Then there is a very savage Yeti that can devour a whole party of men as easily as you would eat a dozen grapes.
There’s a giant Yeti twenty feet tall, very much like a man, covered with long hair. He looks like a gorilla. But he doesn’t act like a gorilla. The gorilla will not eat men, but this Yeti likes nothing better.
There’s still another Yeti but much larger, with flaming eyes and teeth a yard long.
‘And then there is the ninety-foot monster that must be the lord supreme of all Yeti.’
‘Are there any female Yeti?’ Hal asked.
‘Yes. We call them Yetini. They are kind to our children, but they devour our cats, dogs and pigs.’
The boys kept looking about for a Yeti - and hoping they would see one.
Hal said, The shopkeeper told us that the Yeti are invisible.’
They would be invisible to the shopkeeper. But they can be seen by the lamas, and sometimes by good people like you. A lama in the next monastery saw one. He was awakened by the sound of heavy breathing and scratching and a very bad smell. He looked out of the open window and saw the Yeti. He offered up a very loud prayer and the Yeti shrank away. The next morning the footprints could be seen in the snow, like a man’s footprints, but much larger.
‘A Yeti can change its size - small one moment and big the next. One would shrink to the size of a beetle and not look a bit dangerous. He would watch for someone to come along, then in the twinkling of an eye he would become a giant ogre. He would seize the passer-by and eat him up, clothes, bones and all, and leave not a trace behind.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Sherpa, ‘a Yeti is kind to a man. A certain lama lost in the mountains was fed day after day by a Yeti, Then one day the lama realised that he had not been fed for several days. He went searching and found the Yeti dead in a cave.’
Vic was quaking with fear. He kept peering about. He took off his dark snow-glasses so he could see better. The sun reflecting on the snow was very painful and he at once replaced the snow-glasses on his nose.
They wouldn’t really attack us, would they?’ he said.
‘Oh, of course not,’ said the Sherpa. They might push us over a cliff, make us fall into a crevasse, bury us in an avalanche, give us snow-blindness, lock us in an ice cave, torture us with dizziness, and if you saw one you would die of fright.’
Hal had a suspicion that Temba was kidding. He saw that Vic was taking it all as gospel truth. Vic was as crazy with dread as if he were already in the long claws of a Yeti.
‘Go easy,’ Hal said to Temba. ‘He’s scared to death.’
Now they were all too busy to think about Yeti. From every side came the sound of running water. Under the hot sun snow was melting, causing hundreds of streams and cataracts and waterfalls. Some of the falls were so high that the water turned into mist before it completed its drop.
They could not avoid the streams. If they could not jump over them, they had to wade through. The streams were shallow, yet deep enough to reach above their boot-tops.
They came upon a group of animals having a lot of fun sliding down the snow, then up over a snowdrift.
‘What are they?’ Roger asked.
‘Otters,’ said Hal.
‘There couldn’t be otters way up here at eleven thousand feet.’
Temba said, ‘You’d be surprised. There are shrimp in these streams at fifteen thousand, spiders at seventeen thousand. Here at eleven thousand, we have birds, musk deer, wild dogs, blue sheep, wolves, bears, pandas, gazelles, antelopes and ibex - not to mention the Yeti. And I forgot to include the white tiger and the snow leopard.’
Those are two that we want,’ said Hal.
Don’t you want an otter?’ Roger asked,
I’m afraid not. These are river otters. And we couldn’t very well take a river along with us. Besides, Dad didn’t ask for an otter.’
‘Why are they sliding down? Does it do any good V Roger asked.
They are just playing. They slide down, then go back and slide down again and repeat over and over.’
Vic said, ‘Animals don’t play. They are too busy hunting for food.’
‘Not always.’ Hal said. ‘Many animals play just for the fun of it. Kittens play, dogs play, tiger cubs play, pandas play - a sense of humour is not limited to human beings.’
‘Look at the baby getting a ride,’ said Roger.
Sure enough - a baby otter, sitting on its mother’s chest, was enjoying the snow slide. Down they came, then up over the snowbank, and down again. When they came to a stop the mother, who had been sliding on her back, turned over so she could scramble up again to the top of the slide. But she didn’t lose the baby. Although upside down, the young one clung to its mother’s fur and when they reached the top they at once took another slide. It was very plain that they were having a good time, and it had nothing to do with hunting for food.
‘Of course otters do get hungry,’ Hal said. The sea otter dives down to the floor of the ocean and picks up a couple of shellfish, then rises to the surface where it lies on its back with the shellfish on its chest. It breaks the shells by cracking them together, then eats the squirming things that are inside. When it can get only one shellfish it hunts around for a stone, then comes up and breaks the shell with the stone. I suppose these river otters behave in much the same way.’
‘I didn’t imagine we would see otters here,’ Roger said.
‘Wherever there is water you will find them all over the world, except in Australia.’
‘How bright their eyes are, and look at their cute whiskers, and their shiny brown fur,’ Roger said. ‘And look at the broad webbed feet like paddlewheels. ‘I suppose that’s what makes them good swimmers.’
They can swim a quarter of a mile under water,’ said Hal. Few animals can go as fast. They can cover six miles in an hour. They can stay underwater for four hours before they have to come up to breathe. They make affectionate pets but they must be handled with care because they can inflict a very serious bite.’
‘Is their skin valuable?’
‘A large furry skin costs a thousand dollars or more.’
‘But suppose all lakes and rivers are frozen over, what do they do then?’
They spend most of their time in their burrow which may be twenty feet or more long. If the ice on a lake is not too thick they break it with a stone and swim down after fish or shellfish. If a man has a tame otter he can train it to do his fishing for him. The otter will bring up a fish between his forepaws and deliver it to his master without taking a bite. When the man has enough fish he will give back one or two so that the otter can have a reward for his good work.’
The otters, having finished their game, disappeared.
Roger said, ‘I think I’ll take a trip down that slide and see if it’s as much fun as the otters think it is.’
Down he came like the wind, shot up over the snowbank and down the other side.
‘It’s great,’ he said to Vic. ‘Why don’t you try it?’
That’s just child’s play,’ Vic said. ‘Anybody can do that.’
‘All right - go ahead and do it.’
‘I can’t be bothered. I don’t play kids’ games.’
‘Go ahead, Vic.’ said Hal. ‘Show Roger that you can do it.’
Not very willingly, Vic went to the head of the slide. ‘If an otter can do it, I can,’ he said. He sat down and slid. He let out a yell of terror. He got up on his feet, intending to jump off the slide. Instead, he was thrown head first into the snowbank. He bored through it like a meteor and his head came out the other side while his feet dangled where he had entered.
‘Get me out of here,’ he screamed.
Just how do you get a man out of a snowbank? Vic’s whole body, except head and feet, was buried. Hal and Temba laid hold of the head and tried to pull the screaming fellow out of his cage.
‘Look out,’ he cried. ‘You’re breaking my neck.’
It was not only snow that held him. It was also ice. The
snowbank evidently had been there for a long time and every rain that fell upon it froze and became ice. In the grip of both snow and ice, Vic was helpless. However, that did not interfere with his yells and screams that sounded as if he were ready to give up the ghost at any moment.
‘We’ll have to chop him out,’ said Hal. ‘Get the axes.’
With ice-axes they began to attack the bank.
‘Wait a minute.’ cried Vic. ‘You’ll chop my head off.’
But the men kept chopping. They seemed to think it didn’t matter very much if Vic lost his head. He didn’t use it, so why should he mind losing it? But, after all, he was a human being, though a rather poor specimen, not as bright as an otter, so they kept on trying to release him in spite of the scolding they got for doing him this favour.
Vic was no longer scolding. He had fainted. The choppers finally got down to him and lifted out his unconscious body. He was almost as cold as ice. A Sherpa came with his sleeping bag.
Tut him in this, It will warm him up.’
It was a kind thing for the Sherpa to do and it was not his fault that Vic would have to scratch for a week because of the lice and fleas that had taken up residence in that bag.
The unconscious Vic was strapped to a sled and the company continued the struggle up the mountain.
Vic gradually came out of his faint and began scolding.
‘Why am I in this lousy bag? I itch all over.’ He squirmed and twisted, but he still itched. ‘What are you doing to me?
Don’t you think I’ve had enough trouble? Let me out of this thing.’
They let him out of the sleeping bag. He was warm now. The hundreds of little biting things had warmed him up. But they had not improved his temper. He tottered along like a drunken man, grumbling at every step.
The higher they went, the thinner the air, and the thinner the air the less oxygen got to their lungs. The result was that they became dizzy, but Vic was the only one who complained about it.
At one point they faced a cliff thirty feet high. The Sherpas went a roundabout way to the top of the cliff and drove a sharp spike called a piton into the ice. They attached to this a rope ladder and let it down within reach of the others.
Hal climbed it without difficulty and so did Roger. Vic tried it, but the ladder wobbled so badly that he fell off.
‘Why can’t you hold it still?’ he complained.
It was a foolish thing to say for there was no way the ladder could be held still. Made of rope, it swung and twisted at every step. The Hunts had climbed to the top of the masts on sailing ships. Vic had climbed nowhere except into bed. It was no use - he couldn’t conquer the rope ladder.
‘Hang on to it,’ Hal called from above, ‘and we’ll haul you up.’
Vic sat down on a rung of the ladder and up he went like a heavy piece of baggage.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘it’s, not so hard when you know how to do it.’
The weather grew worse as the day went on. They were now up in the clouds and the clouds were not kind. They struggled against a terrific wind. This was a blizzard, and ft had no mercy. Breathing was almost impossible. Every head was aching, lungs were suffering for lack of air, eyes were attacked by pelting snow and rain that did not come down but flew horizontally in huge drops, making it seem that the horrible Yeti were determined to destroy them.
They lay flat on the ground and let the storm ride over them. No one spoke, because he could not be heard above the roar of the blizzard. Was it the Yeti who were trying to push them off the mountain?
If so, the Yeti did not succeed. They howled past and away and the clouds that enveloped the men broke and let a little sun come glimmering through.
Now they could speak and be heard, but all except the Sherpas were too exhausted to say anything. The Sherpas had been through all this sort of thing before. They lived high on the mountain and had become used to thin air and sudden storms.
It had not been possible to raise the two tents that had been brought along. The blizzard would have torn them to rags.
Now they painfully erected the tent for the three boys and the other tent for the Sherpas.
The boys crawled in, lit their oil stove, and cooked some dehydrated food - from which all the water had been squeezed out in order to make it lighter to carry.
Temba came in. He said, ‘Do you want to go on up tomorrow morning, or will you go back to Aligar?’
‘We’ll go back.’ said Vic.
Hal said to Vic, ‘You can go back if you want to. You will get lost and die on the way. We are not going back. Have you forgotten that we are after certain animals who live high up? As yet we haven’t had a glimpse of a white tiger or a snow leopard or an ibex. That’s what we came for, and we won’t go back until we do our job.’
Vic protested, ‘But how can I go on so long as I am covered by these pesky bugs that you let me get out of that Sherpa sleeping bag? I need a bath.’
Now they were up above the flowing streams and there was no water to be had. Hal said, ‘You can use snow. There’s plenty of that around. Take off your clothes, go outside and scrub yourself with snow.’
‘But how about my clothes - they’re full of bugs.’
That’s all right. We’ll burn them.’
‘Burn them? Then what will I wear?’
‘We have some extra clothing. You can have it. The Sherpa who very kindly gave you his sleeping bag has taken it back, bugs and all. Your own sleeping bag is here ready for you whenever you need it. Try to be a good sport. Climbing the mountain should be great fun if you will just let yourself enjoy it.’
‘Great fun!’ Vic exclaimed. ‘Buried in a snowbank, chopped out with ice-axes, climbing a rope ladder where there ought to be a flight of stairs. A howling blizzard full of Yeti. Bites all over me. Bathing in freezing cold snow. Great fun!’
‘Cheer up,’ said Hal. The worst is yet to come.’
Chapter 27
The Deadly Avalanche
The boys remembered that their father wanted an ibex.
‘What’s an ibex?’ Roger wanted to know. ‘Is it something like the unicorn, an animal that doesn’t really exist?’
‘No,’ said Hal. There’s no such animal as a unicorn. But there really is an ibex. Right up here where there are so many rocks and precipices we are likely to find one. It’s a sort of antelope with a dash of goat, a really remarkable animal. It has such keen eyesight that it can see you miles away. And it can smell you at the same distance. That’s quite an improvement on poor little man who can smell only if he gets close up to something smellable.’
They had reached an altitude of seventeen thousand feet. The Sherpas did not mind this, but the boys, who never before had been above ten thousand, had headaches and were so dizzy that they could hardly see each other, let alone an ibex a mile or so away. They were gasping for air. They really got plenty of it but it was too thin to do them much good. They could have made use of oxygen bottles but they were too proud to give up.
‘If the Sherpas can stand it, we can,’ said Hal.
Temba came into the tent. ‘Did you want an ibex? There’s one on the rocks just above us.’
The boys at once forgot how they felt and rushed out to see the ibex. They were amazed by the two great horns of the beast, each five feet long.
‘But how can it use them?’ Roger wondered. They curve backwards. They can’t kill another animal with horns that back up.’
‘Right,’ said Hal. ‘But the ibex isn’t interested in killing other animals. It lives on grass, plants, flowers, and the bark of trees.’
Then it doesn’t need horns at all,’ said Roger. ‘They are just a dead weight. Why do they grow them?’
‘Let’s say it’s just one of Nature’s mistakes. Or perhaps it’s Nature’s way of producing something beautiful. Those are very handsome horns.’
They’re handsome all right,’ said Roger, ‘but so far as I’m concerned I’d rather not be handsome than have such heavy horns. How much do you
suppose they weigh?’
Hal thought a moment. ‘I’d say the animal weighs about two hundred pounds, and a hundred of that is horns.’
‘He doesn’t seem to be afraid of us,’ Vic said.
Hal said, ‘Perhaps he doesn’t know what dangerous creatures men are. Possibly he has never seen a man before.’
‘Look at him leap.’ Roger marvelled. ‘I’ll bet he jumped fifteen feet from one boulder to the next. And that rock has only a point for him to stand on. See - he’s clinging to it with all four feet. Why, he could walk a tightrope. I never saw any animal with such good balance.’
‘Speaking of rope,’ Hal said, ‘I’d better try my lasso.’
It was a far throw, but Hal’s fine muscles made light work of it. The loop settled down over the two magnificent horns. Since horns have no feeling the ibex was not aware that he had been caught. But when Hal began to draw in the rope, the ibex started dancing and prancing and pulling back with all his strength. But Hal drew him in to within ten feet and tied the rope to a piton whose sharp point was driven deep into the ice.
Hal spoke to Temba. ‘Can you and your men strap him on to a sled and take him down to camp?’
‘Yes,’ said Temba, ‘but not just now. Feel those quakes? They are very small but they generally mean that we’re going to have a real earthquake in a few minutes. And that may cause an avalanche.’
‘Avalanche?’ Vic’s voice trembled. He didn’t know exactly what an avalanche was but it must be something bad.
Temba said, That’s when everything comes tumbling down.’
The big shock came. The mountain trembled as if it had the ague. The snow was shaken off the upper slopes and came thundering down. Hal and Roger happened to be protected by a big rock. Vic was carried away.
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