第32章 Toward the Pass(2)

For my part I felt as if we had already arrived somewhere. I little knew what lay beyond. While I was plodding along in this blissfully ignorant state of mind, communing with a pipe, the path, which had frisked in and out for some time among the boulders, suddenly took it into its head to scale a cliff on the left. It did this, as it seemed to me, without provocation, after a certain reckless fashion of its own. The higher it climbed, the more foolhardy it got, till the down-look grew unpleasant. Then it took to coquetting with the gulf on its right until, as I knew would happen, it lost its head completely and fell over the edge. The gap had been spanned by a few loose boards. Over the makeshift we all, one after the other, gingerly crawled, each waiting his turn, with the abyss gaping on his side, for the one in front to move on.

We had not yet recovered from the shock when we came to another place not unlike the first. Here again the path had given way, and a couple of logs had been lashed across the inner elbow of the cliff.

We crossed this by balancing ourselves for the first two steps by the stump of a bush that jutted out from a crevice in the rock; for the next two we touched the cliff with the tips of our fingers; for the last two we balanced ourselves alone.

For the time being the gods of high places had tempted us enough, for the path now descended again to the dry bed of the stream, and there for a certain distance tripped along in all soberness, giving me the chance to look about me. The precipitous sides of the mountains that shut in the narrow valley were heavily masked in forest; and for some time past, the ravines that scored their sides had been patched with snow. With each new mile of advance the patches grew larger and merged into one another, stretching toward the stream. We now began to meet snow on the path. In the mean time, from one cause and another, insensibly I fell behind. The others passed on out of sight.

The path, having lulled me into a confiding unconcern, started in seeming innocence of purpose to climb again. Its ingenuousness but prefaced a malicious surprise. For of a sudden, unmasking a corner, it presented itself in profile ahead, a narrow ledge notched in naked simplicity against the precipice. Things look better slightly veiled; besides, it is more decent, even in a path. In this case the shamelessness was earnest of the undoing. For on reaching the point in view and turning it I stood confronted by a sight sorry indeed.

The path beyond had vanished. Far below, out of sight over the edge, lay the torrent; unscalable the cliff rose above; and a line of fossil footprints, leading across the face of the precipice in the debris, alone marked where the path had been. Spectres they seemed of their former selves. Crusoe could not have been more horrified than was I.

Not to have come suggested itself as the proper solution, unfortunately an impracticable one, and being there, to turn back was inadmissible.

So I took myself in hand and started. For the first few steps I was far too much given up to considering possibilities. I thought how a single misstep would end. I could see my footing slip, feel the consciousness that I was gone, the dull thuds from point to point as what remained of me bounded beyond the visible edge down, down. . .

And after that what! How long before the porters missed me and came back in search? Would there be any trace to tell what had befallen?

And then Yejiro returning alone to Tokyo to report--lost on the Dragon peak! Each time I almost felt my foot give way as I put it down, right before left, left before right.

Then I realized that this inopportune flirting with fate must stop;that I must give over dallying with sensations, or it would soon be all over with me. I was falling a prey to the native Lorelei--for all these spots in Japan have their familiar devils--subjectively, as befits a modern man. I numbed sensibility as best I could and cared only to make each step secure. Between the Nirvana within and the Nirvana below, it was a sorry hell.

In mid-career the path made an attempt to recover, but relapsed to further footprints in the sand. At last it descended to a brook.

I knelt to drink, and on getting up again saw my pocket-handkerchief whisking merrily away down stream. I gave chase, but in vain; for though it came to the surface once or twice to tantalize me it was gone before I could seize it. So I gave over the pursuit, reflecting that, after all, it might have fared worse with me. If the Lorelei had hoped to turn my head, I was well quit of my handkerchief for her only trophy.

Shortly after this, the main stream divided into two, and the left branch, which we followed, led up to a gorge,--beyond a doubt the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet. I do not remember a landscape more ghastly. Not a tree, not a blade of grass, not even decent earth in the whole prospect. Apparently, the place had been flayed alive and sulphur had then been poured into the sore.

Thirty years before a cataclysm had occurred here. The side of one of the mountains had slid bodily into the valley. The debris, by damming up the stream, caused a freshet, which swept everything before it and killed quantities of folk lower down the valley.

The place itself has never recovered to this day.

Although the stream here was a baby to the one below, it was large enough to be impassable to the natural man. From our woodcutter friends, however, we had learned of the leavings of a bridge, upon which in due time we came, and putting the parts of it in place, we passed successfully over.

We now began to enter the snow in good earnest, incipient glacier snow, treacherously honeycombed. It made, however, more agreeable walking than the boulders. The path had again become precipitous, and kept on mounting, till of a sudden it landed us upon an amphitheatral arena, dominated by high, jagged peaks. One unbroken stretch of snow covered the plateau, and at the centre of the wintry winding-sheet a cluster of weather-beaten huts appealed pitiably to the eye. They were the buildings of the Riuzanjita hot-springs; in summer a sort of secular monastery for pilgrims to the Dragon peak.

They were tenanted now, we had been told, by a couple of watchmen.

We struck out with freer strides, while the moon, which had by this time risen high enough to overtop the wall of peaks, watched us with an ashen face, as in single file we moved across the waste of level white.