Page:Ossendowski - Beasts, Men and Gods.djvu/145

Rh around us, scarcely seeing the camel immediately in front. Suddenly I felt a shock and looked about me. Nothing unusual was visible. I was seated comfortably between two leather saddle bags filled with meat and bread but &hellip; I could not see the head of my camel. He had disappeared. It seemed that he had slipped and fallen to the bottom of a shallow ravine, while the bags which were slung across his back without straps had caught on a rock and stopped with myself there in the snow. This time the demon of Jagasstai only played a joke but one that did not satisfy him. He began to show more and more anger. With furious gusts of wind he almost dragged us and our bags from the camels and nearly knocked over our humped steeds, blinded us with frozen snow and prevented us from breathing. Through long hours we dragged slowly on in the deep snow, often falling over the edge of the rocks. At last we entered a small valley where the wind whistled and roared with a thousand voices. It had grown dark. The Mongol wandered around searching for the trail and finally came back to us, flourishing his arms and saying:

"We have lost the road. We must spend the night here. It is very bad because we shall have no wood for our stove and the cold will grow worse."

With great difficulties and with frozen hands we managed to set up our tent in the wind, placing in it the now useless stove. We covered the tent with snow, dug deep, long ditches in the drifts and forced our camels to lie down in them by shouting the "Dzuk! Dzuk!" command to kneel. Then we brought our packs into the tent.

My companion rebelled against the thought of spending a cold night with a stove hard by.