The Consequence Was, They Pressed On Some Sixteen Miles Farther
At A Good Pace, To Reach A Little Wooden Village At The Head Of The
Wurdwan Valley, And We Saw Nothing Of Them On The Road.
On reaching
our halting-place, however, lo and behold, our unfortunate cook was
absent, and nobody seemed to know anything whatever about him!
The
cooking things and the larder were all present, and dinner-hour was
at hand; but, alas! the pots and kettles were without a lord, and the
question of where was our dinner began to give way in point of interest
to where was our cook. At the time F. and I left the "cave-hotel,"
the whole of the coolies, Rajoo, the three goats, and the two sheep,
had all gone on ahead, as also the "Invincible One," the sepoy.
The bhistie and the missing cook had therefore only remained
behind. The road, soon after leaving, entered a wooded gorge, and,
as the valley narrowed, the torrent began to get considerably more
rapid and boisterous, as it took to leaping down the giant rocks,
which bound it in between their iron grasp and formed its only bed.
The path was wet and sloppy, and led in parts along the tops of rather
dangerous precipices. Passing cautiously over these, and through
wooded paths lined with mosses and wild flowers, whose perfume scented
the entire air, we came upon a curious bridge of well-packed snow,
which spanned the torrent. A treacherous-looking specimen it was,
and after taking its likeness in my pocket-book, I was passing it as a
matter of course, when I suddenly heard a shout, and perceived F. and
the mate at the other side of the torrent beckoning me to cross the
snow. I accordingly, with no very good grace and some astonishment,
essayed the passage. The snow I found hard as ice, and not liking the
look of its treacherous convex sides, I held my course straight up the
centre, and then descended with great care and deliberation along the
junction of the snow and the mountain. So slippery was the passage,
that without grass shoes I should have been sorry to have attempted
it, and, as I halted to regard the curious structure from a distance,
I could not help thinking what a likely spot it was for a traveller to
lose his life without anybody being the wiser, and what a small chance
he would have in the deep and rapid torrent below if he should happen
to slip into its remorseless clutches. The path from this continued
its perilous character, in one place traversing a precipitous face
of rock only passable on all fours, beneath which a thick cover of
long grass and weeds hung over the deep, treacherous-looking pools of
the torrent. Having on a pair of grass shoes which had already done
one day's work, I had broken down about half way, and was now nearly
bare-footed. I consequently did not arrive till nearly the last of
the party, and found the tent pitched and fires lit under a group of
large trees, in the wooden village of about a dozen houses, called
Sucknez. It was then getting dusk, and after waiting a reasonable
time, we sent out a party from the village to make search for our
missing man, while F. and I, lighting a fire almost in the tent door,
proceeded to cook our own dinner.
The materials consisted of an unlimited supply of eggs and a box
of sardines, hitherto neglected, and despised among the artistic
productions of our lost professor. F. superintended the frying
of the eggs, and produced a conglomeration of some eight of them,
which we pronounced unusually delicious, while I laid the table and
looked after the kettle, for we thought it better, under our bereaved
circumstances, to knock tea and dinner into one meal. Although we had
made a longish march, we managed, with the aid of the kettle and the
brandy, to sit up by the light of a roaring pine fire until late, in
the hopes of some news arriving of our searching party. None however
came, and we went to bed HOPING that the man had lost his way, and
FEARING that he had fallen either over the slippery snow-bridge or
down one of the many precipices into the torrent.
SEPTEMBER 6. - Morning came, but neither news of our cook nor of
the party who went out in his search, and, after breakfast, donning
a pair of grass shoes, and provided with some matches and a small
bottle of cherry-brandy, I sallied out with the mate on a voyage of
discovery. Outside the village I met the searching party, who had
been out all through the bitter night, but had found no traces of
the object of their search.
Sending a note to F. to dispatch all the coolies to search, I pressed
on to the most dangerous precipice of our yesterday's route, and,
descending to the torrent, searched about the grass and weeds at the
bottom, but without finding any traces. About this place I met three
lonely travellers, laden with meal, who had come along the entire
path, but had seen no sign of a human creature anywhere. I now gave
up our man as lost, but still held on, in a pouring mixture of sleet
and snow, which added considerably to the gloom of the scene. Every
now and then the old mate, who was in very low spirits, would raise
a lugubrious wail at the top of his voice of "Ai Khansaman Jee! Ai
Khansaman Jee?" "Oh, cook of my soul! oh, cook of my soul, where
art thou?" at the same time apparently apostrophizing the deepest
whirlpools of the torrent, while the roar of the waters effectually
prevented his magnificent voice from reaching more than a dozen
yards from the spot where he stood. Arriving at the snow-bridge,
we examined it closely for signs of footmarks; it was, however,
so hard that it baffled all our efforts.
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