The Weeping Ash (Paget Family Saga Book 2) by Joan Aiken

Author:Joan Aiken [Aiken, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2016-10-03T21:00:00+00:00

Ten

Some twelve weeks had elapsed since Cal’s unfortunate seizure on the brink of the gorge. During that period of time he had not, mercifully, been subject to another severe attack of his malady, but the party of travelers had undergone many other trials and vicissitudes. Hazarah, the guide, from neglecting to follow the precautions advised by Colonel Cameron, had been afflicted with snow blindness; he moaned in agony all day long and was of practically no use to them in his prime capacity, since he could see virtually nothing and must have every feature of the landscape described to him before he could suggest which way to go. Miss Musson made him tea-leaf poultices until Colonel Cameron forbade this use of their precious scanty supplies, saying that it was the man’s own stupid fault and he must suffer the consequences.

For a period of many weeks, now, they had been above the snow line; the blond grass hillsides which had succeeded the forests had in their turn been succeeded by unbroken white: sometimes a slippery crust on which the travelers must proceed with the utmost caution for fear of falling and sliding hundreds of feet; sometimes, in the passes and ravines, the snow formed a soft layer, knee deep or thigh deep, through which they were obliged to flounder at a painfully slow rate of progress.

And what Colonel Cameron gloomily apprehended had come to pass: owing to their tardiness, the full severity of winter came down while they were between the passes of Lowacal and Weran, so that they were obliged to pass six weeks of somewhat acrimonious inactivity in a mountain village, before being able to continue their journey. Miss Musson, to be sure, occupied her time in advising the hill people on their ailments, and by learning how to spin goat hair on the locally made spindles; while Cal succeeded in completing his epic poem on Alexander’s invasion of India. Owing to a complete lack of writing paper, he was obliged to inscribe his verses between the lines of the few books he had carried with him, cultivating a microscopic script for the purpose. The accomplishment of this task filled him with great satisfaction, and he was now meditating his next work, undecided as to whether it should be a heroic drama on the life of Timur Leng (or Tamburlaine), a narrative saga about Genghis Khan, or a romantic elegy on the fate of the Children of Israel, some of whom, by Colonel Cameron’s account—those deported from their homeland by Nebuchadnezzar—had subsequently drifted eastward and come to rest in Kafiristan, as evidenced by the frequent use of the proper name Israel among the natives of that region. Thus absorbed in literary planning, Cal was perfectly contented.

It was far otherwise, however, with Scylla and Colonel Cameron, both of whom, for different reasons, chafed exceedingly at their enforced inaction and were impatient to be on their way.

During this time they were all, also, in some degree affected by the great height

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