lost, at last, the fear of recapture.
They came from the west, a little knot of marching men, and as they came closer I saw there were six native soldiers with an N.C.O. in charge. I wanted to wave my hands and shout, but I just stood there with the other three watching them come. They were very smart, very clean, very fit, very military. My eyes began to fill and the tears brimmed over.
Smith stepped forward and stuck out his hand.
‘We are very glad to see you,’ he said.
23. Four Reach India
IT WAS HARD to comprehend that this was the end of it all. I leaned my weight forward on my stick and tried to blink my eyes clear. I felt weak and lightheaded like a man in a fever. My knees trembled with weakness and it required real effort to prevent myself slumping down on the ground. Zaro, too, was hunched over his stick, and one of Kolemenos’s great arms was drooped lightly about his shoulders. The rough, scrubby country danced in the haze of a warm noon sun. The soldiers, halted but five yards from us, were a compact knot of men in tropical shorts and shirts swimming in and out of my vision.
I dropped my head forward on my chest and heard the voice of Mister Smith. He talked in English, which I did not understand, but there was no mistaking the urgency in the tone. It went on for several minutes. I flexed my knees to stop their trembling.
The American came over to us, his face smiling. ‘Gentlemen, we are safe.’ And because we remained unmoving and silent, he said again in Russian, very slowly, ‘Gentlemen, we are safe.’
Zaro shouted and the sound startled me. He threw down his stick and yelled, his arms above his head and fingers extended. He threw his arms about the American and Smith had to hold him tight to prevent his running over to the patrol and kissing each man individually.
‘Come away, Eugene,’ he shouted. ‘Come away from them, I have told them we are filthy with lice.’