The valley of eyes unseen

of the _tagliks_ lost their lives in one day, slipping under their load and falling down a deep ravine. Worst of all, the _obo_ hadn't appeared, although by Philipson's calculations we should have found it by now. Philipson kept up a dogged confidence, but I could see that even he was getting uneasy. He decided, before casting around, to push straight ahead for one more day's march. This we did, and it was our worst day yet. Two ponies dropped dead, and two of the remaining bearers disappeared--where, we never discovered, though it is likely they lay down to the drowsy rest from which there is no awakening, and were quietly left by their own fellows. At last Philipson, who was on foot ahead, halted with a great cry. 'This is the pass,' he shouted. 'The _obo_ is at the top end of it.' But when we came to the place it was five or six feet deep in drifts, and nobody short of a diviner could have said whether the _obo_ was there or not. It was too late to investigate now: dark was coming on. We retreated down the rugged slope and pitched camp. That night our thermometer went down to five degrees below zero, but the morning rose clear, with the warmest sun we had known for a week past. The whole party set to work digging, with any tool that came to hand, but it was to the sun we owed our discovery. Brisk runnels of water began to tinkle away down the slope, the face of the snow sagged and caved, until there appeared, fully thirty yards from the scene of our blind efforts, a curious green blotch against the white. Philipson ploughed through the soggy mess towards it with a whoop of exultation, and a moment later the three of us were dancing round the _obo_, cheering like schoolboys. There was no doubt about it being the one we sought: you could see plainly the zigzag scratches where Philipson had scraped off the dead man's message. We were now in a regular fury to be gone. Perhaps not two days off was the end of our quest, the rim of that mysterious depression we had come so far to find. Philipson at once laid out his compass and set a course due west; but at that moment I observed a strange commotion among the bearers. They were gathered in a group at some distance from where we stood, and I saw one of them point to the sky with an expression of downright terror. Excited as I was, I half expected to see one of the monstrous birds of the legend flap out over the peak surrounding us, but it wasn't that. It was a black cloud, no bigger than the cloud of holy writ, but curiously distinct from anything I had ever seen before. It was expanding swiftly under our eyes, and looked, on a gigantic scale, exactly like a big blob of ink that has fallen on to a blotter. But the really astonishing thing about it was the speed with which it was approaching. 'Great Scott!' gasped Poyning. 'It's coming up as fast as a train!' If I hadn't seen this type of cloud before, Philipson evidently had, and recognised it for something dangerous. He instantly ordered the tents, which had just been taken down, to be opened out and erected again length-wise--one wall of canvas five or six-fold and about six yards long. Every rope and peg we possessed we used to secure this one shelter, and concentrated our whole camp under the lee of it. These preparations were rushed through, but none too soon. With a shriek the storm was upon us, first a terrific blast of wind, then a withering burst of hail, then thunder; and after a while, when the very snow was scoured off the barren steeps by the force of the tempest, blinding clouds of sand and grit that stung the skin like spirts of flame. It was a brand of storm, as I say, new to my acquaintance, and even in the rush and howl of it all I couldn't help noticing with astonishment that although the thunder crashed like the splitting asunder of mountains, we saw from first to last no sign of lightning. We crouched under the barrier, European and native alike, and I wasn't long in seeing the point of lumping all our canvas together. Any one tent by itself would have gone whirling on the wings of the storm, but this reinforced wall, though the canvas bulged as if it would split and the poles bent like reeds in a current, held; and after withstanding its first fury, gathered strength from the storm itself. Snow and sand banked up against it, forming a drift some seven feet high, behind which, so long as the wind kept to the one quarter, we could laugh at it. The storm didn't rise. Nor did it abate. When once the thunder had passed, which was about an hour after the first squall, the wind settled down to blow steadily, gale-strong, through the night. And that was a night of horror. By what I judge to have been ten o'clock we were as near frozen to death as men can be and still live, for the canvas wall, though a capital bulwark against the wind, was of little efficacy against the cold. Our thickest blankets might have been summer muslins. Then once more we had reason to bless Philipson's uncanny foresight. He had insisted on adding the yak-hide to our gear, though I remember thinking at the time that it was folly to burden ourselves with a thing of such weight; now I knew that the foolishness had been mine. As soon as the storm burst we had given our one remaining pony the yak-hide for a rug. The poor beast whinnied pitifully when we took it off him, but it was his life or ours. Philipson, Poyning and myself got into the great woolly hide, turned inside out--it was ample to hold the three of us--and slept in fair warmth. At last there came a little lightening of the dense gloom, which having reckoned to be daybreak, we rose to take stock of our situation. The pony was dead, as we knew he must be, frozen stiff and hard as iron. The Chinese servants and the bearers all appeared to have survived the night without frostbite; they had pooled their sheepskins and rolled themselves into one composite knot of humanity, which, in the circumstances, was about the wisest thing they could have done. The storm was still blowing great guns, and even by that mirky light we could see an alarming change in the face of the mountain; nothing but lumpy drifts everywhere, and every crevasse filled with treacherous, powdery snow. Worst and crowning disaster, our chronometer and watches were ruined. The all-penetrating dust which had been swirling in eddies and back-washes behind our shelter all night had not only filled our eyes and ears and mouths; it had got into every piece of clockwork we possessed. In future we should be reduced to guessing time from the sun, if visible, and our position in a land as unmapped as the ocean, by the roughest of dead-reckoning from distance travelled. The wind fell about mid-day, letting down a brisk fall of snow for some three hours; then the sky cleared, and we were shown the full direness of our calamity. Advance or retreat was out of the question till the snow thinned, and we set about pitching a camp in the normal pattern--pulling down our canvas wall and resolving it into three tents. This kept us busy till dark. An atmosphere of utter dejection was everywhere, which even Philipson's dogged energy and inspiration couldn't lift. For myself, it was useless to deny I had ceased to believe we could win through. Our one great hope had failed us: we had been counting all along on "summer" weather, whatever the difficulties of the route; but this terrific blizzard proved that such reliance had been mere vain imagining. I could see Poyning was a prey to similar gloomy forebodings, and I knew from the look of the hillmen that if we got any more help from them it would only be because of their mortal terror of Saunders Philipson. The Chinese servants alone seemed to have no thought of retreat. They wore the fatalistic look of men reconciled to death, and content to humour their master's madness to the end. That night there was again a terrific frost, but sheltered as we now were by a canvas wall on all sides, we felt it far less than before, and reckoned to make do with the yak-hide spread out mattress-wise underneath us. At last, however, the cold awakened me, and sitting up, I was a good deal startled to see that the flap of the tent was open. I crept to it and looked out. In a direct line, and no great distance away, was the bearers' tent; and it seemed to me that instant that a figure was disappearing through their door. This was disquieting. If the hillmen deserted--as I made little doubt they would if a chance presented--they would get no wages except by robbery. Could it be that the man I saw retreating into their tent had just visited ours, and left the flap unfastened in his hurry? I turned to rouse Philipson and report my suspicions. This was queerer still. Philipson's place on the yak-hide was empty. Now thoroughly puzzled, I wrapped my sheepskin tight round me and stole out. I could see nothing, and heard nothing at first but muffled snores and the swish of the night wind. Then there seemed to mingle with these sounds a low mutter of talk, some way away. I crept towards the sound. As I drew near, pausing at every step to listen, the noise resolved itself into something strangely familiar, which yet for the life of me I couldn't place. I was now so close that I could hear the words. I stood racking my brains to remember where I had heard the like before. Then it came to me, in about as curious a way as you could imagine. I had been feverish all day; now my eyes played me a trick; I began seeing things. The scene was transformed. The shadowy snow-draped mountain side became the verandah of our inn at Nanking, and I was listening again while Philipson spoke in that strange tongue that had so baffled me. The vision faded, but parts of it stood clear. I was actually looking at Philipson now. I had stolen to a sharp bluff of rock and was peeping round the angle of it; and there, not twenty paces from me, assuredly was Saunders Philipson; beyond him, half hidden by his form, something tall and white. Then he himself was hidden in darkness, as was everything else, for a cloud crossed the moon. At the same instant there came a violent puff of wind. When the moon shone out again I could see columns of snow, tall and white, being whirled up on all sides. I withdrew softly towards the tent, but before I reached it there were quick footsteps behind me. I swung round. 'What the devil are you doing here, Mirlees?' demanded Philipson. 'I woke and found the tent-flap open,' I said, 'and came out to see what was up. But what are you doing yourself?' He pointed to the sky, where black clouds were gathering as the wind freshened. 'It sounded to me as if the storm was blowing up again,' he said. 'If it comes on like yesterday we shall have to get up and rearrange the tents.' There was nothing to be said to this. It was a perfectly sound explanation. The only thing was, it was false. What Philipson's object could be in lying to me I couldn't fathom, though I lay awake pondering the mystery long after he was asleep; this much I knew, that for Saunders Philipson to depart from the truth, there would have to be some extremely potent cause. The wind continued to blow in gusts, but at last died down altogether, and I fell into a deep sleep myself. When I woke, Philipson had already left the tent. I could hear him rapping out sharp orders to the bearers, and on going outside myself, I found him energetically superintending the work of striking camp. For the leader of an expedition in such dismal straits as ours he seemed in wonderful spirits. The hillmen were not so cheerful. They wore a look not only of despair but evident terror, and one glance was enough to tell me we were going to have trouble with them.