“Fine,” said the Deacon. “So I’ll choose you, you, you, you, you, and you…” He pointed out six of the Sherpas, including both Nawang Bura and Semchumbi. “You’ll come down to Camp Two with us, help us break down some tents, and haul them back up here to Camp Three.”
When Pasang interpreted the command and the men started shaking their heads, the Deacon snapped to the Sherpa doctor, “Tell them it’s not a request, damn it. It’s an order. If they don’t get at least three more tents up here tonight, some of these men will be dead by morning. Tell those six that we sahibs and Pasang will stay with them at Camp Two until they pack up at least four more tents to haul up here. We’ll wait until they get safely back on the glacier before the five of us head down to check out Base Camp. And they can have my pistol to bring back up to Camp Three.”
The six men sighed and hung their heads, but a couple of them brightened at the idea of getting the large Webley Mark VI pistol. Semchumbi said something which Reggie translated as “The cook says that if it is their destiny to die by the hands of yeti on Cho-mo-lung-ma, so be it.”
The Deacon only grunted. “Tell those six to get their rucksacks. And also tell them to get a bloody move on.”
Reggie leaned close to the Deacon and half-whispered, “Is it really wise to give up the only firearm we have?”
“I’m not giving it up,” said the Deacon. “I’m only lending it to Semchumbi until we return from Base Camp. There are fourteen Sherpas here who need protection. All five of us at least will have Very pistols.”
In ten more minutes we were ready. The Deacon made a small ceremony of handing his Webley revolver to Semchumbi and then set his heavy flare gun—loaded with a flare cartridge—in the large pocket of his Shackleton anorak. After a moment’s hesitation, Reggie, Pasang, Jean-Claude, and I took out our smaller Very pistols, loaded them with 12-gauge cartridges—I chose the white flare, which left me only one spare cartridge, the red one—and put the pathetic little flare pistols in our outer pockets.
“Do we want to rope up for the glacier?” asked Jean-Claude.
The Deacon thought a minute and then said, “I think not. I’ll lead with you alongside me to point out crevasses that may have been covered by last night’s snow. Jake, you help herd the six Sherpas in a tight pack, single file behind Jean-Claude and me. Where we step, they step. Reggie and Dr. Pasang, you please bring up the rear.”
To Semchumbi he said, “Tie the lanyard of my pistol to your wrist—that’s right—and don’t hold it by its handgrip unless you intend to shoot someone. There’s no safety for it, of course.”
Semchumbi handled the heavy gun as if it were a cobra, but it seemed to put some confidence back into the other five Sherpas and even in those who were to remain behind.
Everyone nodded. We left Camp III and started up onto and then down the long, dangerous glacier toward Camp II.
4.
It was almost dusk when we reached Base Camp.
Everything had taken too long—shepherding the six frightened Sherpas down the glacier to Camp II at 19,800 feet, checking out that the camp hadn’t been harmed and didn’t seem to be inhabited by yetis or mountain demons, helping the Sherpas break camp and then reload the tents, poles, and stakes—one big Whymper tent bound for Camp III and three smaller Meades—and finally convincing the anxious Sherpas that they’d be safe on the five-mile carry between Camps II and III. In the end, only Semchumbi’s possession of the heavy Webley pistol persuaded them to head back up the glacier; their friends and relations at Camp III would be waiting for their protection with that gun.
At Camp II the Deacon asked Nawang Bura to go down to Base Camp with us since he was the only surviving Sherpa who claimed to have seen the yeti attack. Before leaving for Camp I and Base Camp, the six of us used the big Primus in the mess tent at Camp II to cook up a hearty lunch of cocoa—hotter than anything the five of us had drunk in days—as well as pea soup, biscuits, ham, cheese, and some fresh chocolate bars for dessert.
After the mid-afternoon meal, I was sure that all of us wanted to crawl into one of the few remaining tents at Camp II and sleep around the clock. But we couldn’t.
It was two and a half miles from Camp II down to Camp I at only 17,800 feet—relatively easy going when we’d formerly hiked up and down the bamboo-wand-marked path in the center of the Trough, but this Tuesday we stayed away from the usual trail and took twice as long descending on a rough lateral moraine that ran above the Trough and abutted the glacier itself. The high moraine route across larger stones was much harder than the usual walk down the Trough, but we were anxious not to blunder into whatever might be waiting for us at Camp I or coming up from that camp. We wanted to see them before they saw us.
Nothing and no one unusual waited for us at Camp I. The tents were empty, extra oxygen rigs and food stores cached right where they’d been when we’d passed this way days ago heading up to the North Col. We studied the few snowfields around Camp I, attempting to find strange boot prints—or, I admitted only to myself, the gigantic footstep imprints of a yeti—but other than the total absence of the few Sherpas who’d been permanently stationed there, there was nothing unusual to see at our first camp above Base Camp. I admit that after days and nights at real altitude, the air at 17,800 feet felt thick enough to swim in.
It was a final three miles from Camp I down to Base Camp at a mere 16,500 feet, and once again we stayed off the beaten trail—which prolonged both the descent and my anxiety. By the time we reached a moraine ridge that looked out and across the next lower ridge to Base Camp itself, we were all, save for Nawang Bura, carrying Very pistols in our gloved or bare hands. The Deacon’s much larger Very pistol looked gigantic compared to the smaller German flare pistols carried by J.C., Reggie, Pasang, and me. Nawang had brought a large carving knife with him from Camp II.
Personally, I wished the Deacon had kept the damned revolver.
We found a place where we could all lie on our bellies along the rocky ridge that looked over the final moraine ridge between us and Base Camp, and we studied the camp through our binoculars.
“Douce Mère de Dieu,” whispered Jean-Claude.
I couldn’t speak. I just let my jaw sag and worked hard at keeping the field glasses from shaking in my hands.
There were bodies spread all around Base Camp. Every tent was torn and collapsed, including the large Whymper mess and infirmary tents, and even the canvas tarps had been ripped off the sanga-walled low stone enclosures.
The bodies were sprawled seemingly at random, and none of them looked intact. Here there was a decapitated torso, there a body with its head and limbs intact but with all of its internal organs ripped out; far out on the plain beyond the point where the glacial stream turned into a shallow river, vultures circled and swooped over two more dead bodies. We could tell through the glasses that those two farthest-flung corpses were dressed in Sherpa clothing, but we could make no identification—especially since the low clouds kept moving along the ground like a thick fog, obscuring the bodies from our view and then suddenly revealing them again in all their gore and horror. The amount of blood at Base Camp was…absurd was the only word that came to mind at the time.
So we couldn’t make out anyone’s identity in the camp area through the binoculars, only gaze at the ungainly attitudes of death, each torn body, lopped-off limb, and decapitated head in its own pool of blood.