Chapter VII: The Distant Hills

It must have been about four in the morning that I woke, with the same sort of feeling of something being different as you have when a ship stops at night, and the absence of the engines’ murmur, which kept you awake the first night or two, now wakes you up seeking the accustomed sound.

Then I realized that the wind had stopped. I unlaced the tent flies to see if the sky was cloudy or clear, but as I came out I heard a rushing sound and a gust beat on the tent as if it would tear it from its pegs. A thick whirl of sand filled the air, and the rush of it woke the others.

“What’s up?” called out Wrexham as I struggled with the flies.

I explained as best I could, and while doing so smelt the unmistakable fresh smell of rain.

“By Jove, I believe it’s rain coming up!” I called out, and pulled the flies apart again. The wind dropped, and was succeeded by a steady patter on the tent wall.

It got harder and harder and steadier and steadier, and we heard the men stirring.

“Come on!” called Wrexham, “all hands outside with every d----d pot and pan you can get and see if we can fill ’em.”

By the light of the rain-dimmed hurricane-lamp I could see Firoz spreading out the cooking-pots, and Payindah taking advantage of the wind stopping to peg out a waterproof-sheet. Cold as it was, we stood out in the rain for the sheer pleasure of feeling the sand being washed off our faces and our skins expanding again. Our scanty water ration had allowed nothing for washing. It rained more or less continuously for nearly two hours, and stopped just as the dawn was breaking.

After it had gone on for a quarter of an hour or so, we three, with Firoz carrying our two spades and a pick, went to the far end where we had made the dam.

We already found a thin trickle of water reaching it and apparently being sucked up by the sand. But a little later the dam had bound together, and we stood there in the rain watching with delighted eyes the growth of a small black pool that spread and spread until the end of it passed out of the misty halo of light. Wrexham stayed there till dawn like a Dutchman saving a dyke, getting up at intervals with Firoz to heap more and more sand on to the outer and upper sides of his dam.

“Not bad calculations,” he said, when the growing dawn revealed to us a pool of water--somewhat sandy, but still water--some thirty feet long, as much as three feet wide in places, and nearly a foot deep in the middle of the deepest pool. “I should say there was at least one hundred and fifty gallons there.”

Our first care was to fill up every utensil we had, and from them, straining through several thicknesses of cloth, to replenish all the tanks. Then we gave the camels as much as they could swallow. You could almost see the poor beasts swelling as they drank. Even after that there was a certain amount left, rather sandy and muddy.

Wrexham looked at it.

“If I thought that would last the day, I would suggest stopping here till to-morrow to give the camels a rest and another drink, but what doesn’t evaporate will soak through the dam, so it would be no score. We’d better use what’s left for a bath.”

So we did, and felt new men once more. The two Punjabis followed, but Sadiq, beyond washing his face and hands, did not appear interested. The removal of the sand crust from his face seemed quite enough ablutions in his estimation. We started rather later than usual, and, although the rain had ceased, the sky was yet heavy with clouds. The air was clear, but there was no great visibility in the horizon.

Once we left the rock where we had camped, the rain seemed to have made little difference to the sands, save that the upper surface was somewhat caked, but it was refreshing to breathe air that was air and not part sand. There was only a gentle breeze, and it was free from the irritating particles that we had been breathing for the last few days. The dunes were still very high, despite Wrexham’s opinion that they ought to be getting lower. I estimated that the majority of them were little under eighty feet in height most of that day. There was a very slight steaminess in the air as the sun warmed, but as the sky cleared we began to see farther and farther.

Men and beasts alike stepped out briskly, for the downpour had put new life into us all. As we went, we climbed each fresh dune in the hope of seeing a new glimpse of the hills in front, but for a long time saw nothing beyond the desert’s yellow edge. A thick bank of cloud still hung to the northeast, although the sky above us was by now clear blue.

We halted about one o’clock, and it was after that, as the sun began to start down on his journey westward, that we were rewarded by our first view of the hills. Forsyth was the first to draw our attention to the clouds to the northeast having thinned considerably, and a little later Payindah called to me as we topped a dune. Wrexham was down in the dip in front.

“Look, sahib, those be surely hills in front!”

I looked, and there was a rift in the cloud-bank that had baffled us all day, and in it showed hills, real, unmistakable, blue-shadowed hills, such as one sees from the northern stations of India as you look out over the sunburnt expanse of plain. They were a long way off--forty or fifty miles, I estimated--although in the clean, rain-washed air they looked closer with the sun falling directly upon them. These must be the hills below the high snow we had seen.

“Surely, Payindah, hills like the hills of the Punjab.”

I called to Wrexham breasting the slope ahead with the leading camels:

“Hills, John! Hills ahead!”

He stopped as I called, and then, as my words reached him, he broke into something like a run up the steep slope and stopped. Then I saw his glasses come out. I slithered down the dune I was on, and raced up to him, picking up Forsyth as I went.

The clouds were thinning even as I looked, and presently there stretched before us to right and left a long wall of hills, faint heather colour, below a long veil of clouds.

“‘What I had sought all day in vain, the faint lilae haze below the white that I have noted marks always the lower hills below high snow,’” said Wrexham, quoting from his great-great-uncle’s diary. “We’ve found them, after all! Thank God, we didn’t turn back. I think that rain must have been sent on purpose.”

Wrexham is not what you would call a religious man in the strict sense of the word, but I think--and I know him well--that under his very practical and somewhat materialistic exterior is a very strong belief in a Creator who takes an active interest in His creation. But that was the first time I had ever heard him make such a definite confession of his faith, sure sign of his being deeply moved. We stood in silence a space, and up behind us climbed the camels and stopped, too. Even Sadiq was convinced now, as he stood looking out on the far hills, the first of his people to have faced the desert and seen what lay on the far side.

Forsyth was the first to break the silence.

“How far do you say they are, John?” he asked.

“Anything from forty miles upwards; impossible to tell from here. When we camp I’ll plot some kind of a base-line and see if I can get an estimate. But the main point is that now we _know_ we can reach them.”

He led off again down the slope, and we continued the march. Owing to our late start and the high dunes, we made but ten miles that day, but we camped with joyous hearts. The cloud-cap still hung over the hills, but seemed to be thinning toward sunset.

The tent was up, and Firoz busy with the evening meal, when Wrexham, who had been taking bearings from two dunes nearly a mile apart and was now at work on a rise above us, called to Forsyth and me sitting by the tent.

“Quick, you two! The clouds are lifting, and you can see the snow.”

We ran up to the top where he stood, and there, above the hills which showed sharp and clear--a long jagged wall--we could see to one side of the centre a patch of white below the clouds. A minute or two later these rolled off it, and there, stabbing the sky with two sharp-toothed peaks, was a great snow mountain vivid in the low rays of the westering sun. The last clouds lifted ere the sun went down as though to give us a full view.

The mountain rose in a long swell, not unlike a camel’s back, from the centre of the wall of lower hills, and after rising gently for some way sheered up steeper in a high wall of snow topped with two great peaks with a sharp dip between. The snow-line lay considerably below the bases of the peaks, which looked like the horns on the head of some gigantic beast. Below the snow was faint blue haze that told us that the mountain was a considerable distance behind the low hills we had first seen, since these stood out clear and sharp.

“That mountain is on no map in the world,” said Wrexham as he took its bearing. “You remember all this part and several hundred miles on it is empty desert even on the latest maps. We shall have the pleasure of naming a new mountain among our other finds. It’s high, too--I should say twelve thousand or thirteen thousand feet, at least--to show snow at this time of year so low as that. What shall we call it?”

“I think we’d better wait till we get there. The white-skinned people have probably got a name already.”

“I wonder if it will be a name redolent of old Greece,” said Forsyth. “Perhaps one of the goddesses of old times. Anyway, if it hasn’t, I’m for giving it something a d----d sight more poetic than K2 or K5 or any other of the beastly insults that the Survey of India put on some of the most beautiful things in the world. Even the unpoetic Indian treats them better than that. Nanga Parbat is at least graceful.”

“The lady blushes at the suggestion,” I said. “Look, really blushes.” The sun had just sunk below the horizon, and the great peaks ahead, still catching the rays now hidden to us, turned rose-colour, then darker red, then faded to purple, and last cold blue. A minute later they were but a white patch against the opal sky, and then they had disappeared.

“She thinks your remarks are flippant and has veiled herself, Forsyth,” I continued.

“Well, what about a meal if Wrexham has done his calculations? The lower hills, too, are fading fast now.”

We moved back to the tent, and while Payindah was bringing food Wrexham told us how his calculations had worked out. By his reckoning the hills should be about fifty-odd miles away: the low hills, of course, not the snow-peak which was not showing when he had taken his bearings from the two ends of his base-line. The fifth day from now should, therefore, see us at the foot, reckoning on twelve miles a day average if we started early each morning.

During the next three days we did thirty-eight miles, and as we went the dunes began to get lower, and by the evening of the second day, the ninth day of our march, were not more than thirty feet high. The desert was ever the same, greyish sand-dunes, now wind-tossed once more, for the wind had risen again, though not with the same violence that had marked the earlier days of our journey.

On the evening of the ninth day the snow-peak had sunk much lower, from which we were the more convinced that it lay some way behind the long wall of rock which now filled all our northeast horizon. Wrexham measured it again, and made us out twenty-three miles from the near hills, somewhat more than his last estimate had been, taken at much over double the distance. The snow mountain he considered at least fifty miles beyond the first hills.

On the eleventh day we did a good march, covering thirteen miles, thanks to much lower dunes. Not bad going for the camels, who were very done by now from want of grazing and water. In the afternoon we remarked some distance away to our right another bit of rock formation, and Forsyth was for making for it. He said it must be the line that was mentioned in the diary. Wrexham at first considered it would be better to stick to our original bearing which had done us so well. Then, since going was now easy and the rock formation not more than a couple of miles off our line, we decided to head for it. It added a little to the march, but nothing noticeable. As we got near, we could see that the hill was somewhat higher and longer than the last, as, indeed, one would expect, it being nearer to the main chain. It must have been one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy feet above the surrounding sand.

As we got closer, Forsyth and I pushed on ahead, climbing up it some way in front of the rest, and, to our surprise, as we neared the top, a couple of birds flew up. This first sign of life after eleven days of barren, lifeless desert was a pleasant find, and made us feel that we had surmounted the first lap of our difficulties, and that, whatever lay before us, at least we were in habitable country once more.

This formation differed from the last in being a razor-back all along with no central depression. Clearly we should have to camp at the foot of it. But it would give us a fine view of the hills from which to plan the morrow’s march.

But our greatest surprise was when Forsyth climbed to the crest line and then shouted to me:

“Water below, Harry; real water!”

I hurried after him, and he pointed out to me a thin shining line about half a mile away, a little ribbon of silver in the glaring sands, a ribbon that seemed to lead away toward the hills, which now, only about ten miles distant, towered up like a giant wall, steep and apparently unscaleable. The previous evening Wrexham had estimated their height at not less than two thousand feet. From here they looked, as, indeed, they proved to be in many places, even more, and as far as one could see sheer cliffs of scarped rocks, with only a short expanse of tumbled slope at their feet. They gave one the impression of springing straight out of the desert sands.

“That must be the great-great-uncle’s little stream, and somewhere at the end of it should be his valley,” said Forsyth, as he sat down and lit a cigarette, a form of luxury that was drawing near its close. “This gives one almost an aeroplane view, doesn’t it? Can you see any signs of life yonder--fields or houses or anything?”

I had got out my glasses on reaching the top, and while he was speaking was studying the distant hills, but could see nothing whatever that looked like signs of human habitation.

“Can’t see any. It looks all as barren as the Aden coast, and not unlike it with these rocks springing clear out of the sand. Toss you who goes down and sends John up here and then leads the camels round to the stream.”

“Right-o!” Forsyth pulled a coin out of his pocket and spun it.

“Heads,” I called.

“Heads it is. What am I to do?”

“Go down and send John up. Tell him about the stream, and then lead the camels round to it below where we are now. The south side will be the shortest way.”

Before he got to the bottom of the slope, he met Wrexham starting up, explained the lie of the land, and then led the camels off while John joined me on top.

“Your uncle’s stream unless I’m a Dutchman,” I said, pointing. “We can camp by water to-night, thank goodness.”

Wrexham looked down without speaking. Then he turned to me. “Considering we marched on a guesswork bearing calculated from a vague entry in a hundred-year-old diary, it’s unfair to call it chance.”

“Yes, I don’t think there’s much chance about it. Not that there really is about anything, for that matter, to my way of thinking.”

Sometimes, especially when things go crooked, one feels that it’s all chance, that the only controlling hand is one vast mocking deity or fate; but, generally, if you look back afterwards, you see that there’s been method in it all through, although at the time there seemed to be none unless it were malevolent. After all, we are but shuttles, and as we drive our way through the loom there doesn’t seem much sense in the whole thing, the steady monotony, over and under, over and under. But later, when perhaps we’re laid on the rack for a space and can see the pattern as a whole, we realize how the apparently aimless movements each had their part to play in the finished pattern of beauty that the weaver had intended.

As we were speaking, the first of the gaunt, weary camels came round the corner of the hill below us, and we watched them pacing slowly along till they came to the bank of the stream, then stopped and buried their muzzles in the water.

“Nice to camp by running water again. I wonder where it goes to,” I said.

“Swallowed up in the sand, I fancy, before very far,” said Wrexham. “Can you see if there is any valley at the far end in the hills?”

“I was looking for that as you came up, but I can’t see any break. If there is one, it must be very narrow. But you remember, according to the diary, it is narrow, and I doubt if you could see it from here unless there was a big dip in the cliffs.”

“There’s a long line of shadow that looks as if it might be something, but, as you say, it’s hard to make out from here. One thing is pretty clear, that the people, if there are people, can’t live below the hills. I can’t make out a single vestige of a field or even a tree, and the hills themselves look absolutely bare.”

“Probably such vegetation as there is on this first ridge is on the other side. You see that very markedly sometimes in hills. One side quite bare and the other all green,” said I.

“Well, anyway, here we are at the entrance or somewhere near it, and the next thing is how are we going to get in?”

“We’d better push on to-morrow morning and get up to the cliffs, and then start looking round for the valley with the gateway. There’s nothing to be seen from here, so our best course is to follow straight up the stream to wherever it runs into the hills. You remember your great-great-uncle travelled nearly three days skirting them before he found a way in at all.”

“True. Our best course will certainly be the stream. And now we’d better get down to camp and look over things for to-morrow. There’s no more need for the compass, anyway. I’m jolly tired of marching on it all day.” Wrexham led away down the rock slope, and I followed.

After dinner we sat outside and listened to the pleasant ripple of the little stream in the starry stillness. The wind had dropped entirely and the air was clear, so that we could see the sharp outline of the hills against the sky.

“To-morrow we shall know our fate, more or less,” said Wrexham, “as to whether we can get into these hills peacefully or not. But I think we ought to be prepared for possible trouble, so a couple of us had better work ahead. There’s no difficulty about keeping our direction, since all we’ve got to do is to follow the stream. What do you think, Harry? You’re the professional soldier man.”

“Quite agree. I think, if I and Payindah keep half a mile or so ahead and you keep the two camels well closed up, we shall get warning in time of any one moving in front. We’re all armed except Sadiq, and he’s safer without anything.”

“If we start at 7.30 A.M. we shall be in the hills before midday, and that will give us plenty of time to look around before dark if this is not the actual stream we’re looking for, though I feel sure it must be. A longer rest will do us all good to-night; don’t you think so?”

“Every time, John. I shall be d----d glad to feel that I needn’t stir out of bed before six to-morrow, and when I do, that I can get a decent wash for once in a way. I’m contemplating shaving, too.” Forsyth rubbed his hand over his stubby chin, and then we all remembered our peculiarly dirty appearance, and then and there decided to commence the morrow with a shave, hitherto abandoned owing to lack of water.

“I don’t want to enter the promised land of the Gobi Greeks, or whoever they may be, with ten days’ stubble on my face,” continued Forsyth, who had some consideration for his personal appearance.

“No; you might meet the Lady Euphrosine at the door,” said Wrexham. “I hope you’ve got a string of nice classical compliments ready at the tip of your tongue.”

“Well, if you haven’t it’s not my fault after all the trouble I’ve taken with you for the last nine months.”

It was true. We had both taken considerable pains with Wrexham day after day trying to push Greek into him, and I must say we had succeeded passably well in that he could now make shift to read the language easily. We had brought up a pocket edition of the more famous classics and one or two modern books with us, and every day during our long journey from India he had spent an hour or two, and sometimes a great deal more, in study. Conversation was, of course, his weak point, although Forsyth and I had endeavoured to make him talk to us in a combination of modern idioms and old classical Greek.

“We shall look pretty silly if they don’t talk Greek or if they’ve got some special brand of their own,” said Wrexham.

“Well, if they do talk it, it’s sure to be different after all the centuries they must have been here. Consider American after a mere hundred years and a bit. But the basis will probably be unchanged, and pronunciation and idiom can be picked up pretty quickly when you’re actually among the people. Besides, if they’ve been cut off from the rest of the world, they will have been saved from new importations from other tongues, so that the only changes will be definite alterations of old forms. Some find to take back home for the philologists. I can see myself writing a treatise on phonetic changes through the ages in a pure tongue.”

It was strange how Forsyth spoke as though we knew the people in those hills would speak Greek. And yet he only voiced all our thoughts. We had long ago ceased to think there was any doubt in the matter, and only wondered what sort of a reception we should get and what manner of life we should find them leading. We speculated a good deal on that point, but none of us had any very clear theories. Forsyth favoured some kind of city-state, such as he was familiar with from his readings of the classics. Wrexham, on the other hand, I think, expected to find a mixture of Arabian Nights Bagdad with a prehistoric Pathan village. I had no very clear-cut ideas on the point at all.

“I’ll tell the men we don’t start till 7.30 to-morrow,” said Wrexham, “and then I vote for bed. We may as well get a good sleep, for Heaven alone knows whether we shall get one to-morrow night.”

He went over to the men’s fire, for we found a certain amount of reeds by the stream brink, and the men had taken the opportunity to make up a fire--a comforting thing to sit over, after the miserable oil-stove which was all we had had for cooking during our desert journey.

We turned in a few minutes later, and my last recollection of that night is of Wrexham gravely asking Forsyth whether the ancient Greeks understood the “Kamerad” gesture.