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i7,ooo FEET ABOVE THE SEA. 219
day’s much-needed rest, we set ourselves to climb over.
Up in the saddle then, and let us scale the heights, scramble
up the ravines, and surmount the pass. Very soon after
we started a man came to tell us that one of the horses
was unable to go any further. And no sooner had the
poor beast been killed than a second lay down, never to
get up again. Once this pass were crossed, however, we
ought not to have very much further to go to reach grass.
A third horse, which was running loose without any load,
gave up and fell, and was killed at once. And, upon reaching
the top of the pass, a fourth was missing, namely, my faith-
ful little grey, the same which I had ridden on both desert
journeys and which had refused to carry Ordek’s sculp-
tured planks.
At the spot where we encamped there was not a blade of
grass. Turdu Bai and I went together through what
remained of our supply of rice, and we divided as much as
we could possibly spare amongst our remaining horses.
They, poor brutes, stood tied in a row, covered over with
felt rugs, and in the morning one of them lay dead in the
string, his head stretched out, his eyes staring, frozen
hard. Nobody had observed when or how his sufferings
ended. The camels, with marvellous resignation, lay as
usual motionless, in the same positions in which they had
lain down the evening before. They were white with frost
and appeared to be casting longing glances down towards the
valley where we hoped to find the means of saving the
last of our veterans. How long would they continue to
hold out ? This was the crucial question. Our marches
grew every day shorter, and the cold more nipping. On
the 8th October the thermometer fell 1° below zero. We
were making our way down through a narrow gorge, with
lofty perpendicular walls of rock on each side, and harshly
though loudly they flung back the echoes of our funeral
caravan-bells, for our animals were dying as they struggled
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