Far, Far The Mountain Peak

by John Masters

  Chapter 40

  The reconnaissance produced much the results that he had expected. He and Norris, with two Sherpas actually with them and four Rudwalis in support, readily climbed the south-east ridge as far as the Needles. They found nothing changed, and confirmed what was already known: that, as far as the Needles, the ridge route was arduous but not difficult. They did not attempt to climb farther because it was not part of the plans at that time; but on two exceptionally clear days they had a good look at the Mirror Wall, Walsh’s Fault, the Bowl, and at the Needles themselves, from below. The Mirror seemed even more impossible than Peter remembered it, a face of ice that presented to them the glittering indifference of the utterly unassailable. Nothing had altered there, and though the risks of getting up and over the Needles were as great as ever, they were still less than those of any other course possible from the Wilcot Ridge.

  On their way down Peter saw through his binoculars two tiny dots far down in the Great Chimney Glacier--in the high-altitude glare their dark clothing showed up well against the glacier--and he knew that Harry and Billy were in position. He had little hope that they would discover a feasible route. Looking from their higher angle, down the frightful sweep of the ice wall below the Mirror, he had a momentary thought that he must have been mad to send anyone even to glance at that approach.

  He found Norris an excellent climbing companion--sound and strong, careful to avoid unnecessary risks, but armed with the mental and physical equipment to deal with bad situations when they were met. He spent a lot of time looking hungrily at the summit, or the clouds that hid it, or the snow banner flying down-wind from it. Somehow, without more than a hundred words being said between them for a week--and those no more intimate than a request for more sugar, please--Peter thought they had become close friends by the time they returned to Juniper.

  Harry and Billy Barnes, and Oscar and the Count, came in from opposite directions two days later, on May 28. That night, in the big tent, the latter pair reported that they had spent forty-eight hours at maximum effort merely getting to the foot of the North Wall, one hour deciding that the wall was impossible, and seventy-two hours extricating themselves. When Peter asked their formal opinions of the route Oscar said: ‘No.’

  The Count said: ‘Even the bloody eagles get vertigo there. We saw one dead at the bottom. Crushed to pulp, boss. Pulp! Let’s go, though. Oscar would make a lovely, juicy mess and we could take him home in a sack and spread him over the Test wicket at Lord’s.’

  Oscar said sourly: ‘It was a Himalayan griffon, not an eagle. And would you mind giving me another batting partner next time? The Count’s humour makes me laugh so much that my ribs are sore.’

  Peter turned to Harry, who began a careful report on their reconnaissance. They had found that the Great Chimney Glacier offered fair enough going in its lower section, roughly from 16,000 to 20,000 feet. Then they reached the foot of a place which they described as being more like a frozen waterfall than the conventional picture of an ice-fall. There the glacier moved over a cliff about 1,000 feet in height. That too they had surmounted, and so reached the savage trench where the glacier began, at the foot of the Great Chimney itself. They had climbed on, finally reaching a height of about 23,000 feet among severe cliffs and ice chutes somewhere beyond and below the far edge of the Mirror Wall.

  During Harry’s story Billy Barnes sat silent, occasionally yawning or puffing at the huge pipe he affected. Harry’s unemotional report of what they had done and seen made it clear to Peter that there was no sense in launching the expedition on that route, but before giving his decision he asked Barnes if he had any opinion. Barnes said: ‘The Great Chimney won’t go--but I thought there might have been a route out of the glacier on the north-west, just short of the fall. That would lead us on to a big ridge--this one.’ On the map spread out between them he pointed with the stem of his pipe to the Yangpa Ridge, roughly north-north-east of the mountain.

  Peter glanced questioningly at Harry. Harry said: ‘Yes. There might, just possibly, be a way up to the Yangpa, though I estimate the chances of its being passable for porters as twenty to one against.’

  ‘We didn’t try it,’ Billy said.

  Harry said: ‘There wasn’t time. Even if there had been, I wouldn’t have tried it, because the ridge it leads to, the Yangpa, is impassable for climbers as well as porters.’

  ‘How do you know?’ young Billy Barnes said, and this time his sneer, though slight, was unmistakable. It was on the tip of Peter’s tongue to give him a short answer, but Harry spoke first and, Peter was glad to see, with some heat. Sweet reasonableness and tenderness for the susceptibilities of the young were all very well, but mountain-climbing was not a sweet or reasonable affair, and passions, angers, and loves were not only inevitable at high altitudes but desirable and actually necessary for the accomplishment of its aims.

  Harry said: ‘I know because Lyon and I traversed the lower part of the Great Chimney trench in nineteen-fourteen, and reached the Yangpa at twenty-two thousand feet. That snow, which you thought looked so inviting, is a cornice, and it overhangs nearly a hundred feet on the other side, where it’s flat. On this side, where you thought the porters might move along on the firm snow, the angle is eighty-five degrees, and it’s just under four inches deep. In other words, there’s no anchorage. In other words, only a bloody fool would try the Yangpa. As I told you at the time.’

  Billy flushed angrily and got up from the camp chair. ‘Do you want me any more, Peter?’ he asked stiffly.

  ‘No thanks, Billy,’ Peter said. ‘For God’s sake get some rest or you won’t be fit enough to be considered for the summit.’ The young man paled then, and went out. Peter thought that his evident fatigue had been caused by the secret conflict with Harry as much as by the tremendous work they must have done; but he had meant what he said, and Barnes knew it.

  The rest trailed out, and then Harry and he sat alone for a time, listening to the murmur of the porters and a song the Sherpas were singing as they split a bottle of rum. Harry said: ‘He’s a good climber, Peter--one of the best. But try not to pair him with me again, will you? As you see, he disapproves of me.’ Peter nodded. There was no sense in pushing Billy against Harry any more. He had hoped Billy would be more receptive, but no one can be so obstinate as the very young and, after all, it was Harry he was primarily concerned with, not Mr William Barnes.

  Two days later they began the advance up the Wilcot Ridge. He and the Count went ahead to mark out Camp I on the old site, and Robin Granger came with them to stretch his legs. Oscar, George Norris, and Billy were to lead the whole body of porters up the ridge, and Harry was to stay at Juniper to supervise that end of the work.

  They reached the camp site at about ten in the morning and sat around in the sun, waiting for the porters to struggle into view. It was a beautiful day. Robin went off to sleep, and Peter sat in a contented trance, his back against a rock, while the Count, who had never been on the Wilcot, stared up at the Needles and said: ‘Boss, are we going up those ruddy things?’ Peter grunted affirmation, and the Count said: ‘Mind if I go back to the North Wall?’

  Robin mumbled: ‘Shut up.’

  The leading porters should have been up to them by eleven. By half-past, Peter was becoming impatient. At twelve he asked Robin to go down at once--he was going back anyway that evening--and tell Harry to get a move on, or report what was wrong.

  Robin had hardly disappeared down the ridge when he reappeared with Oscar Hutton. When they reached Peter, Oscar said: ‘Porter trouble, Peter.’

  ‘What?’ Peter jumped up, wrenching his pack on to his shoulders. The porters had been in such good humour and had worked so well that he could hardly believe it.

  Oscar said: ‘They’re on strike--the whole lot of them, except the Sherpas. Billy hit one of them. Knocked him for six.’

  ‘That’s not porter trouble,’ the Count drawled from behind him. ‘That’s climber trouble.’

  ‘Harry asked you to
come down,’ Oscar said.

  Peter nodded and led off at a fast pace. As no tents or sleeping-bags would be brought up to Camp I now, none of them could stay there for the night. He was furious, and as he ran down the ridge he told himself that he would send Billy back to Rudwal immediately, with or without escort. If Billy wanted to prove his bravery he could walk alone to Harkamu across the Parasian plateau, among the occasional bandits who wandered into it from Tibet. Let him knock a few of them down with blows from his big fists, instead of picking on a poor bloody porter who’d left his wife and home and come into this wilderness from nothing but a wish to help them--specifically, he knew, to help him, Peter Savage.

  ‘Did you see what happened?’ he asked Oscar as they hurried down.

  Oscar said: ‘No. None of us did. I was just going to leave Juniper with a party when the man came tearing into camp, without his load, blood streaming from his forehead. His name is Pahlwan. And hot on his heels were all the rest of the porters, and Billy.’

  ‘Hot on their heels and yelling blue murder at them to come back, I’ll bet,’ the Count said.

  Oscar said: ‘Yes. Then Harry came up and took them both inside the tent--Billy and Pahlwan. After a while he told me to come up to you.’

  Peter said nothing more, and in an hour and a half they reached Juniper. The Rudwalis were standing about in two or three large groups, all talking as loudly as though the incident had happened five minutes instead of four hours before. He went straight to the big tent and found Harry in there. Harry confirmed Oscar’s outline, and added that Billy’s story was that he’d found the porter, Pahlwan, baulking at a steep pitch quite low on the ridge and persuading the others to refuse to face it until ropes had been fixed for them to hold on to while they walked up. Pahlwan’s story, as far as he could make out, was only that a rope would be a good idea at that place, not that he wouldn’t go up it without one.

  Peter recognized the spot from Harry’s account: it was a rock slope, quite steep and about twelve feet high, tricky but not dangerous.

  ‘Where’s Billy?’ he asked.

  Harry said: ‘In his tent, sulking. I think we can settle the whole thing out of hand if he apologizes to Pahlwan--but he refuses to. Shall I call him in?’

  Peter nodded, and in a moment the young man was with them, standing opposite Peter with his hands working at his sides and his sunburned face heavy with a mixture of defiance and misery. Peter asked him to sit down and tell what had happened, and he did. It was just as Harry had said.

  At the end Billy said: ‘I had to do it, sir. You know how quickly that sort of thing spreads if it isn’t nipped in the bud at once.’

  Peter groaned inwardly. Billy had been reading the Dyer debates. Perhaps he’d heard of the Punjab Tradition, of instant action by juniors and unfailing support by seniors--and that was a good tradition, too, in its time and place. Certainly he had read accounts of the ferocious climbs of Mr Peter Savage, and so he believed he knew what the model of a mountaineer should be.

  Peter said: ‘Do you understand the Rudwali dialect, Billy?’

  Billy said: ‘No--but I could understand his gestures. He was telling them not to go up.’

  Peter sent for Pahlwan and the Rudwali headman and Subadar Tilakbir. Pahlwan was a small, weaselly fellow of about forty, thin, wiry, and sharp of feature. Dr Zaman Khan had put a huge and probably very satisfying plaster cross on his forehead, but otherwise he was not hurt. He explained curtly in the vile Northern Tehsils patois, which contained many Tibetan words and inflections, that he had thought the slope tricky; that he was sure the Bara Sahib (meaning Peter) would order a rope put there if there had been enough rope; but he knew there wasn’t enough rope, because it was needed higher up where only the evil-smelling Bhotias (the Sherpas) would be going; so the rest of them would have to do without, and of course they could because only the evil-smelling Bhotias would need a rope on such a place as this. All this he had been explaining to the other porters during a brief pause. Then the chokra sahib spoke angrily to him and would not listen to his explanation and finally did a great zulm on him by hitting him; so he threw down his load, his heart having been made small and his face black, and returned to seek justice.

  ‘Did you urge the other porters to come with you?’ Peter asked coldly.

  Pahlwan looked at him for quite half a minute without speaking, and then said: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Pahlwan did not answer.

  Subadar Tilakbir said: ‘This man has been the cause of any trouble we have had since leaving Harkamu.’

  Possibly, Peter thought, but there had been no trouble. On an expedition as large and long-lasting as this no sensible man called minor bickering ‘trouble.’ Something about the man’s recital stuck in his mind as being out of character. Obviously Pahlwan had been doing a little lead-swinging, stretching a minute’s breather into a five-minute rest by his dissertation on the rope, the rock, and the evil-smelling Bhotias. Ah--perhaps that was it. He’d look into it as soon as the immediate cause of the trouble had been dealt with.

  He turned to Billy, explained Phalwan’s story, and said: ‘I’d like you to apologize to Pahlwan for hitting him.’

  Billy licked his lips twice and tried to say something. Finally he got it out. ‘I can’t, sir . . . it was for the sake of the expedition ... I was in the right.’

  Peter said: ‘I don’t think so, Billy, and it would have saved a lot of trouble if you’d said you were sorry when Harry asked you to.’ Billy shot Harry Walsh a scowl of pure hatred. Peter said: ‘Harry, come outside. Stay here and talk to Pahlwan, Billy. You haven’t got any money in your pockets, have you?’ ‘No,’ Billy said, puzzled.

  Peter said: ‘Good,’ and went out, taking the others with him.

  Soon enough Pahlwan emerged and said: ‘It is settled. It is not right that a man of Harkamu should hold a grudge, even though he has been wronged.’

  ‘Not like the evil-smelling Bhotias?’ Peter said.

  ‘No,’ Pahlwan said quickly. ‘One of them would have stuck a knife in the young sahib’s back while he slept at night, even---‘ He stopped suddenly and looked at Peter suspiciously, suspecting that he had fallen into a trap.

  Peter said: ‘So you wanted to make everyone think the trouble was really the Sherpas’ fault. Answer me!’

  Pahlwan stood glowering at him. Peter said: ‘Why should I not send you back to Harkamu?’

  The man did not speak. Peter was weighing in his mind whether to send him back or give him some lesser punishment. Harry spoke quietly beside him. ‘Peter, I think he wants to go high.’

  The suggestion wrenched Peter into an opposite channel of thought. He looked at the little man with new eyes. He was jealous, yes. But suppose it was not because of the Sherpas’ extra pay but because of the extra trust the climbers were putting in them? He was sure, suddenly, that Harry was right. In dealing with this affair he had been thinking too much of the large consequences to the expedition, and not enough to the individual feelings of this one unimportant man--but an expedition is composed of individuals, and he had been stupid.

  He said: ‘Pahlwan, do you want to go high, like the evil smelling Bhotias?’

  Pahlwan said gruffly: ‘I am not fit to do so. Only the Bhotias can climb with you on the upper slopes of our sacred mountain.’ Peter said: ‘That’s what we have found.’ Billy Barnes was there, standing stiffly a little aside from the group. The Count and Oscar Hutton had joined it.

  Pahlwan said: ‘I can climb. I have practised, carrying loads up the peaks above Harkamu. I stole a rope from the sahib in nineteen-fourteen.’ He jerked his chin at Harry.

  ‘So that’s where it went,’ Harry murmured.

  ‘Are you still using it?’ Peter gasped.

  ‘Yes,’ Pahlwan said. ‘It broke two or three times, but I have knotted it together, and parts of it are still sound. But of course we Rudwalis are no good.’

  Peter said: ‘You can join the Sherpas. Subadar sahib, see that P
ahlwan gets the Sherpa pay, and give him boots, crampons, and a sleeping-bag. ... It would have been better to come to me before we set out, Pahlwan, and tell me what you wanted, rather than sulk and pretend you are being deliberately insulted. How can I know that one Rudwali has tried to fit himself to work high on the mountains?’

  ‘I am the only one,’ Pahlwan said. ‘But three others want to go at least as far as the Needles. They too will need boots.’

  ‘Good,’ Peter said. ‘Go, then, and prove yourselves.’ The man salaamed and went off, carrying his back very straight.

  ‘Pheew!’ the Count said. ‘Scratch a bolshie and you find George Mallory. . . , I’ll play you poker for a pound ante, Oscar.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Oscar said.

  ‘Dot cricket, then?’ the Count insisted.

  ‘We-ell,’ Oscar said, ‘all right. I’ll be the Gloucestershire side of nineteen-seven.’

  Peter turned to say a word to Billy, but he had disappeared. ‘He went to his tent,’ Harry said, ‘looking very sick.’

  ‘About Pahlwan being promoted, I suppose?’ Peter said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Harry said.

  Peter wondered a moment whether he should go to Billy’s tent and try to reason with him, but he decided not to. The young man was not in a reasonable frame of mind, and it was pretty sure that he would hold his misfortunes and mistakes not against Peter but against Harry. In these circumstances a discussion would do no good.