Ayesha:The Return of She

tue of Buddha seated in front of the ancient monastery, and in that clear atmosphere could even distinguish the bent form of our friend, the old abbot, Kou-en, leaning

eave this present life, yet we shall meet again in many future incarnations, and after you have put away these follies, together tread the path to perfect peace. Now t

d him and wen

her we marched across the flower-strewn desert, seeing nothing except bunches of game and one or two herds of wild asses which had come down from the mountains to feed upon the new grass. As evening approached we shot an antelope and made our camp - for we had brought the yak and a tent with us - among some tamarisk

ins, without having experienced either accident or fatigue. As Leo said, things were "going like clockwork," but I reminded him that a good start often meant a bad finish. Nor was I wrong, for now came our hardships. To begin with, the mountains proved to be exceeding h

ce have run a road. Not that we could see any road, indeed, for everything was buried in snow. But that one lay beneath our feet we were certain, since, although we marched along the edge of precipices, our path, howeve

e beams of course had long since rotted away, leaving a gulf between us and the continuation of the path. When we met with such gaps we were forced to go back and mak

cold at night, obliged as we were to camp in the severe frost at a great altitude, and to endure th

or now we had no fuel with which to boil water, and must satisfy our thirst by eating frozen snow, while our eyes smarted so sorely that we could not slee

dragged our stiffened limbs a hundred yards or so to a spot where the defile took a turn, in order

an exclamation. In a few seconds I reached his

een the bottom of one of the vast lakes of which a number exist in Central Asia, most of them now in process of desiccation. One object only relieved this dreary flatness, a single, snow-clad, and gigantic mountain, of which even at that distance - for it was very far from

ad not seen it during our passage of the mountains, since the peaks ahead and the rocky sides of the defile hid it from view, so great was its height that it overtopped the tallest of them. This made it

ry. Doubtless, at times when the volcano was awake, that smoke must be replaced by flame, emitting li

owed across the plain. Also it was evident that this country had a large population who cultivated the soil, for by the aid of a pair of field glasses, one of our few rem

ere rose the mystic Mount, so that all we had to do was

e us, what terrors and weary suffering we must endure before

which we washed down with lumps of snow that gave us toothache and chilled us inside, but w

ord. Down the snow slopes we marched swiftly and without hesitation, for here the road was marked for us by means of pillars of rock set opposite to on

ome bears and mountain foxes, not a single sign of beast or man could we discover. This, however, was to be explained, we reflected, by the fact that dou

. As we had descended many thousand feet, the temperature proved, fortunately, a little milder; indeed, I do not think that there were more than eighteen or twenty degrees of frost that night. Also here and there the heat

er see the country beneath, for it and even the towering volcano were hidden from us by an intervening ridge that seemed to be pierced by a single narrow gulley, towards which we headed. Indeed, as the pillars

a sheer precipice that was apparently three or four hundred f

lars stood upon its extreme brink, and yet how could a road descend such a

laugh, "the gulf has opened since this

which has rotted. It does not matter. We must find anothe

id, "if we do not wish

en into its substance. This glacier hung down the face of the cliff like a petrified waterfall, but whether or no it reached the foot we could not discover. At any rate, to think o

d below us lay that same pitiless, unclimbable gulf. As the light began to fade we perceived, half a mile or more in front a bare-topped hillock

e also, as beyond the glacier, the gulf was infinitely deeper than at the spot where the road ended, so deep indeed that w

ace, where we were obliged to climb a sort of rock ladder, that we scarcely cared to attempt to struggle down it again in that gloom. Therefore, remembering that there was little to choose between the top of t

ast of the food that we had brought with us from the Lamasery, and we reflected with dismay that unless we could shoot something, our commissariat was no

n and terrific sound like the boom of a great cannon, followed by thousan

n! What is t

and feel. The booming and cracking had ceased, and was followed by a soft, grinding noise, the most sickening sound, I think, to which I ever lis

oving down upon us in a

ame, a living thing, rolling, sliding, gliding; piling itself in long, leaping waves, hollowing itself into

oller, or an aspen in a sudden rush of wind. It struck and slowly separated, then with a majestic motion flowed like water over the edge of the precipice on either side, and fell with

ted rock must be torn from its foundations and hurled like a pebble to the deeps beneath. And the turmoil of it all! The screaming of the blast caused by the

foam. Then gathering momentum, they sprang into the air with leaps such as those of shells ricocheting upon water, till in the end, singing and hurtling, many of them rushed past and even over us to vanish far beyond. Some indeed struck our little mountain with the force of shot fired from the great guns of a

the quiet mountains, looked down upon by the peaceful, tender sky, the powers hidden in the breast of Nature were suddenly

n the ground, gripped it and clung there, fearing lest the wind should whirl us to the abyss. Long a

song. We were not touched, but when we looked behind us it was to see the yak, which had risen in its terror, lying dead and headless. Then in our fear we lay still, waiting f

scene time loses its proportion. Only we became aware that the wind had fallen, while the nois

ed to the consistency of ice and spotted with boulders that had lodged there. The peak itself was torn and shattered, so that it revealed great gleaming surfaces and pits, in which glittered mica, or some other mineral. The vast gulf behind was half filled with

anche boulders from time to time still thundered down the rocky slope, and with them came patches of snow that had been left behind by the big slide, small in themselves, it is true, but ea

n would say if he could see us now. By degrees hunger mastered all our other

will be something to do, and w

ndeed, long residence among peoples who believed fully that the souls of men could pass into, or were risen from, the bodies of animals, had made us a little superstitious on this

cut off little bits of his flesh and, rolling them in snow till they looked as though they were nicely floured, hung