And there came over him, too, as he stared at that superb mountain-piece, a glow of satisfaction that there were such places still left on earth—distant, inaccessible, as yet unhumanised. The icy rampart of the Karakorams was now more striking than ever against the northern sky, which had become mouse-coloured and sinister; the peaks had a chill gleam; utterly majestic and remote, their very namelessness had dignity. Those few thousand feet by which they fell short of the known giants might save them eternally from the climbing expedition; they offered a less tempting lure to the record-breaker. Conway was the antithesis of such a type; he was inclined to see vulgarity in the Western ideal of superlatives, and ‘the utmost for the highest’ seemed to him a less reasonable and perhaps more commonplace proposition than ‘the much for the high.’ He did not, in fact, care for excessive striving, and he was bored by mere exploits.
While he was still contemplating the scene, twilight fell, steeping the depths in a rich velvet-gloom that spread upwards like a dye. Then the whole range, much nearer now, paled into fresh splendour; a full moon rose, touching each peak in succession like some celestial lamp-lighter, until the long horizon glittered against a blue-black sky. The air grew cold and a wind sprang up, tossing the machine uncomfortably. These new distresses lowered the spirits of the passengers; it had not been reckoned that the flight could go on after dusk, and now the last hope lay in the exhaustion of petrol. That, however, was bound to come soon. Mallinson began to argue about it, and Conway, with some reluctance, for he really did not know, gave as his estimate that the utmost distance might be anything up to a thousand miles, of which they must already have covered most. “Well, where would that bring us to?” queried the youth miserably.
“It’s not easy to judge, but probably some part of Tibet. If these are the Karakorams, Tibet lies beyond. One of the crests, by the way, must be K2, which is generally counted the second highest mountain in the world.”
“Next on the list after Everest,” commented Barnard. “Gee, this is some scenery.”
“And from a climber’s point of view much stiffer than Everest. The Duke of Abruzzi gave it up as an absolutely impossible peak.”
“Oh, God!” muttered Mallinson testily, but Barnard laughed. “I guess you must be the official guide on this trip, Conway, and I’ll allow that if only I’d got a flask of café cognac I wouldn’t care if it’s Tibet or Tennessee.”
“But what are we going to do about it?” urged Mallinson again. “Why are we here? What can be the point of it all? I don’t see how you can make jokes about it.”
“Well, it’s as good as making a scene about it, young feller. Besides, if the man is a loonie, as you’ve suggested, there probably isn’t any point.”
“He must be mad. I can’t think of any other explanation. Can you, Conway?”
Conway shook his head.
Miss Brinklow turned round, as she might have done during the interval of a play. “As you haven’t asked my opinion, perhaps I oughtn’t to give it,” she began, with shrill modesty, “but I should like to say that I agree with Mr. Mallinson. I’m sure the poor man can’t be quite right in his head. The pilot, I mean, of course. There would be no excuse for him, anyhow, if he were not mad.” She added, shouting confidentially above the din: “And do you know, this is my first trip in the air! My very first! Nothing would ever induce me to do it before, though a friend of mine tried her very best to persuade me to fly from London to Paris.”
“And now you’re flying from India to Tibet instead,” said Barnard. “That’s the way things happen.”
She went on: “I once knew a missionary who had been in Tibet. He said the Tibetans were very odd people. They believe we are descended from monkeys.”
“Remarkably cute of ’em.”
“Oh dear no, I don’t mean in the modern way. They’ve had the belief for hundreds of years—it’s only one of their superstitions. Of course I’m against all of it myself, and I think Darwin was far worse than any Tibetan. I take my stand on the Bible.”
“Fundamentalist, I suppose?”
But Miss Brinklow did not appear to understand the term. “I used to belong to the L.M.S.,” she shrieked, “but I disagreed with them about infant baptism.”
Conway continued to feel that this was a rather comic remark long after it had occurred to him that the initials were those of the London Missionary Society. Still picturing the inconveniences of holding a theological argument at Euston Station, he began to think that there was something slightly fascinating about Miss Brinklow. He even wondered if he could offer her any article of his clothing for the night, but decided at length that her constitution was probably wirier than his. So he huddled up, closed his eyes, and went quite easily and peacefully to sleep.
And the flight proceeded.
Suddenly they were all wakened by a lurch of the machine. Conway’s head struck the window, dazing him for the moment; a returning lurch sent him floundering between the two tiers of seats. It was much colder. The first thing he did, automatically, was to glance at his watch; it showed half-past one—he must have been asleep for some time. His ears were full of a loud flapping sound, which he took to be imaginary until he realised that the engine had been shut off and that the plane was rushing against a gale. Then he stared through the window and could see the earth quite close—vague and snail-grey, scampering underneath. “He’s going to land!” Mallinson shouted; and Barnard, who had also been flung out of his seat, responded with a saturnine: “If he’s lucky.” Miss Brinklow, whom the entire commotion seemed to have disturbed least of all, was adjusting her hat as calmly as if Dover Harbour were just in sight.
Presently the plane touched ground. But it was a bad landing this time—“Oh, my God, damned bad, damned bad!” Mallinson groaned as he clutched at his seat during ten seconds of crashing and swaying. Something was heard to strain and snap, and one of the tyres exploded. “That’s done it,” he added in tones of anguished pessimism. “A broken tail-skid—we’ll have to stay where we are now, that’s certain.”
Conway, never talkative at times of crisis, stretched his stiffened legs and felt his head where it had banged against the window. A bruise—nothing much. He must do something to help these people. But he was the last of the four to stand up when the plane came to rest. “Steady,” he called out as Mallinson wrenched open the door of the cabin and prepared to make the jump to earth; and eerily, in the comparative silence, the youth’s answer came: “No need to be steady—this looks like the end of the world—there’s not a soul about, anyhow.”
A moment later, chilled and shivering, they were all aware that this was so. With no sound in their ears save the fierce gusts of wind and their own crunching footsteps, they felt themselves at the mercy of something dour and savagely melancholy—a mood in which both earth and air were saturated. The moon looked to have disappeared behind clouds, and starlight illumined a tremendous emptiness heaving with wind. Without thought or knowledge, one could have guessed that this bleak world was mountain-high, and that the mountains rising from it were mountains on top of mountains. A range of them gleamed on a far horizon like a row of dog-teeth.
Mallinson, feverishly active, was already making for the cockpit. “I’m not scared of the fellow on land, whoever he is,” he cried. “I’m going to tackle him right away. . . .”
The others watched, hypnotised by the spectacle of such energy, though apprehensive also. Conway sprang after him, but too late