The valley of eyes unseen
with one of the species that Saunders Philipson showed himself in a
light that almost set me wondering whether he was mortal man like the
rest of us. It was more than amazing. It was uncanny.
Uncertain as we were whether our canned stuff would last out the trip,
we were constantly on the alert for a chance to supplement it with game
of the country; and when we sighted a fine herd of yak at feed plumb in
the middle of our path one day, we decided to halt the caravan and try
a shot. Yak beef, I may remark, is a good deal better than pony-steak,
and in those cold dry altitudes will keep indefinitely.
There was no cover within close range of the herd, nor was there need
of any: the yak continued to feed after observing us, as if totally
indifferent to our approach, and I make no doubt they had never seen
human beings before. I had loaded my .45 and was edging nearer, with
Philipson and Poyning on my heels.
'Careful aim, Mirlees,' whispered Philipson to me. 'Those brutes are
not usually dangerous till they are wounded. You know where to put your
shot?'
'Just behind the shoulder is best, isn't it?'
'The only place. As for the bony parts, you might as well loose off
into a concrete wall. Now is your chance.'
I picked out a magnificent bull standing broadside on to us, and fired
at about fifty yards. The beast threw up its head with a snort of
wrath, but didn't appear to be wounded dangerously, let alone mortally.
Philipson snatched the rifle from my hand, loaded and fired again, but
it was too late. The herd, ten or eleven in number, had seen where the
attack came from. They put down their heads and charged. I yelled to
the bearers for more rifles, but the bearers had dropped everything and
scattered, leaving the ponies to stampede in terror with all our gear.
There was nothing for it now but to stampede ourselves, which we did,
heading instinctively for the shelter of a great boulder at some
distance from the spot where I had fired. Poyning and I reached it
abreast, but as I glanced back over my shoulder I saw to my horror that
Philipson hadn't followed. He stood out in the open, rifle in hand,
loading and firing rapidly, it is true, but with no more precipitation
than if he had been at the butts.
'Good God!' yelled Poyning. 'The man will be trampled flat!'
In an instant he had wheeled and dashed back, waving his arms and
shouting, as if in a wild hope to stem that terrible charge. He
might as well have shouted at a typhoon of the China seas. Philipson
continued to fire. He must have got in three shots before the rush
drew near, and the main herd swerved and went wide; but the wounded
bull came on alone, bellowing with fury. He was within ten yards of
Philipson when a shot took him between the forelegs, and I could see
that at last he was checked. The great brute swung to the right,
straight at Poyning, who leapt aside but stumbled in the doing and fell
heavily to earth. The next instant he was on his back, helpless, while
the monster drew up and lowered the enormous horns to gore.
Then ensued the most amazing sight these eyes of mine have ever beheld.
In a flash Philipson had dropped his rifle and dived forward, gripping
the horns of the yak at their tips. I expected to see him instantly
tossed high in the air, but this didn't happen. The yak paused, as
if bewildered to find this weight drop suddenly from nowhere on to
its horns. Then it seemed to me that the beast _could not move_. It
pawed the earth restlessly with its hind hoofs, but the fore hoofs
remained quite still, as did the monstrous head. You would have said
some instantaneous catalepsy had turned the animal's forequarters to
stone. I stood still, gazing, spellbound by the sight, and there, for
a span of seconds that seemed hours, we were in a tableau: Poyning
motionless and apparently stunned, the huge yak held by the horns,
Philipson holding it, and staring between the brute's eyes with a look
of tremendous, overpowering concentration.
It was a movement of Poyning's that brought me to myself. He rolled
suddenly towards the rifle. I dashed in and snatched it up and had my
cartridge in the chamber, when the yak gave a queer sort of whistling
groan, swayed slowly to one side, and fell with a thud that made the
earth jump under our feet. I fired at the same instant, but I know
the brute was dead before my bullet struck. It lay still. Saunders
Philipson was lying beside it, white as the snow on the peaks above us,
a thin trickle of blood coming from his nostrils.
In an agony of alarm I dragged him aside and rested his head on my
sheepskin coat. I was afraid at first his tremendous effort had
ruptured some blood vessel and that he would be beyond the reach of my
rough-and-ready attentions there in the wilderness. Poyning had now got
his senses fully back, and together we felt Philipson's heart--which
was beating weak and slow--and chafed his wrists and plied him with
brandy from Poyning's flask; and after some time it seemed the life
was flickering up in him again. The blood had dried quickly on his
lip, and the faintest tinge of red was coming back into his face. In
my travels at one time and another I've seen a good deal of woundings
and miscellaneous injuries to the human frame, yet I couldn't put down
Philipson's unconsciousness to any definite physical hurt. Rather he
seemed to me to display the sort of symptoms you might expect from a
man in an absolute nervous prostration.
At last, to our unspeakable relief, he stirred, sat up, and stared
round him.
'Eh? Oh, yes, I remember,' he muttered. 'The yak-herd.'
Poyning was on his knees beside him. 'Philipson,' he said hoarsely,
'you pulled me out of that at your own life's risk. I shall not forget
it. How do you feel now?'
Philipson was struggling to his feet. 'It is nothing,' he said quietly.
'You would have done as much for either of us. But we really must be
more careful in future. It was--' he glanced at the dead yak--'as much
as I could do to hold that beast.'
'Good God, man,' I cried, 'it was amazing! Six ordinary men couldn't
have held it!'
Philipson gave me a queer enigmatic smile. 'Be just, Mirlees,' he said.
'Give the yak his due. See here.' He stooped over the great beast and
pulled the clotted hair aside from its breast. 'If the brute had not
received this injury I am much afraid he would have thrown me half way
along the pass.'
'But your hands!' exclaimed Poyning, pointing to Philipson's bruised
and blackened fingers and the blood that had oozed out from under every
one of his ten nails. 'You must have put tremendous force into it! You
must have the muscles of a Hercules!'
Philipson's answer was to pull up his sleeves, revealing arms that
were muscular and shapely, but a good deal smaller than those of many
a professional athlete. 'If it were a question of muscle,' he said,
'even a badly hit yak would be too much for the hero you mention. But
the good gods have given us other powers. I used mine to-day. Let us be
thankful that I had them to use. Now for re-assembling the camp.'
We recovered the stampeded ponies, helped by Ah Sing and Lo Eng, who
had been far in the rear at the time of the brush, leading one of the
baggage animals that had gone lame and could carry no load. One by one
we got the lot, but the bearers were harder to collect. I noticed a
couple of them skulking shamefast in the middle distance, and thought
at first they were watching me; then I saw it was Philipson they were
looking at, with eyes of awe and fear. When at last they had gathered
into a sulky knot, Philipson summoned them to approach. They hesitated,
then, obviously in spite of themselves, slunk up to our leader, who
addressed them in their own dialect. I didn't know enough of this to
follow his words closely, but there was no mistaking the gist. The
hillmen were manifestly ill at ease. They shifted their weight from
one foot to the other. Under the swarthy skin and life-long dirt of
their faces a paleness became apparent. With a miserable cry one of
them dropped to his knees, head to earth, and the rest followed suit,
groaning and whining. Still the level, hard voice of Saunders Philipson
kept on. It was like some long, blighting curse to listen to. He
pointed to the yak, apparently drawing a parallel from its fate, and at
last strode up to the grovelling hillmen, stretching his blood-crusted
hands over their heads and raising his voice to a startling, terrible
shout. At this moment I happened to glance at Poyning. I may have been
mistaken, but I thought he trembled. Then I noticed I was trembling a
little myself.
Philipson ceased, motioning the bearers back to their work, and they
scuttled off, clearly relieved to find themselves still alive.
'Those fellows will behave better in future,' said our leader, turning
to us. 'They know now that the next man to fail in his duty dies. I
have also taken the precaution of making them understand that I am
bullet-proof, in case one of them should be tempted to seek revenge
with a gun.'
We halted while the bearers cut up the slain yak and prepared the
meat for transport. Ah Sing and Lo Eng were superintending the work,
in their capacity of non-commissioned officers, and I heard them
haranguing the bearers in a style the very reverse of sympathetic.
They had learned how the hillmen deserted in the hour of danger, and
I anticipated that for the next few days those bearers would have a
thin time of it. But when Ah Sing came to me a few minutes afterwards,
there wasn't much of the bullying ganger about him. Instead, he looked
strangely uncomfortable.
'My no likum dis, Misser Mirlee,' he said, shaking his head. 'My long
time sabbee master him plenty stlong. Jus' now my tinkee him too muchee
stlong.'
'What gives you that impression, Ah Sing?' I said.
His voice took on a tone of awe. 'Jus' now my look-see dat piecee
yakkum,' he said, with his hand held edgewise to his own poll. 'Him
neckee bloke-um hab got!'
Deeper and deeper we plunged into the mountain fastnesses. It was clear
from the temperature our cooking water boiled at that we had risen
to a great altitude, and Poyning and I were already troubled with
height-sickness. Philipson concocted from his medicine chest a tonic
that quickly reduced the fever, but we still had great difficulty in
getting our breath in the rarefied air, and there was worse to come,
for our route lay far higher yet. Moreover, to advance had become a
matter of the utmost hardship. Whereas on the lower levels we had
climbed under clear skies, now the heavens were frequently clouded over
black from horizon to horizon, bringing fierce squalls of snow or hail,
and a biting wind was in our teeth all day, though calming down usually
at nightfall. Philipson was working towards the _obo_ very much as if
it were a point in the ocean and he a mariner steering a course to it;
he used his maps as a chart and checked our position by observations
whenever the sky cleared. The lie of the land necessitated constant
changes of direction, and sometimes we had even to deviate from
Philipson's former route, which, it will be remembered, he had followed
on foot; but never would our leader consent to leave the course laid
down on his maps unless it was physically impossible to get the ponies
along it. As it was, our journey took us up and down steeps which rise
in my mind to this hour like a ghastly dream--one of those nightmares
when you imagine yourself to be clinging fly-like to a vertical wall
at dizzy heights. But for the energy and skill and implacable resolve
of Saunders Philipson I am perfectly certain we should never have
got through at all, and even he couldn't prevent the ponies from
succumbing one by one to the tremendous work on scant fodder. Also, two