During that third week of May the situation in Baskul had become much worse and, on the 20th, air force machines arrived by arrangement from Peshawar to evacuate the white residents. These numbered about eighty, and most were safely transported across the mountains in troop carriers. A few miscellaneous aircraft were also employed, among them being a cabin machine lent by the maharajah of Chandapore. In this, about 10 a.m., four passengers embarked:Miss Roberta Brinklow, of the Eastern Mission; Henry D. Barnard, an American; Hugh Conway, H.M. Consul; and Captain Charles Mallinson, H.M. Vice Consul.

These names are as they appeared later in Indian and British newspapers.

Conway was thirty-seven. He had been at Baskul for two years,in a job which now, in the light of events, could be regarded as a persistent backing of the wrong horse. A stage of his life was finished;in a few weeks’ time, or perhaps after a few months’ leave in Enland, he would be sent somewhere else. Tokyo or Teheran, Manila or Muscat; people in his profession never knew what was coming.He had been ten years in the Consular Service, long enough to assess his own chances as shrewdly as he was apt to do those of others. He knew that the plums were not for him; but it was genuinely consoling, and not merely sour grapes, to reflect that he had no taste for plums.He preferred the less formal and more picturesque jobs that were on offer, and as these were often not good ones, it had doubtless seeme to others that he was playing his cards rather badly. Actually, he felt he had played them rather well; he had had a varied and moderately enjoyable decade.

He was tall, deeply bronzed, with brown short-cropped hair and slate-blue eyes. He was inclined to look severe and brooding until he laughed, and then (but it happened not so very often) he looked boyish. There was a slight nervous twitch near the left eye which wa usually noticeable when he worked too hard or drank too much, and as he had been packing and destroying documents throughout the whole of the day and night preceding the evacuation, the twitch was very conspicuous when he climbed into the aeroplane. He was tired out, and overwhelmingly glad that he had contrived to be sent in the maharajah’s luxurious airliner instead of in one of the crowded troop carriers. He spread himself indulgently in the basket seat as the plane soared aloft. He was the sort of man who, being used to major harships, expected minor comforts by way of compensation. Cheerfully he might endure the rigors of the road to Samarkand, but from London to Paris he would spend his last tenner on the Golden Arrow.

It was after the flight had lasted more than an hour that Mallinso said he thought the pilot wasn’t keeping a straight course. Mallinson sat immediately in front. He was a youngster in his middle twenties,pink-cheeked, intelligent without being intellectual, beset with public school limitations, but also with their excellences. Failure to pass an examination was the chief cause of his being sent to Baskul, where Conway had had six months of his company and had grown to like him.

But Conway did not want to make the effort that an aeroplane conversation demands. He opened his eyes drowsily and replied that whatever the course taken, the pilot presumably knew best.

Half an hour later, when weariness and the drone of the engine had lulled him nearly to sleep, Mallinson disturbed him again. “I say,Conway, I thought Fenner was piloting us?”

“Well, isn’t he?”

“The chap turned his head just now and I’ll swear it wasn’t he.

“It’s hard to tell, through that glass panel.”

“I’d know Fenner’s face anywhere.”

“Well, then, it must be someone else. I don’t see that it matters.”

“But Fenner told me definitely that he was taking this machine.

“They must have changed their minds and given him one of the others.”

“Well, who is this man, then?”

“My dear boy, how should I know? You don’t suppose I’ve memorized the face of every flight lieutenant in the air force, do you?

“I know a good many of them, anyway, but I don’t recognize this fellow.”

“Then he must belong to the minority whom you don’t know.”Conway smiled and added: “When we arrive in Peshawar very soon you can make his acquaintance and ask him all about himself.”

“At this rate we shan’t get to Peshawar at all. The man’s right of his course. And I’m not surprised, either—flying so damned high he can’t see where he is.”

Conway was not bothering. He was used to air travel, and took things for granted. Besides, there was nothing particular he was eager to do when he got to Peshawar, and no one particular he was eager to see; so it was a matter of complete indifference to him whether the journey took four hours or six. He was unmarried; there would be no tender greetings on arrival. He had friends, and a few of them would probably take him to the club and stand him drinks; it was a pleasant prospect, but not one to sigh for in anticipation.

Nor did he sigh retrospectively, when he viewed the equally pleasant, but not wholly satisfying vista of the past decade. Changeable,fair intervals, becoming rather unsettled; it had been his own meteorological summary during that time, as well as the world’s. He thought of Baskul, Pekin, Macao, and other places—he had moved about pretty often. Remotest of all was Oxford, where he had had a cople of years of donhood after the war, lecturing on Oriental history,breathing dust in sunny libraries, cruising down the High on a push bicycle. The vision attracted, but did not stir him; there was a sense in which he felt that he was still a part of all that he might have been.

A familiar gastric lurch informed him that the plane was beginning to descend. He felt tempted to rag Mallinson about his fidgets,and would perhaps have done so had not the youth risen abruptly,bumping his head against the roof and waking Barnard, the American, who had been dozing in his seat at the other side of the narrow gangway. “My God!” Mallinson cried, peering through the window.“Look down there!”

Conway looked. The view was certainly not what he had expected,if, indeed, he had expected anything. Instead of the trim, geometrically laid-out cantonments and the larger oblongs of the hangars, nothing was visible but an opaque mist veiling an immense, sun-brown desolation. The plane, though descending rapidly, was still at a height unusual for ordinary flying. Long, corrugated mountain ridges could be picked out, perhaps a mile or so closer than the cloudier smudge of the valleys. It was typical frontier scenery, though Conway had never viewed it before from such an altitude. It was also, which struck him as odd, nowhere that he could imagine near Peshawar. “I don’t recognize this part of the world,” he commented. Then, more privately,for he did not wish to alarm the others, he added into Mallinson’s ear:“Looks as if you’re right. The man’s lost his way.

The plane was swooping down at a tremendous speed, and as it did so, the air grew hotter; the scorched earth below was like an oven with the door suddenly opened. One mountaintop after another lifte itself above the horizon in craggy silhouette; now the flight was along a curving valley, the base of which was strewn with rocks and the debris of dried-up watercourses. It looked like a floor littered with nutshells. The plane bumped and tossed in air pockets as uncomforably as a rowboat in a swell. All four passengers had to hold onto their seats.

“Looks like he wants to land!” shouted the American hoarsely.

“He can’t!” Mallinson retorted. “He’d be simply mad if he tried to!He’ll crash and then—”

But the pilot did land. A small cleared space opened by the side of a gully, and with considerable skill the machine was jolted and heaved to a standstill. What happened after that, however,was more puzzling and less reassuring. A swarm of bearded and turbaned tribesmen came forward from all directions, surrounding the machine and effectively preventing anyone from getting out of it except the pilot. The latter clambered to earth and held excited coloquy with them, during which proceeding it became clear that, so far from being Fenner, he was not an Englishman at all, and possibly not even a European. Meanwhile cans of gasoline were fetched from a dump close by, and emptied into the exceptionally capacious tanks.Grins and disregarding silence met the shouts of the four imprisoned passengers, while the slightest attempt to alight provoked a menacing movement from a score of rifles. Conway, who knew a little Pushtu,harangued the tribesmen as well as he could in that language, but without effect; while the pilot’s sole retort to any remarks addressed to him in any language was a significant flourish of his revolver. Midda sunlight, blazing on the roof of the cabin, grilled the air inside till the occupants were almost fainting with the heat and with the exertion of their protests. They were quite powerless; it had been a condition of the evacuation that they should carry no arms.

When the tanks were at last screwed up, a gasoline can filled with tepid water was handed through one of the cabin windows. No questions were answered, though it did not appear that the men were personally hostile. After a further parley the pilot climbed back into the cockpit, a Pathan clumsily swung the propeller, and the flight was resumed. The takeoff, in that confined space and with the extra -oline load, was even more skillful than the landing. The plane rose high into the hazy vapors; then turned east, as if setting a course. It was mid-afternoon.

A most extraordinary and bewildering business! As the cooler air refreshed them, the passengers could hardly believe that it had really happened; it was an outrage to which none could recall any parallel,or suggest any precedent, in all the turbulent records of the frontier.It would have been incredible, indeed, had they not been victims of it themselves. It was quite natural that high indignation should follow incredulity, and anxious speculation only when indignation had worn itself out. Mallinson then developed the theory which, in the absence of any other, they found easiest to accept. They were being kidnaped for ransom. The trick was by no means new in itself, though this particular technique must be regarded as original. It was a little more comforting to feel that they were not making entirely virgin history; after all, there had been kidnapings before, and a good many of them had ended up all right. The tribesmen kept you in some lair in the mountains till the government paid up and you were released.You were treated quite decently, and as the money that had to be paid wasn’t your own, the whole business was only unpleasant while it lasted. Afterwards, of course, the Air people sent a bombing squadron,and you were left with one good story to tell for the rest of your life.Mallinson enunciated the proposition a shade nervously; but Barnard, the American, chose to be heavily facetious. “Well, gentlemen,I daresay this is a cute idea on somebody’s part, but I can’t exactly see that your air force has covered itself with glory. You Britishers make jokes about the holdups in Chicago and all that, but I don’t recollect any instance of a gunman running off with one of Uncle Sam’s aeroplanes. And I should like to know, by the way, what this fellow did with the real pilot. Sandbagged him, I bet.” He yawned. He was a large, fleshy man, with a hard-bitten face in which good-humoed wrinkles were not quite offset by pessimistic pouches. Nobody in Baskul had known much about him except that he had arrived from Persia, where it was presumed he had something to do with oil.

Conway meanwhile was busying himself with a very practical task. He had collected every scrap of paper that they all had, and was composing messages in various native languages to be dropped to earth at intervals. It was a slender chance, in such sparsely populated country, but worth taking.

The fourth occupant, Miss Brinklow, sat tight-lipped and straight-backed, with few comments and no complaints. She was a small, rather leathery woman, with an air of having been compelled to attend a party at which there were goings-on that she could not wholly approve.

Conway had talked less than the two other men, for translating SOS messages into dialects was a mental exercise requiring concentration. He had, however, answered questions when asked, and had agreed, tentatively, with Mallinson’s kidnaping theory. He had also agreed, to some extent, with Barnard’s strictures on the air force. “Though one can see, of course, how it may have happened. With the place in commotion as it was, one man in flying kit would look very much like another. No one would think of doubting the bona fides of any man in the proper clothes who looked as if he knew his job.And this fellow must have known it—the signals, and so forth. Pretty obvious, too, that he knows how to fly … still, I agree with you that it’s the sort of thing that someone ought to get into hot water about. And somebody will, you may be sure, though I suspect he won’t deserve it.”

“Well, sir,” responded Barnard, “I certainly do admire the way you manage to see both sides of the question. It’s the right spirit to have,no doubt, even when you’re being taken for a ride.”

Americans, Conway reflected, had the knack of being able to say patronizing things without being offensive. He smiled tolerantly, but did not continue the conversation. His tiredness was of a kind that no amount of possible peril could stave off. Towards late afternoon when Barnard and Mallinson, who had been arguing, appealed to him on some point, it appeared that he had fallen asleep.

“Dead beat,” Mallinson commented. “And I don’t wonder at it, after these last few weeks.”

“You’re his friend?” queried Barnard.

“I’ve worked with him at the Consulate. I happen to know that he hasn’t been in bed for the last four nights. As a matter of fact, we’re damned lucky in having him with us in a tight corner like this. Apart from knowing the languages, he’s got a sort of way with him in dealing with people. If anyone can get us out of the mess, he’ll do it. He’s pretty cool about most things.”

“Well, let him have his sleep, then,” agreed Barnard.

Miss Brinklow made one of her rare remarks. “I think he looks like a very brave man,” she said.

Conway was far less certain that he was a very brave man. He had closed his eyes in sheer physical fatigue, but without actually sleeping.He could hear and feel every movement of the plane, and he heard also, with mixed feelings, Mallinson’s eulogy of himself. It was then that he had his doubts, recognizing a tight sensation in his stomach which was his own bodily reaction to a disquieting mental survey.He was not, as he knew well from experience, one of those persons who love danger for its own sake. There was an aspect of it which he sometimes enjoyed, an excitement, a purgative effect upon sluggish emotions, but he was far from fond of risking his life. Twelve years earlier he had grown to hate the perils of trench warfare in France,and had several times avoided death by declining to attempt valorous impossibilities. Even his D.S.O. had been won, not so much by physical courage, as by a certain hardly developed technique of endurance.And since the war, whenever there had been danger ahead, he had faced it with increasing lack of relish unless it promised extravagant dividends in thrills.

He still kept his eyes closed. He was touched, and a little dismayed,by what he had heard Mallinson say. It was his fate in life to have his equanimity always mistaken for pluck, whereas it was actually something much more dispassionate and much less virile. They were all in a damnably awkward situation, it seemed to him, and so far from being full of bravery about it, he felt chiefly an enormous distaste for whatever trouble might be in store. There was Miss Brinklow, for istance. He foresaw that in certain circumstances he would have to act on the supposition that because she was a woman she mattered far more than the rest of them put together, and he shrank from a situation in which such disproportionate behavior might be unavoidable.

Nevertheless, when he showed signs of wakefulness, it was to Miss Brinklow that he spoke first. He realized that she was neither young nor pretty—negative virtues, but immensely helpful ones in such difficulties as those in which they might soon find themselve He was also rather sorry for her, because he suspected that neither Mallinson nor the American liked missionaries, especially female ones. He himself was unprejudiced, but he was afraid she would find his open mind a less familiar and therefore an even more disconcerting phenomenon. “We seem to be in a queer fix,” he said, leaning forward to her ear, “but I’m glad you’re taking it calmly. I don’t really think anything dreadful is going to happen to us.”

“I’m certain it won’t if you can prevent it,” she answered; which did not console him.

“You must let me know if there is anything we can do to make you more comfortable.”

Barnard caught the word. “Comfortable?” he echoed raucously.“Why, of course we’re comfortable. We’re just enjoying the trip. Pity we haven’t a pack of cards—we could play a rubber of bridge.”

Conway welcomed the spirit of the remark, though he disliked bridge. “I don’t suppose Miss Brinklow plays,” he said, smiling.

But the missionary turned round briskly to retort: “Indeed I do,and I could never see any harm in cards at all. There’s nothing against them in the Bible.”

They all laughed, and seemed obliged to her for providing an ecuse. At any rate, Conway thought, she wasn’t hysterical.

All afternoon the plane had soared through the thin mists of the upper atmosphere, far too high to give clear sight of what lay beneath.Sometimes, at longish intervals, the veil was torn for a moment, to display the jagged outline of a peak, or the glint of some unknown stream. The direction could be determined roughly from the sun; it was still east, with occasional twists to the north; but where it had led depended on the speed of travel, which Conway could not judge with any accuracy. It seemed likely, though, that the flight must aready have exhausted a good deal of the gasoline; though that again depended on uncertain factors. Conway had no technical knowledge of aircraft, but he was sure that the pilot, whoever he might be, was altogether an expert. That halt in the rock-strewn valley had demostrated it, and also other incidents since. And Conway could not repress a feeling that was always his in the presence of any superb and indisputable competence. He was so used to being appealed to for help that mere awareness of someone who would neither ask nor need it was slightly tranquilizing, even amidst the greater perplexities of the future. But he did not expect his companions to share such a tenuous emotion. He recognized that they were likely to have far more personal reasons for anxiety than he had himself. Mallinson, for instance, was engaged to a girl in England; Barnard might be married;Miss Brinklow had her work, vocation, or however she might regard it. Mallinson, incidentally, was by far the least composed; as the hours passed he showed himself increasingly excitable—apt, also, to resent to Conway’s face the very coolness which he had praised behind his back. Once, above the roar of the engine, a sharp storm of argument arose. “Look here,” Mallinson shouted angrily, “are we bound to sit here twiddling our thumbs while this maniac does everything he damn well wants? What’s to prevent us from smashing that panel and having it out with him?”

“Nothing at all,” replied Conway, “except that he’s armed and we’re not, and that in any case, none of us would know how to bring the machine to earth afterwards.

“It can’t be very hard, surely. I daresay you could do it.”

“My dear Mallinson, why is it always me you expect to perform these miracles?”

“Well, anyway, this business is getting hellishly on my nerves.Can’t we make the fellow come down?”

“How do you suggest it should be done?”

Mallinson was becoming more and more agitated. “Well, he’s there, isn’t he? About six feet away from us, and we’re three men to one! Have we got to stare at his damned back all the time? At least we might force him to tell us what the game is.”

“Very well, we’ll see.” Conway took a few paces forward to the partition between the cabin and the pilot’s cockpit, which was situated in front and somewhat above. There was a pane of glass, about six inches square and made to slide open, through which the pilot,by turning his head and stooping slightly, could communicate with his passengers. Conway tapped on this with his knuckles. The rsponse was almost comically as he had expected. The glass panel slid sideways and the barrel of a revolver obtruded. Not a word; just that.Conway retreated without arguing the point, and the panel slid back again.

Mallinson, who had watched the incident, was only partly satisfied. “I don’t suppose he’d have dared to shoot,” he commented. “It’s probably bluff.

“Quite,” agreed Conway, “but I’d rather leave you to make sure.”

“Well, I do feel we ought to put up some sort of a fight before giing in tamely like this.”

Conway was sympathetic. He recognized the convention, with all its associations of red-coated soldiers and school history books, that Englishmen fear nothing, never surrender, and are never defeated.He said: “Putting up a fight without a decent chance of winning is a poor game, and I’m not that sort of hero.”

“Good for you, sir,” interposed Barnard heartily. “When somebody’s got you by the short hairs you may as well give in pleasantly and admit it. For my part I’m going to enjoy life while it lasts and have a cigar. I hope you don’t think a little bit of extra danger matters to us?”

“Not so far as I’m concerned, but it might bother Miss Brinklow.”

Barnard was quick to make amends. “Pardon me, madam, but do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all,” she answered graciously. “I don’t do so myself, but I just love the smell of a cigar.”

Conway felt that of all the women who could possibly have made such a remark, she was easily the most typical. Anyhow, Mallinson’s excitement had calmed a little, and to show friendliness he offered him a cigarette, though he did not light one himself. “I know how you feel,” he said gently. “It’s a bad outlook, and it’s all the worse, in some ways, because there isn’t much we can do about it.”

“And all the better, too, in other ways,” he could not help adding to himself. For he was still immensely fatigued. There was also in his nature a trait which some people might have called laziness, though it was not quite that. No one was capable of harder work, when it had to be done, and few could better shoulder responsibility; but the facts remained that he was not passionately fond of activity, and did not enjoy responsibility at all. Both were included in his job, and he made the best of them, but he was always ready to give way to anyone else who could function as well or better. It was partly this, no doubt, that had made his success in the Service less striking than it might have been. He was not ambitious enough to shove his way past others, or to make an important parade of doing nothing when there was really nothing doing. His dispatches were sometimes laconic to the point of curtness, and his calm in emergencies, though admired, was often suspected of being too sincere. Authority likes to feel that a man is imposing some effort on himself, and that his apparent nonchalance is only a cloak to disguise an outfit of well-bred emotions. With Coway the dark suspicion had sometimes been current that he really was as unruffled as he looked, and that whatever happened, he did no give a damn. But this, too, like the laziness, was an imperfect interpretation. What most observers failed to perceive in him was something quite bafflingly simple—a love of quietness, contemplation, and -ing alone.

Now, since he was so inclined and there was nothing else to do, he leaned back in the basket chair and went definitely to sleep. When he woke he noticed that the others, despite their various anxieties, had likewise succumbed. Miss Brinklow was sitting bolt upright with her eyes closed, like some rather dingy and outmoded idol; Mallinson had lolled forward in his place with his chin in the palm of a hand.The American was even snoring. Very sensible of them all, Conway thought; there was no point in wearying themselves with shouting.But immediately he was aware of certain physical sensations in himself, slight dizziness and heart-thumping and a tendency to inhale sharply and with effort. He remembered similar symptoms once bfore—in the Swiss Alps.

Then he turned to the window and gazed out. The surroundin sky had cleared completely, and in the light of late afternoon there came to him a vision which, for the instant, snatched the remaining breath out of his lungs. Far away, at the very limit of distance, lay range upon range of snow peaks, festooned with glaciers, and floaing, in appearance, upon vast levels of cloud. They compassed the whole arc of the circle, merging towards the west in a horizon that was fierce, almost garish in coloring, like an impressionist backdrop done by some half-mad genius. And meanwhile, the plane, on that stupendous stage, was droning over an abyss in face of a sheer white wall that seemed part of the sky itself until the sun caught it. Then,like a dozen piled-up Jungfraus seen from Murren, it flamed into sperb and dazzling incandescence.

Conway was not apt to be easily impressed, and as a rule he did not care for “views,” especially the more famous ones for which thoughtful municipalities provide garden seats. Once, on being taken to Tiger Hill, near Darjeeling, to watch the sunrise upon Everest, he had found the highest mountain in the world a definite disappointment.But this fearsome spectacle beyond the window-pane was of different caliber; it had no air of posing to be admired. There was something raw and monstrous about those uncompromising ice cliffs, and a cetain sublime impertinence in approaching them thus. He pondered,envisioning maps, calculating distances, estimating times and speeds.Then he became aware that Mallinson had wakened also. He touched the youth on the arm. lVddfAHuNKIrc1XQ4OqWGJOEbSXJhZAuCkfSfKMeQz9HevfC8jhpJqk85C7aPFPj

It was typical of Conway that he let the others waken for themselves, and made small response to their exclamations of astonishment; yet later, when Barnard sought his opinion, gave it with something of the detached fluency of a university professor elucidating a problem. He thought it likely, he said, that they were still in India;they had been flying east for several hours, too high to see much, but probably the course had been along some river valley, one stretching roughly east and west. “I wish I hadn’t to rely on memory, but my impression is that the valley of the upper Indus fits in well enough. Tha would have brought us by now to a very spectacular part of the world,and, as you see, so it has.”

“You know where we are, then?” Barnard interrupted.

“Well, no—I’ve never been anywhere near here before, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that mountain is Nanga Parbat, the one Mummery lost his life on. In structure and general layout it seems in accord with all I’ve heard about it.”

“You are a mountaineer yourself?”

“In my younger days I was keen. Only the usual Swiss climbs, of course.”

Mallinson intervened peevishly: “There’d be more point in dicussing where we’re going to. I wish to God somebody could tell us.”

“Well, it looks to me as if we’re heading for that range yonder,” said Barnard. “Don’t you think so, Conway? You’ll excuse me calling you that, but if we’re all going to have a little adventure together, it’s a pity to stand on ceremony.”

Conway thought it very natural that anyone should call him by his own name, and found Barnard’s apologies for so doing a trifle neeless. “Oh, certainly,” he agreed, and added: “I think that range must be the Karakorams. There are several passes if our man intends to cross them.”

“Our man?” exclaimed Mallinson. “You mean our maniac! I reckon it’s time we dropped the kidnaping theory. We’re far past the frontier country by now, there aren’t any tribes living around here. The only explanation I can think of is that the fellow’s a raving lunatic.Would anybody except a lunatic fly into this sort of country?

“I know that nobody except a damn fine airman could,” retorted Barnard. “I never was great at geography, but I understand that these are reputed to be the highest mountains in the world, and if that’s so,it’ll be a pretty first-class performance to cross them.

“And also the will of God,” put in Miss Brinklow unexpectedly.

Conway did not offer his opinion. The will of God or the lunac of man—it seemed to him that you could take your choice, if you wanted a good enough reason for most things. Or, alternatively (and he thought of it as he contemplated the small orderliness of the cabin against the window background of such frantic natural scenery),the will of man and the lunacy of God. It must be satisfying to be quite certain which way to look at it. Then, while he watched and pondered, a strange transformation took place. The light turned to bluish over the whole mountain, with the lower slopes darkening to violet. Something deeper than his usual aloofness rose in him—not quite excitement, still less fear, but a sharp intensity of expectation.He said: “You’re quite right, Barnard, this affair grows more and more remarkable.”

“Remarkable or not, I don’t feel inclined to propose a vote of thanks about it,” Mallinson persisted. “We didn’t ask to be brought here, and heaven knows what we shall do when we get there, wherever there is. And I don’t see that it’s any less of an outrage because the fellow happens to be a stunt flyer. Even if he is, he can be just as much a lunatic. I once heard of a pilot going mad in midair. This fellow must have been mad from the beginning. That’s my theory, Conway.

Conway was silent. He found it irksome to be continually shouting above the roar of the machine, and after all, there was little point in arguing possibilities. But when Mallinson pressed for an opinion, he said: “Very well-organized lunacy, you know. Don’t forget the landing for gasoline, and also that this was the only machine that could climb to such a height.”

“That doesn’t prove he isn’t mad. He may have been mad enough to plan everything.”

“Yes, of course, that’s possible.”

“Well, then, we’ve got to decide on a plan of action. What are we going to do when he comes to earth? If he doesn’t crash and kill us all,that is. What are we going to do? Rush forward and congratulate him on his marvelous flight, I suppose.

“Not on your life,” answered Barnard. “I’ll leave you to do all the rushing forward.”

Again Conway was loth to prolong the argument, especially since the American, with his levelheaded banter, seemed quite capable of handling it himself. Already Conway found himself reflecting that the party might have been far less fortunately constituted. Only Mallinson was inclined to be cantankerous, and that might partly be due to the altitude. Rarefied air had different effects on people; Conwa for instance, derived from it a combination of mental clarity and physical apathy that was not unpleasant. Indeed, he breathed the clear cold air in little spasms of content. The whole situation, no doubt, was appalling, but he had no power at the moment to resent anything that proceeded so purposefully and with such captivating interest.

And there came over him, too, as he stared at that superb mountain, a glow of satisfaction that there were such places still left on earth,distant, inaccessible, as yet unhumanized. The icy rampart of the Kaakorams was now more striking than ever against the northern sky,which had become mouse-colored 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 atithesis 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 splendor; a full moon rose, touching each peak in succession like some celestial lamplighter, until the long horizon glittered against a blue-black sky.The air grew cold and a wind sprang up, tossing the machine uncofortably. These new distresses lowered the spirits of the passengers; it had not been reckoned that the flight could go on after dusk, and no the last hope lay in the exhaustion of gasoline. 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?” 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. Th 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 -mit that if I only had a flash 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 fellow. Besides, if the man is off his nut, 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 b 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 tri by 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 to Tibet.He said the Tibetans were very odd people. They believe we are dscended from monkeys.”

“Real smart 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 hi 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 realized 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-gray,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 Harbor 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 tires exploded. “That’s done it,” he added in tones of anguished pessimism. “A broken tailskid, 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 dogteeth.

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 apprehensively, hypnotized by the spectacle of such energy. Conway sprang after him, but too late to prevent the investigation. After a few seconds, however, the youth dropped down again, gripping his arm and muttering in a hoarse, sobered staccato:“I say, Conway, it’s queer … I think the fellow’s ill or dead or something … I can’t get a word out of him. Come up and look … I took his revolver, at any rate.”

“Better give it to me,” said Conway, and though still rather dazed by the recent blow on his head, he nerved himself for action. Of all times and places and situations on earth, this seemed to him to combine the most hideous discomforts. He hoisted himself stiffly into position from which he could see, not very well, into the enclosed cockpit. There was a strong smell of gasoline, so he did not risk striing a match. He could just discern the pilot, huddled forward, his head sprawling over the controls. He shook him, unfastened his helmet,and loosened the clothes round his neck. A moment later he turned round to report: “Yes, there’s something happened to him. We must get him out.” But an observer might have added that something had happened to Conway as well. His voice was sharper, more incisive;no longer did he seem to be hovering on the brink of some profound doubtfulness. The time, the place, the cold, his fatigue, were now of less account; there was a job that simply had to be done, and the more conventional part of him was uppermost and preparing to do it.

With Barnard and Mallinson assisting, the pilot was extracted from his seat and lifted to the ground. He was unconscious, not dead. Conway had no particular medical knowledge, but, as to most men who have lived in outlandish places, the phenomena of illness were mostly familiar. “Possibly a heart attack brought on by the high altitude,” he diagnosed, stooping over the unknown man. “We can do very little for him out here—there’s no shelter from this infernal wind. Better get him inside the cabin, and ourselves too. We haven’t an idea where we are, and it’s hopeless to make a move until daylight.”

The verdict and the suggestion were both accepted without dipute. Even Mallinson concurred. They carried the man into the cabin and laid him full length along the gangway between the seats. The iterior was no warmer than outside, but offered a screen to the flurrie of wind. It was the wind, before much time had passed, that became the central preoccupation of them all—the leitmotif , as it were, of the whole mournful night. It was not an ordinary wind. It was not merely a strong wind or a cold wind. It was somehow a frenzy that lived all around them, a master stamping and ranting over his own domain.It tilted the loaded machine and shook it viciously, and when Conway glanced through the windows it seemed as if the same wind were whirling splinters of light out of the stars.

The stranger lay inert, while Conway, with difficulty in the -ness and confined space, made what examination he could by the light of matches. But it did not reveal much. “His heart’s faint,” he said at last, and then Miss Brinklow, after groping in her handbag, creaed a small sensation. “I wonder if this would be any use to the poor man,” she proffered condescendingly. “I never touch a drop myself,but I always carry it with me in case of accidents. And this is a sort of accident, isn’t it?”

“I should say it was,” replied Conway with grimness. He unscrewed the bottle, smelt it, and poured some of the brandy into the man’s mouth. “Just the stuff for him. Thanks.” After an interval t slightest movement of eyelids was visible. Mallinson suddenly became hysterical. “I can’t help it,” he cried, laughing wildly. “We all look such a lot of damn fools striking matches over a corpse … And he isn’t much of a beauty, is he? Chink, I should say, if he’s anything at all.”

“Possibly.” Conway’s voice was level and rather severe. “But he’s not a corpse yet. With a bit of luck we may bring him round.”

“Luck? It’ll be his luck, not ours.”

“Don’t be too sure. And shut up for the time being, anyhow.”

There was enough of the schoolboy still in Mallinson to make him respond to the curt command of a senior, though he was obviously in poor control of himself. Conway, though sorry for him, was more concerned with the immediate problem of the pilot, since he, alone of them all, might be able to give some explanation of their plight. Conway had no desire to discuss the matter further in a merely speculative way; there had been enough of that during the journey. He was uneasy now beyond his continuing mental curiosity, for he was aware that the whole situation had ceased to be excitingly perilous and was threatening to become a trial of endurance ending in catastrophe.Keeping vigil throughout that gale-tormented night, he faced facts nonetheless frankly because he did not trouble to enunciate them to the others. He guessed that the flight had progressed far beyond the western range of the Himalayas towards the less known heights of the Kuen-Lun. In that event they would by now have reached the loftiest and least hospitable part of the earth’s surface, the Tibetan plteau, two miles high even in its lowest valleys, a vast, uninhabited,and largely unexplored region of windswept upland. Somewhere they were, in that forlorn country, marooned in far less comfort than on most desert islands. Then abruptly, as if to answer his curiosity by increasing it, a rather awe-inspiring change took place. The moon,which he had thought to be hidden by clouds, swung over the lip of some shadowy eminence and, whilst still not showing itself directly,unveiled the darkness ahead. Conway could see the outline of a long valley, with rounded, sad-looking low hills on either side jet-black against the deep electric blue of the night sky. But it was to the head of the valley that his eyes were led irresistibly, for there, soaring into the gap, and magnificent in the full shimmer of moonlight, appeared what he took to be the loveliest mountain on earth. It was an almost perfect cone of snow, simple in outline as if a child had drawn it, and impossible to classify as to size, height or nearness. It was so radiant,so serenely poised, that he wondered for a moment if it were real at all. Then, while he gazed, a tiny puff clouded the edge of the pyramid giving life to the vision before the faint rumble of the avalanche confirmed it.

He had an impulse to rouse the others to share the spectacle, but decided after consideration that its effect might not be tranquilizing Nor was it so, from a commonsense viewpoint; such virgin splendors merely emphasized the facts of isolation and danger. There was quite a probability that the nearest human settlement was hundreds of miles away. And they had no food; they were unarmed except for one revolver; the aeroplane was damaged and almost fuel-less, even if anyone had known how to fly. They had no clothes suited to the terrif chills and winds; Mallinson’s motoring coat and his own ulster were quite inadequate, and even Miss Brinklow, woolied and mufflered a for a polar expedition (ridiculous, he had thought, on first beholding her), could not be feeling happy. They were all, too, except himself,affected by the altitude. Even Barnard had sunk into melancholy uder the strain. Mallinson was muttering to himself; it was clear what would happen to him if these hardships went on for long. In face of such distressful prospects Conway found himself quite unable to restrain an admiring glance at Miss Brinklow. She was not, he refleced, a normal person, no woman who taught Afghans to sing hymns could be considered so. But she was, after every calamity, still normaly abnormal, and he was deeply obliged to her for it. “I hope you’re not feeling too bad?” he said sympathetically, when he caught her eye.

“The soldiers during the war had to suffer worse things than this,she replied.

The comparison did not seem to Conway a very valuable one.In point of fact, he had never spent a night in the trenches quite so thoroughly unpleasant, though doubtless many others had. He had concentrated his attention on the pilot, now breathing fitfully and sometimes slightly stirring. Probably Mallinson was right in guessing the man Chinese. He had the typical Mongol nose and cheekbones,despite his successful impersonation of a British flight lieutenant.Mallinson had called him ugly, but Conway, who had lived in China, thought him a fairly passable specimen, though now, in the burnished circle of match flame, his pallid skin and gaping mouth were not pretty.

The night dragged on, as if each minute were something heavy and tangible that had to be pushed to make way for the next. Moonlight faded after a time, and with it that distant specter of the moutain; then the triple mischiefs of darkness, cold, and wind increased until dawn. As though at its signal, the wind dropped, leaving the world in compassionate quietude. Framed in the pale triangle ahead,the mountain showed again, gray at first, then silver, then pink as the earliest sun rays caught the summit. In the lessening gloom the valley itself took shape, revealing a floor of rock and shingle sloping uwards. It was not a friendly picture, but to Conway, as he surveyed,there came a queer perception of fineness in it, of something that had no romantic appeal at all, but a steely, almost an intellectual quality. The white pyramid in the distance compelled the mind’s assent as passionlessly as a Euclidean theorem, and when at last the sun rose into a sky of deep delphinium blue, he felt only a little less than comfortable again.

As the air grew warmer the others wakened, and he suggested carrying the pilot into the open, where the sharp dry air and the sunlight might help to revive him. This was done, and they began a second and pleasanter vigil. Eventually the man opened his eyes and began to speak convulsively. His four passengers stooped over him, listening intently to sounds that were meaningless except to Conway, who occasionally made answers. After some time the man became weaer, talked with increasing difficulty, and finally died. That was ab mid-morning.

Conway then turned to his companions. “I’m sorry to say he told me very little—little, I mean, compared with what we should like to know. Merely that we are in Tibet, which is obvious. He didn’t give any coherent account of why he had brought us here, but he seemed to know the locality. He spoke a kind of Chinese that I don’t understand very well, but I think he said something about a lamasery near here, along the valley, I gathered, where we could get food and shelter.Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain pass. He was most emphatic that we should go there.”

“Which doesn’t seem to me any reason at all why we should,” said Mallinson. “After all, he was probably off his head. Wasn’t he.

“You know as much about that as I do. But if we don’t go to this place, where else are we to go?”

“Anywhere you like, I don’t care. All I’m certain of is that this Shangri-La, if it’s in that direction, must be a few extra miles from civilization. I should feel happier if we were lessening the distance,not increasing it. Damnation, man, aren’t you going to get us back?”

Conway replied patiently: “I don’t think you properly understand the position, Mallinson. We’re in a part of the world that no one knows very much about, except that it’s difficult and dangerous eve for a fully equipped expedition. Considering that hundreds of miles of this sort of country probably surround us on all sides, the notion of walking back to Peshawar doesn’t strike me as very hopeful.”

“I don’t think I could possibly manage it,” said Miss Brinklow seriously.

Barnard nodded. “It looks as if we’re darned lucky, then, if this lamasery is just around the corner.”

“Comparatively lucky, maybe,” agreed Conway. “After all, we’ve no food, and as you can see for yourselves, the country isn’t the kind it would be easy to live on. In a few hours we shall all be famished.And then tonight, if we were to stay here, we should have to face the wind and the cold again. It’s not a pleasant prospect. Our only chance,it seems to me, is to find some other human beings, and where else should we begin looking for them except where we’ve been told they exist?”

“And what if it’s a trap?” asked Mallinson, but Barnard supplied an answer. “A nice warm trap,” he said, “with a piece of cheese in it,would suit me down to the ground.”

They laughed, except Mallinson, who looked distraught and nerve-racked. Finally Conway went on: “I take it, then, that we’re all more or less agreed? There’s an obvious way along the valley; it doesn’t look too steep, though we shall have to take it slowly. In any case, we could do nothing here. We couldn’t even bury this man without dynamite. Besides, the lamasery people may be able to supply us with porters for the journey back. We shall need them. I suggest we start at once, so that if we don’t locate the place by late afternoon we shall have time to return for another night in the cabin.”

“And supposing we do locate it?” queried Mallinson, still intransigent. “Have we any guarantee that we shan’t be murdered?”

“None at all. But I think it is a less, and perhaps also a preferable risk to being starved or frozen to death.” He added, feeling that such chilly logic might not be entirely suited for the occasion: “As a matter of fact, murder is the very last thing one would expect in a Buddhist monastery. It would be rather less likely than being killed in an English cathedral.”

“Like Saint Thomas of Canterbury,” said Miss Brinklow, nodding an emphatic agreement, but completely spoiling his point. Mallinson shrugged his shoulders and responded with melancholy irritation:“Very well, then, we’ll be off to Shangri-La. Wherever and whatever it is, we’ll try it. But let’s hope it’s not half-way up that mountain.”

The remark served to fix their glances on the glittering cone -wards which the valley pointed. Sheerly magnificent it looked in the full light of day; and then their gaze turned to a stare, for they could see, far away and approaching them down the slope, the figures of men. “Providence!” whispered Miss Brinklow. F8xy0UTU/uF9nhldCItRw/WD4b9y9SboJndHR6YvRaBR44mCmi1m9kARq6EPFxMD