244 A Sportswoman in India 



long after the rest of the world is shrouded in the 

 greys of twilight, the lonely peak is stained in crimson 

 glory. 



The whole mountain is haunted by pixies, and no 

 native shikari will venture into its nullahs. They 

 call the glacier, or the ice peak on its summit, 

 " Shal-batte-kot" and a shikari is said to have once 

 climbed up to it, and to have found therein countless 

 snakes. If any man doubts this, they add, let him 

 go there and bring down word, that all may know 

 the truth. 



But those heights, which defied even Mummery and 

 which are now his grave, keep their secret. We could 

 see the great shoulder of the mountain, up which it 

 was his intention to work his way, and the gigantic 

 glacier down its south-west front ; but I suppose we 

 must have been fifty miles from it. I have seen the 

 sun glinting on its ice-fields at a distance of a hundred 

 miles in a bee-line. 



No descriptions give any idea of its beauty. " In 

 a hundred ages of the good, I could not tell the 

 glories of Nanga Parbat. As the dew is dried up by 

 the morning sun, so are the sins of mankind by the 

 sight of Nanga Parbat." 



For a long time we gazed. Uplifted above love 

 and hate and storms of passion, calm amidst the eternal 

 silences and unknown of man, bathed in living blue, 

 a great peace rested on the sad and lonely peak on 

 that bright day. I said " Good-bye." I have never 

 seen it again. 



