The Great Amulet

by Maud Diver

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  "Ledge by ledge outbroke new marvels, now minute, and now immense: Earth's most exquisite disclosure, heaven's own God in evidence!" --Browning.

  "Sahib, dinner is ready."

  "I also am ready. More than ready!" Lenox answered, a twinkle in hiseyes.

  Zyarulla responded by a gleam of teeth as he followed his master to thecamp fire of roots and scrub, on whose summit 'dinner' was servedsteaming hot; a delectable mass of mutton and rice; eaten straight fromthe copper cooking vessel, lest the ice-bound breath of the mountainsfreeze it before it could reach its destination. The fire itself wassmall, and gave out little heat: for in the heart of the glaciers,sixteen hundred feet up, fuel is scarce, and even more precious thanfood.

  The five human forms, crouching close to it, had been Lenox's solecompanions through three months of hardship and danger, sweetened bythe exhilaration of conquering such difficulties as brace a man's nerveand fortitude to the utmost. Four of them were Gurkhas,--a Havildarand three men; short, sturdy hill folk of the Mongol type, with thespirits of schoolboys and the grit of heroes. The fifth was a Pathanfrom Desmond's regiment, told off to act as orderly and surveyor; a manof immovable gravity, who shared but two qualities with thethick-headed, stout-hearted little soldiers from Nepal:--courage of thefirst order, and devotion to the British officer, for whom any one ofthem would have laid down his life, if need be; not as a matter ofsentiment or heroism, but simply as a matter of course. The Gurkhashad, in fact, settled it among themselves before starting, that if anyharm came to the Sahib none of them were to disgrace the name of theregiment by returning without their leader.

  Now, as he neared the fire, looking bigger and broader than usual inhis sheep-skin coat and Balaklava cap,--his jaw and throat protected bya beard black as his hair,--all five stood up to receive him: and thequivering light showed that they also were muffled to the eyes.

  "It is a _burra khana_[1] to-night, Hazur," the Havildar informed himwith a chuckle; his slits of eyes vanishing as his teeth flashed out."In a treeless country, the castor-oil is a big plant! And the cook,having three handfuls of flour to spare, hath made us three_chupattis_; one for your Honour, and one to be broken up amongourselves."

  "No, no, Havildar; fair play," Lenox answered, smiling. "We willdivide the three."

  But seeing that insistence would damp their childish spirit offestivity, he accepted Benjamin's portion; and satisfied his conscienceby sharing it with Brutus, the inevitable, who snuggled contentedlyunder a corner of his poshteen, and thanked his stars he was not asother dogs, a mere loafer round clubs and cantonments. It was bad tobe cold and hungry; to plunge shoulder-deep through snow, and slitheracross hideous slopes of ice; but it was uplifting to share yourmaster's dinner and your master's bed; and there are few things moresustaining than a sense of one's own importance in the general schemeof things!

  The fire was their mess-table, round which they dined together, to savetime and trouble in cooking; and also because community of hardship anddanger links men to one another with hooks of steel; dispels all minordistinctions of colour and creed; reveals the Potter's raw materialunderlying all.

  And while they so sat, enjoying their one-course dinner as no gourmetever enjoyed a city feast, night and frost crept stealthily, almostvisibly, over the stupendous snow-peaks and pinnacles of opaque icethat towered on all sides, breathing out cold; and contemplating, as ifin silent amazement, these atoms of 'valiant dust' who dared and werebeaten back, and dared again; who day by day pushed farther into theirwhite sanctuary of silence, in search of a pass whose existence wasguessed at rather than known. At sunset there had been a brief burstof colour,--green and opal and rose; but by now the mountains shimmeredgrey and hard as steel under the tremulous fire of the stars; and everymoment the grip of frost tightened upon half-melted glacier, upon manand beast. For behind the little group of servants, who sat apart,enjoying their own meal in their own fashion, stood twelve apatheticKashmiri ponies,--unconsidered martyrs to man's lust ofachievement,--who endured to the full the miseries of mountaineering,and reaped none of its rewards.

  Dinner over, the fire must be allowed to die down. A pipe over theembers, and a sheep-skin bag shared with Brutus, was the evening'sunvarying programme on this detached expedition into the hidden core ofthings; tents and lesser luxuries having been left with the heavybaggage in charge of two Gurkhas at the foot of the pass.

  While Lenox sat smoking, and encouraging the fire to keep alive as longas might be, his men vied with one another in discovering shelteredcorners for the night. The Havildar was in high spirits after hismorsel of chupatti, washed down with a mouthful of rum; and thelaughter of his comrades echoed strangely among the ghostly peaks.

  "You seem to be in great form, Chundra Sen," Lenox called out at last."What's the joke now?"

  "We are seeking soft stones to sleep on, Hazur; and betting, like the_Sahiblog_, which of us shall find the softest!" [Transcriber's note:the "o" in "_Sahiblog_" is o-macron, Unicode U+014D.]

  Lenox joined in the laugh that greeted this sally,

  "Good men," he said. "Hope you find a few! First-rate joke of yours,Havildar."

  "By ill fortune, it was not I who made it, Hazur! But an officerSahib, up in Kabul; one who knew that it is good to laugh even when theknife is at the throat." And the search went forward with renewed zest.

  Apparently soft stones were forthcoming: for one by one the men rolledthemselves up in their blankets and sheep-skins, and slept soundly ontwo hundred feet of ice under a freezing sky; leaving Lenox alone withhis pipe and his thoughts, and the silence that dwelt like a presencein the eerie place.

  As a rule a hard day on the glaciers left him so over-powered withsleep that he could scarcely finish his smoke: but to-night his brainwas alert and active; stimulated by the knowledge that two more days ofclimbing ought to bring him at last to the Pass of his dreams:--thePass that must be found and crossed in the teeth of all that Naturemight do to hinder him!

  That discovery would close the first phase of his journey: andto-night, looking back over it, from the day of his departure forSimla, he saw that it had been good.

  Sir Henry Forsyth, Foreign Secretary, and an old school friend of hisbrother's, had instructed him to work his way up to Hunza, a smallindependent state north of Kashmir, hidden among lofty mountains andimpenetrable valleys, whence robber bands--secure from retaliation--hadfor long amused and enriched themselves by flying descents uponneighbouring tribes, and upon caravans passing from Asia to India. Andnow, after an unusually daring raid, the peace-loving Kirghiz of thedistrict had appealed to the Indian Government for protection and help.

  Lenox, with his little escort of six Gurkhas and one Pathan, was toenter this stronghold of brigands; reason with their chief, and bindhim down to good behaviour for the future. In addition, Sir Henrysuggested that instead of going to Hunza direct, he should strike outeastward from Kashmir, working his way round through the great MustaghMountains, and exploring as he went, also that he should finally pushon northward, and penetrate as far into the Pamirs as the approach ofwinter would permit.

  "There will be no difficulty with the authorities. I have arranged allthat; and you need not be back at Dera till October or November," thegreat man had concluded, in a tone half question, half command.

  "No, sir. I may as well do all I can while I'm up there."

  Whereat Sir Henry had eyed him thoughtfully from between narrowed lids.For all his great brain, he was a man of one idea: and that idea--"TheNorth safeguarded." Mere men, himself included, were for him no morethan pawns in the great game to be played out between two Empires, onthe chess-board of Central Asia. But . . there are pawns, and pawns:and Sir Henry had had his eye on Lenox for some years; recognising inhim a pawn of high value; a man to be sent to the front on the firstopportunity, and kept there as long as might be. The news of hismarriage had been a shock to the Foreign Secretary: and it isconceivable that he had wished to test
Lenox by asking him to undertakesuch a mission within a year of the fatal event. He was speculatingnow, as he watched him, how far the 'woman complication' was likely tocount with this impenetrable Scot. With Sir Henry, after the firstyear or two, the woman had not counted at all; and, unhappily for her,she knew it.

  The pause lasted so long that Lenox shifted his position: but Sir Henryonly said, "I was relieved when I got your wire."

  "Surely I could not have answered otherwise?"

  "I am glad you think so. But frankly, when I heard of your marriage, Iwas half afraid I had lost one of my ablest men."

  Lenox smiled. "Not quite as bad as that, sir, I hope."

  "Well then . . what about Gilgit?"

  Sir Henry spoke carelessly; but his eyes were on Lenox's face, and hesaw him flinch.

  "Is that likely to be an immediate contingency?" Lenox asked quietly.

  "Next, year, I should say, as things are going now."

  "Well, I hope it may be possible. But . . one would have to think itover."

  "_Talk_ it over, you mean . . eh?"

  Something in the tone angered Lenox.

  "Yes, sir . . talk it over. That is what I meant," he had answered,looking straightly at the other: and they had returned somewhatabruptly to the matter in hand.

  But Lenox had dined with the Foreign Secretary that night, and they hadparted good friends, as ever: Sir Henry begging the younger man to askhim for anything that might serve to lessen the hardships and dangersahead of him, adding, as they shook hands: "I assure you, my dearfellow, we who sit in Simla fully realise how much the country owes tomen of your sort; and grudge no money spent in making the way smootherfor you."

  But Lenox, knowing well that hardships and perils loom larger in aneasy-chair than on the slope of a glacier, had asked for little, beyondpermission to depart, and that speedily.

  A few days at Pindi had sufficed for the collecting of stores andequipment. Then he had pushed northward in earnest, picking up hisescort of Gurkhas from their station in the foot-hills: and so onthrough Kashmir, where spring had already flung her bridal veil overthe orchards, and retreating snow-wreaths had left the hills carpetedwith a mosaic of colour,--primula, iris, orchid, and groundlingsinnumerable: over the Zoji-la Pass, into the shadeless, fantasticdesolation of Ladak; and on, across stark desert and soundlesssnow-fields, to Leh, the terminus of all caravans from India andCentral Asia. Here Lenox had spent two days with one Captain Burrow ofthe Bengal Cavalry, who, with a handful of half-starved Kashmirisoldiers, upheld the interests of the British Raj on this uttermostedge of Empire. Here also he found a letter from Quita; read andre-read it, and stowed it away in his breast-pocket, trying not to beaware of a haunting ache deep down in him, which must perforce beignored. The old charm of the Road, the 'glory of going on,' thatworks like madness in the blood, was strong upon him as ever. Butwhereas, in former journeyings, he had been one man, he was now two.The whole-hearted ecstasy of travel would never again be his. He hadgiven a part of himself into a woman's keeping; and let him put theearth's diameter between them, she would hold him still. Every week,every day that drew him farther from her did but bring home to him moreforcibly the mysterious, compelling power of marriage, its largereserves of loyalty, its sacred and intimate revelations, itsinexorable grip on life and character.

  But meanwhile, there was the Road before him; a rough road, full ofvicissitudes and anxieties, of interests and anticipations that lefthim small leisure for the communings of his heart.

  Before leaving Leh, hill camels and ponies had been added unto him;besides twenty-one decrepit Kashmir soldiers,--a type extinct sincethey have been handled by British officers. These were to be depositedby Lenox at his so-called 'base of operations,' by way of guarding thetrade route so grievously troubled by the brigand state.

  Followed two more weeks of marching,--rougher marching thistime,--through the core of the lofty mountains that divide India fromCentral Asia; across the terrible Depsang Plains, seventeen thousandfeet up; and over four passes choked with snow; till they came upon adeserted fort, set in the midst of stark space, and knew that here,indeed, was the limit of human habitation. Next day the work ofexploration had begun in earnest. Week after week, with unwearyingpersistence, they had pushed on, upward, always upward, through regionssacred to the eagles and the clouds; working along streams that cuttheir way through hillsides steep as houses, or along tracks that ranto polished ledges of rock and dropped sheer to unimaginable depths;clambering over formidable ranges by any chance opening that could bedignified by the name of a pass; the eternally cheery Gurkhas solacingthemselves with rum; the Pathans with opium; the Scot with rare nips ofbrandy, on the bitterest nights. Still more rarely,--at wider andwider intervals of time,--he drew from his breast-pocket a pill-box,like the one still locked in his writing-table drawer at home. Itscontents were running very low by now; and, once gone, they would neveragain be replenished. That he knew; with a knowledge born not ofarrogance, but of faith that somehow, somewhen the right must prevail.

  And to-night,--as he sat alone by the fire, watching the greyness ofdeath quench spark after spark of living light, while a late moonsailed leisurely into view, overlaying the steely hardness of ice andsnow with a veil of shimmering silver,--he took out the box, and openedit. He knew it held two pellets; no more. Why not take them at once,and so break the last link of the devil's chain? He turned them intohis palm, . . and paused, while the enemy within whispered words ofseduction hard to be withstood. But now a second voice spoke in himalso: a voice of mingled authority and pleading. Why not fling awayboth box and pellets, foregoing the final degradation, the finalrapture, that every nerve in him clamoured for more imperatively thanhe dared admit even to himself.

  For some reason the suggestion brought Desmond vividly to hismind:--Desmond, with his characteristic assertion: "Of course you willsucceed. You have won His great talisman." Yes. He was right!--'thegreat talisman.' Surely if marriage were worth anything, if it meantmore to a man than mere domesticity, and material satisfaction, itought by rights to act as a talisman to protect him from the evils ofhis baser self.

  While thinking, he had mechanically returned the pellets to the box,closing it firmly, crushing it between his hands; and now, with a widesweep of his arm, he flung it far from him, into the blue-black mysteryof a ravine that swooped past the camping-ground to the valley below.

  "Thank God _that's_ done with!" he muttered; though as yet the painrather than the elation of conquest prevailed. Then, lifting Brutus inhis arms, as though he had been a child, he slipped, dog and all, intohis sheep-skin bag, and slept without dreams.

  An hour later, a sudden gust from the north swept down the ravine.Battalions of cloud blotted out the stars; and a host of snow-flakeswhirled above the sleeping camp, like spirits of fairies, incapable ofdoing harm.

  The chill discomfort of snow melting on their faces woke the men, oneby one, at an unearthly hour, to find their whole world shrouded inwhite, and a mist of snow-dust still falling. But Lenox, undismayed,ordered tea and biscuits, and lost no time in setting out.

  A stiff climb up the ravine into which he had flung his pill-box layahead of them; but since the side nearest the camp was unbrokenglacier, it seemed wisest to hack their way across it before attemptingthe ascent.

  It was freezing hard: earth and sky were muffled in fine white powder,and scudding clouds constantly hid the moon. An ice-slope overlaidwith snow is not pleasant going at the best of times; and on this onethere were ugly rents, into which men and animals slipped, to theirsore discomfort. But the way of life is by courage and persistence:and in time the thing was done.

  The farther side proved less formidable: and while they halted torecoup their energies, a report like thunder, followed by anunmistakable rushing sound, made every man of them catch his breath.It was an avalanche: and its appalling crescendo was coming straightdown the hill on which they stood.

  The two Pathans remained rigid, impassive,--t
he greater the danger thecooler do these men become: but the Kirghiz--a creature withoutself-respect--shook so violently that he dropped the bridles of hisponies.

  "Run, Sahib . . run!" he stammered. "Or we be all dead men."

  But there was nowhere to run to, even had running on an ice-slope beenpossible; which it was not. Neither was it possible to guess the exactdirection of the invisible annihilation that was racing down upon themthrough a mist of snow. There was nothing for it but to standsteady--till that happened which must happen. So they stood steady,without speech or movement, like men turned to stone.

  It may have been a matter of minutes. To Lenox it seemed a matter ofyears. Because, in that short breathing space, fear--overmasteringfear--gripped him as it never yet had done. A year or two ago, for allhis human love of life, he would have accepted a mountaineer's deathwith something of the same pride and stoicism as a soldier acceptsdeath in battle. But now . . now . . life meant so infinitely more tohim, that every throbbing artery and nerve rebelled against the loss ofit. For it is happiness, more than conscience, that 'makes cowards ofus all.'

  Nearer and louder grew the appalling sound. Then a great cloud ofsnow-dust burst in their faces, half blinding them: and, with the roarof an express train, the avalanche sped down the ravine; burying theice-slope they had just crossed; and obliterating their footsteps asman's work is obliterated by the soundless avalanche of the years.

  All five men let out their breath in an audible murmur.

  "_Burra tamasha_,[2] Hazur," Yusuf Ali remarked gravely. "Never beforehave I seen the like."

  But for the moment Lenox had lost his voice. Ten minutes' delay instarting, and they had been swept out of life, without a struggle or acry. It is this significance of trifles in determining large issuesthat at times staggers faith and reason.

  "The Sahib still goes forward?" the Pathan added presently, as one whomerely asks for orders: and the Sahib nodded.

  But this was too much for the Kirghiz. Emboldened by terror, he flunghimself on the ground.

  "I who speak am as dust beneath the feet of the Heaven-born. Butconsider, Hazur, there will be many more such before the pass can bereached."

  "It is possible," Lenox answered unmoved. "It is also possible that,like this one, they will keep out of our path. Make no more fool'stalk. Go back to the ponies."

  The Kirghiz was not mistaken. There were 'many more such' during thenext few days. But Lenox was not mistaken either: for none of themcame their way. Only the muffled thunder of their descent broke thestillness of a world whose mystery and grandeur surpassed anythingLenox himself had ever seen.

  For on the second night, a night without wind or cloud, they camped inthe heart of the great glacier: and all about them,--touched toethereal unreality by the light of moon and stars,--were unnumberedcrests and pinnacles, fantastically carven; black mouths of caverns,shaggy with icicles; sudden fissures and vast continents of shadow,like ink-stains on unsullied purity; and over-arching all, the stillwonder of the sky, pierced with points of flame.

  Tired as he was, Lenox resented the need for shutting his eyes upon ascene so stirring alike to the imagination and the heart: a scene thatlifted both, past Nature's uttermost sublime, to the Master-Builder,whose mind is the Universe, and whose thoughts are its stars andworlds, and the living souls of men. But for all that Nature had herway with him; sealing up eyes and mind with the double seal ofweariness and the supreme content of the climber who knows that thesummit is at hand.

  And upon the fourth day, in a blaze of sunlight, that set the unchartedsnow-fields glittering like dust of diamonds, they crossed thePass,--Lenox's own Pass, that no living man had set eyes or footupon,--and looked at last on that elusive 'other side,' that drawscertain natures like a magnet to the far-flung limits of earth.

  And in this case the other side proved well worth the hardships enduredto reach it. After 30 many days cooped up between ice-walls andprecipitous heights, Lenox caught his breath at the magnitude of theview outspread before him; an amphitheatre of 'the greater gods', ridgebeyond ridge, peak beyond dazzling peak, stabbing the blue, the highestof them little lower than Everest's self: while across the rock-boundvalley a host of glaciers, like primeval monsters, crept downward fromthe mountains that gave them birth.

  As Lenox stood feasting his soul upon the splendour of it all, he knewthat this was one of the great days of his life: that only Quita'sinspiring presence was needed to crown the triumph of it. Even in thefirst glow of achievement, his heart turned instinctively to hers forsympathy and approval: and, could she have known it, her haunting fearthat the mountains would prove too strong for her had crumbled intonothingness there and then. For if 'many waters cannot quench love,'neither can many mountains dwarf it. When all is said, it is still'the great amulet that makes the world a garden', and always will be,while God's men and women have red blood in their veins.

  [1] Big dinner.

  [2] Great excitement.