Show A d club the white hell heir cy by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter VOU OU know boys and girls in most cases adventuring is 1 l thing that just happens to you all of a sudden but wendy macgowan of brooklyn N Y went at it deliberately wendy was married in india in 1933 and she and her husband started out on the strangest wedding trip you ever heard of a climb over the great himalaya mountains into little tibet the whole doggone trip was an adventure but one part of it was even more so they started out with eleven porters carrying their kits and tents rode horseback as far as they could and then continued afoot into the mountains at thirteen thousand feet they ran into snow an and d found that the pass they had intended to go through was ice bound they had covered most of the distance then and they want to turn back bach they decided ice or no ice to push on through the pass right night there their porters went on strike to go on was sheer suicide suicide they said came caine to 0 o the end of the he world but after an hour of argument dendys husband induced his gun bearer shaik khan and two veteran porters to accompany them the rest of the porters they sent back to a rest house where they could pick them up on the way back the place we had come to says wendy was called by the hindus the end of the world before us towered a huge rock wall culminating in twenty thousand foot crags that shut off the whole horizon even the large scale map we carried was virtually blank beyond this point few people had ever been there before was pure guesswork and we had not even a compass with us idiots that we were but we pretended to know all about it to instill courage into our porters we climbed for three hours up a rocky wall that led us into a ravine already our porters were beginning to grumble but it was too late in the day to turn back then one of our porters missed his footing and hurtled down over the rocks we rescued him luckily little hurt but the experience was too much for our party and we camped for the night the next morning they tried again they climbed for two hours to a spot where a waterfall cascaded down a natural rock staircase wendy and her husband elected to climb it but the porters preferred to avoid it and try a way tor for themselves dragging ourselves from rock to rock wendy says we wormed our way up we were numbed and halt half dead with the cold when we ave got to the top we had completely lost the porters jhc thc they y slid toward a great crevasse struggling ov over er a vast ice field we swept the scene constantly with our field glasses looking for them we had to decide whether to go right or left I 1 wanted to turn right 0 had we gone that way it would have been our deaths in an uninhabited valley but my husband in e ep down ile he went straight toward the jaws of the crevasse aisted on going left then we were pulled up by realizing that to get to the valley we now sought we must go down a solid wall of ice more than a hundred feet high and steeper than a ladder I 1 wont dwell on that nightmare we slid and with eyes shut gave ourselves up to providence A tiny snow hummock at the foot of the wall saved us from a yawning crevasse with shaken nerves we began to cross a slope above a precipice As my husband stepped on it his feet slid out from under him and down he went straight toward the jaws of the crevasse to my horror the whole hillside seemed to move with him he managed to wrest a foothold from an inch wide bit of rock and lay there spread eagle by sheer luck I 1 managed to reach him with the strap of my field glasses and haul him to safety by that time both of them were torn and bleeding was there was no es escape cape from this endless icy hell far below them they could see a tiny green valley but they were cut off from it by a straight wall five hundred feet high snow began to tail fail quickly turned into a raging blizzard the afternoon was wearing on they sat there in dumb dismay A night in the open in their light clothes would mean death it if they find shaik khan and the porters they were doomed then suddenly they heard a rifle shot wendy and her husband started to yell they focused their field glasses in the direction from which the shot had come and sure enough there were three tiny black dots a mile away over on the other side of the glacier wendy took off her jacket and waved it frantically whether they saw it or not they must reach them evidently they had found a path to the valley we started off at a rush says wendy but remembering mem bering our narrow escapes we slowed down and climbed high before getting on the glacier again it took us half an hour to cross that mile wide expanse of ice for to we had to detour around numerous crevasses cre but nearer and nearer we came at last we reached the porters and there was general rejoicing when the two parties met mystery of the rifle shot and now comes the part of the story that wendy says she will never understand both she and he husband congratulated shaik khan on his astuteness in firing the rifle lie he had saved their lives they told him they wanted to hold a special party for him when they got back on the other side and joined with the rest of the porters and to their amazement shaik khan became most indignant and swore lie he had never fired the rifle over there in india no servant is supposed to fire his masters rifle without permission sion its a strict rule without it the ammunition would dwindle unaccountably shaik khan good servant that he was was hurt that anyo anyone e should accuse him of doing such a thing even the porters swore that they heard no shot and when wendy examined the rifle not a cartridge was missing where did that shot come from wendy know but ive sort of got a hunch that old shaik khan risked his reputation as a servant to save the lives of his master and mistress and then want to talk about those edans of north india have some strange ideas about honor 0 service |