The Long Walk (28 page)

I lost count of the days again. My fitful sleep was invaded by visions of reptiles so tenacious of life that though I beat at them with my club in a frenzy they still hissed at me and crawled.
All my fears came bursting through in dreams Worst of all was the picture of myself staggering on alone, shouting for the others and knowing that I should never see them again. I would wake
shivering in the morning cold and be happily reassured to see Smith, Kolemenos, Zaro, Marchinkovas and Paluchowicz close about me.

Almost imperceptibly the terrain was changing. The yellow sand was deepening in colour, the grains were coarser, the smooth topped dunes taller. The sun still burned its shrivelling way across
the blue, unclouded heavens but now there were days when a gentle breeze sighed out from the south and there was a hint of coolness in its caress. The nights were really cold and I had the
impression that we were day by day gradually climbing out of the great heat-bowl.

It might have been a week or eight days after leaving the creek that we awoke to discover in a quickening of excitement and hope a new horizon. The day was sharply clear. Far over to the east,
perhaps fifty miles away, shrouded in a blue haze like lingering tobacco smoke, a mountain range towered. Directly ahead there were also heights but they were mere foothills compared with the
eastward eminences. So uninformed were we of Central Asian geography that we speculated on the possibility that the tall eastern barrier could be the Himalayas, that somehow we had by-passed them
to the west, that we might now even be on the threshold of India. We were to learn that the whole considerable north-to-south expanse of Tibet, ruggedly harsh and mountainous, lay between us and
the Himalayas.

We plodded on for two more exhausting, heart-breaking days before we reached firm ground, a waste of lightly-sanded rocks. We lay there in the extremity of our weakness and looked back at our
tracks through the sand. There were no defined footmarks, only a dragging trail such as skis make in snow. Lifeless and naked the rocky ridge sloped easily into the distance above us. In my mind
was the one thought that over the hump there might be water. We rested a couple of hours before we tackled the drag upwards. We took off our moccasins and emptied them of sand. We brushed the fine
dust from between our toes. Then we went up and out of the Gobi.

Over the ridge there was more desolation. By nightfall we had dropped down into a stone-strewn valley. We might have struggled on longer but Marchinkovas fell and banged his knee. In the morning
he showed us a big bruise and complained of a little stiffness but was able to walk. The pain passed off as he exercised it and he experienced no more trouble from the injury. We climbed again.
There was no talking because none of us could spare the breath and movement of the lips was agony. We hauled ourselves along through a faint dawn mist and did not reach this next summit for several
hours. From the top there was the view again of the great range to the east, looking even more formidable than at our first sight of it. Ahead there seemed to be an unbroken succession of low
ridges corrugating the country as far as we could see. Below us the floor of the valley appeared to be covered with sand and we decided to get down before dark to search for snakes.

It was the merest accident that we did not miss the water on our way down. We had all passed it when Zaro turned round and yelled the one wonderful word. It was no more than a trickle from a
crack in a rock but it glinted like silver. It crept down over the curve of a big round boulder and spread thinly over a flat rock below. Kolemenos and I had been picking our way down the slope
some twenty yards ahead of Zaro when his shout arrested us. We turned quickly and scrambled back. We found that the source of the little spring was a crack just wide enough to take the fingers of
one hand. The water was sparkling, clean and ice-cold. We channelled the tiny stream to a point where we could lead it into our battered and much travelled metal mug and sat down impatiently to
watch it fill. The operation took fully ten minutes.

I said to Zaro, ‘You had passed this point. What made you turn round and find it?’

Zaro spoke quite seriously. ‘I think I must have smelt it. It was quite a strong impulse that made me turn my head.’

The water tinkled musically into the mug until it was brimming. Carefully Zaro lifted it away and I noticed his hand was trembling a little so that some of the water spilled over. He faced Smith
and with a bow, and, in imitation of the Mongolian etiquette of serving the senior first, handed him the water. The mug was passed round and each man took a gulp. No nectar of the gods could have
tasted so wonderful. Again and again we filled the mug and drank. And then we left it, full and running over, under the life-giving spring so that any of us could drink whenever he felt like
it.

The time was around the middle of the day. We agreed readily that we should stay close to the spring for another twenty-four hours, but up here on the hillside nothing lived – and we were
very hungry. I volunteered to go down into the sandy valley to search for a snake and Zaro said he would come with me. We took the two forked sticks and set off, turning at intervals to look back
and fix the position of the squatting group about the spring.

The descent took us over an hour and the heat shimmered off the sandy, boulder-strewn floor of the valley. Our hopes were immediately raised by seeing a snake about a yard long slither away at
our approach and disappear under a rock but we foraged around well into the afternoon after that without seeing another living thing. Then we parted and went opposite ways and I had almost decided
it was time to give up the quest when I heard Zaro let out a whoop of triumph. I ran to him and found him pinning down a Big Black which was thrashing about desperately in an effort to break free.
I reversed my stick and battered it to death. I put my arm about Zaro’s shoulders and congratulated him. He was always our Number One snake-catcher.

Zaro wore his capture like a trophy about his neck as we toiled back up the hillside. We were soaked with sweat and exhausted by the time we reached the spring and Kolemenos took over my usual
job of skinning and preparing the snake for the fire. Paluchowicz had laid a fire from our few remaining sticks on which was placed the last piece of camel dung which Zaro had gathered at the
oasis. There was not enough heat to cook the meat thoroughly but we were too hungry to be squeamish. We ate and we drank as the sun went down. Only Kolemenos slept well that night; for the rest of
us it was too cold for comfort.

The next morning we were on our way again. This time there were no stomach cramps, which led us to believe that we owed at least some of the previous trouble to the muddy creek. We travelled
down the long slope, across the hot valley and up the hillside facing us – a total of at least fifteen miles. From the top of the ridge we took fresh bearings. Directly ahead were some
formidable heights, so we set our course over easier ground about ten degrees east of the line due south. Towards evening we were heartened by the discovery of the first vegetation we had seen
since the oasis. It was a rough, spiky grass clinging hardily to dry rootholds in fissures between the rocks. We pulled up a clump, handed it round and closely examined it like men who had never
seen grass before.

The wearing trek went on day after day. Our diet was still confined to an occasional snake – we lived on them altogether for upwards of three weeks from the time of our first sampling back
in the desert. The nights set in with a chill which produced a frosty white rime on the stones of the upper hillsides. In vain we looked for signs of animal life, but there were birds: from time to
time a pair of hovering hawks, some gossiping magpies and our old acquaintances the ravens. The wiry mountain grass grew more abundant with each passing day and its colour was greener. Then the
country presented us with struggling low bushes and lone-growing dwarf trees, ideal fuel for the fires which we now started to light every night. The spectre of thirst receded as we found
clear-running rivulets. It was rare now that we had to go waterless for longer than a day.

There came a day when we breasted the top of a long rise and looked unbelievingly down into a wide-spreading valley which showed far below the lush green of grazing grass. Still more exciting,
there were, crawling like specks five miles or more distant from and below us, a flock of about a hundred sheep. We made the descent fast, slipping and sliding in our eagerness to get down. As we
got nearer we heard the bleating and calling of the sheep. We had about a quarter of a mile to go to reach the flock when we saw the two dogs, long-coated liver-and-white collie types. They came
racing round the flock to take up station between us and their charges.

Zaro called out to them, ‘Don’t worry, we won’t hurt them. Where’s your master?’ The dogs eyed him warily.

Kolemenos growled, ‘I only need to get near enough to a sheep for one swing of my old axe . . .’

‘Don’t get impatient, Anastazi,’ I told him. ‘It is fairly obvious the shepherd has sent his dogs over here to intercept us. Let us swing away from the flock and see if
they will lead us to their master.’

We turned pointedly away. The dogs watched us closely for a couple of minutes. Then, apparently satisfied they had headed us away from the sheep, ran off at great speed together towards the
opposite slope of the valley. My eyes followed the line of their run ahead of them and then I shouted and pointed. A mile or more away rose a thin wisp of smoke.

‘A fire at midday can only mean cooking,’ said Marchinkovas hopefully.

The fire was burning in the lee of a rocky outcrop against which had been built a one-man shelter of stones laid one above the other as in an old cairn. Seated there was an old man, his two
dogs, tongues lolling, beside him. He spoke to his dogs as we neared him and they got up and raced off back across the valley to the flock. Steaming over the fire was a black iron cauldron. The
American went to the front and approached bowing. The old man rose smiling and returned the bow and then went on to bow to each of us in turn.

He was white-bearded. The high cheek-bones in his broad, square face showed a skin which had been weathered to the colour of old rosewood. He wore a warm goatskin cap with ear-flaps turned up
over the crown in the fashion of the Mongols we had met in the north. His felt boots were well made and had stout leather soles. His unfastened three-quarter-length sheepskin coat was held to the
body by a woven wool girdle and his trousers were bulkily padded, probably with lamb’s-wool. He leaned his weight on a five-feet-tall wooden staff, the lower end of which was iron-spiked and
the upper part terminating in a flattened ‘V’ crutch formed by the bifurcation of the original branch. In a leather-bound wooden sheath he carried a bone-handled knife which I later
observed was double-edged and of good workmanship. To greet us he got up from a rug of untreated sheepskin. There was no doubt of his friendliness and his pleasure at the arrival of unexpected
visitors.

He talked eagerly and it was a minute or two before he realized we did not understand a word. I spoke in Russian and he regarded me blankly. It was a great pity because he must have been looking
forward to conversation and the exchange of news. I think he was trying to tell us he had seen us a long way off and had prepared food against our arrival. He motioned us to sit near the fire and
resumed the stirring of the pot which our coming had interrupted. I looked into the stone shelter and saw there was just room for one man to sleep. On the floor was a sleeping mat fashioned from
bast.

As he wielded his big wooden spoon he made another attempt at conversation. He spoke slowly. It was no use. For a while there was silence. Mister Smith cleared his throat. He gestured with his
arm around the group of us. ‘We,’ he said slowly in Russian, ‘go to Lhasa.’ The shepherd’s eyes grew intelligent. ‘Lhasa, Lhasa,’ Smith repeated, and
pointed south. From inside his jacket the old fellow pulled out a prayer-wheel which looked as if it had been with him for many years. The religious signs were painted on parchment, the edges of
which were worn with use. He pointed to the sun and made circles, many of them, with his outstretched arm.

‘He is trying to tell us how many days it will take us to reach Lhasa,’ I said.

‘His arm’s going round like a windmill,’ observed Zaro. ‘It must be a hell of a long way from here.’

We bowed our acknowledgment of the information. From his pocket he produced a bag of salt – good quality stuff and almost white – and invited us to look into the cauldron as he
sprinkled some in. We crowded round and saw a bubbling, greyish, thick gruel. He stirred again, brought out a spoonful, blew on it, smacked his lips, tasted and finally thrust out his tongue and
ran it round his lips. He chuckled at us like a delighted schoolboy and his good humour was so infectious that we found ourselves laughing aloud in real enjoyment for the first time for months.

The next move by the old man had almost a ritualistic air. From his shack he produced an object wrapped in a linen bag. He looked at us, eyes twinkling, and I could not help thinking of a
conjuror building up suspense for the trick which was to astound his audience. I think we all looked suitably impressed as he opened the bag and reached into it. Into the sunlight emerged a wooden
bowl about five inches in diameter and three inches deep, beautifully turned, shining with care and use, of a rich walnut brown colour. He blew on it, brushed it with his sleeve and handed it
round. It was indeed a thing of which a man could be proud, the work of a craftsman. We handed it back with murmurs of appreciation.

Into the bowl he ladled a quantity of gruel and laid it on the skin rug. He disappeared into the shack and came out holding an unglazed earthenware jar, dark-brown and long-necked. It held about
a gallon of ewe’s milk, a little of which he added to the gruel in the bowl. He made no attempt at working out our seniority but handed the bowl and spoon to Zaro, who was seated nearest to
him. Zaro ate a spoonful, smacked his lips and made to pass the bowl around, but the shepherd gently held his arm and indicated he was to finish the portion.