Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XVIII.—A Critical Situation
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
274 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
routine of the meteorological observations. Then he
said good-night and disappeared, intending to return to
the place where he was sleeping, beside the box that served
as our kitchen, scarce fifteen paces to the leeward. Half-
an-hour later I heard faint shouts coming from quite
another direction. I shouted in reply at the full pitch of
my voice, and soon afterwards Shagdur popped his head
in. He had lost his way, and, indeed, totally lost touch
of our camp, for this tempest was a great deal more violent
than its predecessor. I now held open a chink of the
covering of the yurt, and Shagdur, by creeping backwards
with his eyes fixed upon the gleam of light, managed to
pilot himself successfully to his sleeping-place. Only
those who have themselves experienced a tempest such
as this can form any conception what it is like ; it makes
you giddy, your sense of locality is paralysed. You
imagine that you are going straight forward, and are in
reality all the time going round in a circle. Nothing but
a compass can lead you right, and even a compass is no
use in the dark. Had Khodai Vardi been overtaken by
a sand-storm such as that, he would most certainly have
been lost ; and as he was alone, although he might have
unloaded the camels, he would have been quite unable to
load them up again, because each camel’s load, which is
lashed on both sides of its pack-saddle, requires at least two
men to lift it up. I shuddered as I thought of what would
have happened had the first storm set in a few hours earlier.
On the evening of the 15th March the camels began
to eat up the straw stuffings of their pack-saddles ; but of
these we had now less need, for our supply of ice had
shrunk very considerably. We had, indeed, plenty of
drinking-water, but it had assumed a repulsive and dis-
agreeable flavour of goat-skin. There were, however, a
few pieces of ice still left swimming amongst it, and this
was all we had that we could drink.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
