XV.

Toward the Pass.

I was waked by good news. The porters had, to a certain extent,

come round. If we would halve their burdens by doubling their number,

they would make an attempt on the pass, or, rather, they would go on

as far as they could. This was a great advance. To be already

moving implies a momentum of the mind which carries a man farther

than he means. I acquiesced at once. The recruits consisted of the

master of the house--his father, the officiator at family prayers,

had retired from the cares of this world--and a peasant of the

neighborhood. The charcoal burners were too busy with their own

affairs. From the sill, as I put on my boots, I watched with

complacence the cording of the loads, and then, with quite a

lightsome gait, followed the lengthened file out into the street.

One after the other we tramped forth past the few houses of the

place, whose people watched us go, with the buoyant tread of those

about to do great things, and so out into the open.

The path appeared very well. It trotted soberly along across a

mountain moor until it came out above the river. It then wound up

stream, clinging to the slope several hundred feet above the valley

bottom. It was precipitous in places, but within reason, and I was

just coming to consider the accounts exaggerated when it descended to

the river bed at a point where a butt of neve stuck a foot into the

shingle. The stream, which had looked a thread from above, turned

out a torrent when we stood upon its brink. The valley was nothing

but river bed, a mass of boulders of all sizes, through the midst of

which the stream plunged with deafening roar, and so deep that

fording was out of the question. A man's life would not have been

worth a rush in it.

We followed up the boulder bank in search of a more propitious spot.

Then we followed down again. Each place promised at a distance, and

baulked hope at hand. At last, in despair, we came to a halt

opposite the widest and shallowest part, and after no end of urging,

one of the porters stripped, and, armed with his pole, ventured in.

The channel lay well over to the farther side; thrice he got to its

nearer edge and thrice he turned back, as the rush of water became

too great. His life was worth too much to him, he said, not

unnaturally, for him to throw it away. Yet cross the stream we must,

or return ignominiously; for the path we had so far followed had

fallen over the cliff in front.

We improved the moments of reflection to have lunch. While we were

still discussing viae and viands, and had nearly come to the end of

both, we suddenly spied a string of men defiling slowly down through

the wide boulder desert on the other side. We all rose and hailed

them. They were so far away that at first they failed to hear us,

and even when they heard they stared vacantly about them like men who

hear they know not what. When at last they caught sight of us, we

beckoned excitedly. They consulted, apparently, and then one of them

came down to the edge of the stream. The torrent made so much noise

that our men could make themselves intelligible only in part, and

that by bawling at the top of their lungs. Through the envoy, they

invited the band to string themselves across the stream and so pass

our things over. The man shook his head. We rose to fabulous sums

and still he repeated his pantomime. It then occurred to Yejiro that

a certain place lower down might possibly be bridged, and beckoning

to the man to follow, he led the way to the spot in mind. A boulder,

two-thirds way in stream, seemed to offer a pier. He tried to shout

his idea, but the roar of the torrent, narrow though it was, drowned

his voice; so, writing on a piece of paper: "What will you take to

build us a bridge?" he wrapped the paper round a stone and flung it

over. After reading this missive, the spokesman held a consultation

with his friends and a bargain was struck. For the huge sum of two

yen (a dollar and a half), they agreed to build us a bridge, and at

once set off up the mountain side for a tree.

The men, it seemed, were a band of wood-cutters who had wintered,

as was their custom, in a hut at Kurobe, which was this side of the

Harinoki toge, and were just come out from their hibernation.

They were now on their way to Ashikura, where they belonged, to

report to their headman, obtain supplies and start to return on the

after-morrow. It was a two-days' journey either out or in.

Bridges, therefore, came of their trade. The distance across the

boulder bed was considerable, and as they toiled slowly up the face

of the opposite mountain, they looked like so many ants. Picking out

a trunk, they began to drag it down. By degrees they got it to the

river bed, and thence eventually to the edge of the stream. To lay

it was quite a feat of engineering. With some pieces of drift-wood

which they found lying about, they threw a span to the big boulder,

and from the boulder managed to get the trunk across. Then, with

rope which they carried at their girdles, they lashed the whole

together until they had patched up a very workmanlike affair.

We trod across in triumph. With praiseworthy care lest it should

be swept away they then took the thing all down again.

Such valuable people were not idly to be parted with. Here was a

rare chance to get guides. When, however, we approached them on the

point, they all proved so conscientious about going home first, that

the attempt failed. But they gave us some important information on

the state of the streams ahead and the means of crossing them, and we

separated with much mutual good-will.

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.