Page:Three Years in Tibet.djvu/100

70 in a sand avalanche, if I may be allowed that expression for the places where the thaw had caused the snow and rock to slide down, leaving bare a loose sandy surface, which gave way under one's foot. As for my guide-carrier, he hopped, and skipped, and balanced, and leaped, with the agility and sureness of a monkey, his staff playing for him the part of a boat-hook in a most skilful hand, and, in spite of his seventy-five pounds' burden, he was so much at home on the difficult ascent, that he was ever and anon at my side to help me out of dangerous plights into which I would frequently fall, with my staff stuck fast between two rocks, or while I involuntarily acted the role of a ball-dancer on a loosened boulder. To add to the misery, with each step upward the air grew rarer and my breath shorter, making me feel a scorching sensation in the brain, while burning thirst was fast overcoming me — a morsel of snow, now and then taken, being utterly insufficient to quench it. Many a time I had almost fallen into a faint, and then my chronic tormentor, rheumatism, began to assert itself. I could go no further; I wanted to lie down on the snow and sleep for a long rest. But as often as I wished to do so, I had a warning from my guide that a rest then would be sure death for me, because, as he said, the air thereabouts was charged with a poisonous gas, and I would soon succumb to its effect; he was innocent of the knowledge of atmospheric rarity. I knew full well the weight of this warning, and I struggled on with what was to me at that time a superhuman effort. By the time we had finished wading across the sharp slope of the treacherous sand, and landed upon a rock-paved Hat, even that effort failed me; I came to a halt in spite of myself, and also of the guide, who said that water was obtainable a little distance below. Finding me really helpless, the man went down and fetched me some water which I took with a restorative drug. In a little while I