Chapter Thirty.. Prospects and Precautions
Brave men do not easily yield to despair. Karl was brave. Caspar, although but a mere boy, was as brave as a man. So was the shikarree brave – that is, for one of his race. He would have thought light of any ordinary peril – a combat with a tiger, or a gayal, or a bear; but, like all his race, he was given to superstition, he now firmly believed that some of his Hindoo gods dwelt in this valley, and that they were all to be punished for intruding into the sacred abode. There was nothing singular about his holding this belief. It was perfectly natural, – in fact, it was only the belief of his religion and his race.
Notwithstanding his superstitious fears, he did not yield himself up to destiny. On the contrary, he was ready to enter heart and soul into any plan by which he and his companions might escape out of the territory of Brahma, Vishnu, or Siva – whichsoever of these it belonged to.
It was in thinking over some plan that kept all three of them in silence, and with such thoughts Ossaroo was as busy as the others.
Think as they would, no feasible or practicable idea could be got hold of. There were five hundred feet of a cliff to be scaled. How was that feat to be accomplished?
By making a ladder? The idea was absurd. No ladder in the world would reach to the quarter of such a height. Ropes, even if they had had them, could be in no way made available. These might aid in going down a precipice, but for going up they would be perfectly useless.
The thought even crossed their minds of cutting notches in the cliff, and ascending by that means! This might appear to be practicable, and viewing the matter from a distance it certainly does seem so. But had you been placed in the position of our travellers, – seated as they were in front of that frowning wall of granite, – and told that you must climb it by notches cut in the iron rock by your own hand, you would have turned from the task in despair.
So did they; at least the idea passed away from their thoughts almost in the same moment in which it had been conceived.
For hours they sat pondering over the affair. What would they not have given for wings; wings to carry them over the walls of that terrible prison?
All their speculations ended without result; and at length rising to their feet, they set off with gloomy thoughts toward the spot where they had already encamped.
As if to render their situation more terrible, some wild beasts, – wolves they supposed, – had visited the encampment during their absence, and had carried off every morsel of the jerked meat. This was a painful discovery, for now more than ever should they require such provision.
The stag still remained to them. Surely it was not also carried off? and to assure themselves they hurried to the pool, which was at no great distance. They were gratified at finding the deer in the pool where it had been left; the water, perhaps, having protected it from ravenous beasts.
As their former camp ground had not been well chosen, they dragged the carcass of the deer up to the hot spring; that being a better situation. There the animal was skinned, a fire kindled, and after they had dined upon fresh venison-steaks, the rest of the meat Ossaroo prepared for curing, – just as he had done that of the yak, – but in this case he took the precaution to hang it out of reach of all four-footed marauders.
So careful were they of the flesh of the deer, that even the bones were safely stowed away, and Fritz had to make his supper upon the offal.
Notwithstanding their terrible situation, Karl had not abandoned one of the national characteristics of his countryman, – prudence. He foresaw a long stay in this singular valley. How long he did not think of asking himself; perhaps for life. He anticipated the straits in which they might soon be placed; food even might fail them; and on this account every morsel was to be kept from waste.
Around their night camp-fire they talked of the prospects of obtaining food; of the animals they supposed might exist in the valley; of their numbers and kinds, – they had observed several kinds; of the birds upon the lake and among the trees; of the fruits and berries; of the roots that might be in the ground; in short, of every thing that might be found there from which they could draw sustenance.
They examined their stock of ammunition. This exceeded even their most sanguine hopes. Both Caspar’s large powder-horn and that of his brother were nearly full. They had used their guns but little since last filling their horns. They had also a good store of shot and bullets; though these things were less essential, and in case of their running short of them they knew of many substitutes, but gunpowder is the sine qua non of the hunter.
Even had their guns failed them, there was still the unerring bow of Ossaroo, and it was independent of either powder or lead. A thin reed, or the slender branch of a tree, were nearly all that Ossaroo required to make as deadly a shaft as need be hurled.
They were without anxiety, on the score of being able to kill such animals as the place afforded. Even had they been without arrows, they felt confident that in such a circumscribed space they would have been able to circumvent and capture the game. They had no uneasiness about any four-footed creature making its escape from the valley any more than themselves. There could be no other outlet than that by which they had entered. By the ravine only could the four-footed denizens of the place have gone out and in; and on the glacier they had observed a beaten path made by the tracks of animals, before the snow had fallen. Likely enough the pass was well-known to many kinds, and likely also there were others that stayed continually in the valley, and there brought forth their young. Indeed, it would have been difficult for a wild animal to have found a more desirable home.
The hope of the hunters was that many animals might have held this very opinion, and from what they had already observed, they had reason to think so.
Of course they had not yet abandoned the hope of being able to find some way of escape from their singular prison. No, it was too early for that. Had they arrived at such a conviction, they would have been in poor heart indeed, and in no mood for conversing as they did. The birds and the quadrupeds, and the fruits and roots, would have had but little interest for them with such a despairing idea as that in their minds. They still hoped, though scarce knowing why; and in this uncertainty they went to rest with the resolve to give the cliffs a fresh examination on the morrow.