The Whole Thing Was Over In Less Than Ten Seconds.
The
Shagird might, indeed, have saved the fall had he kept his head
instead of losing it.
All he could do was, with a loud voice and
outstretched arms, to invoke the assistance of "Allah!" We were not
long in suspense. Slowly, inch by inch, the poor brute lost his hold
of the slippery ground, and disappeared, with a shrill neigh of
terror, from sight. For two or three seconds we heard him striking
here and there against a jutting rock or shrub, till, with a final
thud, he landed on a small plateau of deep snow-drifts at least
three hundred feet below. Here he lay motionless and apparently
dead, while we could see through our glasses a thin stream of
crimson flow from under him, gradually staining the white snow
around.
[Illustration: CROSSING THE KHADZAN]
A cat is popularly supposed to have nine lives. After my experience
of the Persian post-horse, I shall never believe that that rough and
ill-shaped but useful animal has less than a dozen. The fall I
have described would assuredly have killed a horse of any other
nationality, if I may use the word. It seemed, on the contrary, to
have a tonic and exhilarating effect on this Patchinar pony. Before we
could reach him (a work of considerable difficulty and some risk) he
had risen to his feet, given himself a good shake, and was nibbling
away at a bit of gorse that peeped through the snow on which he had
fallen. A deep cut on the shoulder was his only injury, and, curiously
enough, our portmanteaus, with the exception of a broken strap, were
unharmed. There was, luckily, nothing breakable in either.
Kharzan, a miserable village under snow for six months of the year,
was reached without further mishap. There is no post-house, and the
caravanserai was crowded with caravans. Before sundown, however, we
were comfortably installed in the house of the head-man of the place,
who spread carpets of soft texture and quaint design in our honour,
regaled us with an excellent "pilaff," and produced a flask of Persian
wine. The latter would hardly have passed muster in Europe. The cork
consisted of a plug of cotton-wool plastered with clay; the contents
were of a muddy-brown colour. "It is pure Hamadan," said our host with
pride, as he placed the bottle before us. "Perhaps the sahib did not
know that our country is famous for its wines." It was not altogether
unpalatable, something like light but rather sweet hock; very
different, however, in its effects to that innocent beverage, and one
could not drink much with impunity. Its cheapness surprised me:
one shilling a quart bottle. That, at least, is the price our host
charged - probably more than half again its real value.
The winegrowers of Hamadan have many difficulties to contend with;
among others, the severe cold. In winter the wine is kept in huge
jars, containing six or seven hundred bottles. These are buried in
the ground, their necks being surrounded by hot beds of fermenting
horse-dung, to keep the wine from freezing. But even this plan
sometimes fails, and it has to be chopped out in solid blocks and
melted for drinking.
Kharzan has a population of about a thousand inhabitants. It was here
that Baker Pasha was brought some years ago in a dying condition,
after being caught in a wind-storm on the Kharzan Pass, and lay for
three days in the house we were lodging at. Our old friend showed us a
clasp-knife presented him by the colonel, who on that occasion nearly
lost both his feet from frost-bite. Captains Gill and Clayton, [A] of
the Royal Engineers and Ninth Lancers, were with him, but escaped
unharmed.
Stiff and worn out with the events of the day, we soon stretched
ourselves in front of the blazing fire in anticipation of a good
night's rest; but sleep was not for us. In the next room were a party
of Persian merchants from Astrakhan on their way to Bagdad _via_
Teheran, who had been prisoners here for five days, and were now
carousing on the strength of getting away on the morrow. A woman was
with them - a brazen-faced, shrill-voiced Armenian, who made more noise
than all the rest put together. Singing, dancing, quarrelling, and
drinking went on without intermission till long past midnight, our
neighbours raising such a din that the good people of Kharzan, a
quarter of a mile away, must have turned uneasily in their slumbers,
and wondered whether an army of fiends had not broken loose. Towards 1
a.m. the noise ceased, and we were just dropping to sleep, when, at
about half-past two in the morning, our drunken friends, headed by the
lady, burst into our apartment, with the information, in bad Russian,
that a gang of fifty men sent that morning to clear a path through
the deep snow had just returned, and the road to Mazreh was now
practicable. The caravans would be starting in an hour, they
added. "And you'd better travel with them," joined in the lady,
contemptuously, "or you will be sure to get into trouble by
yourselves." A reply more forcible than polite from Gerome then
cleared the apartment; and, rekindling the now expiring embers, we
prepared for the road.
We set out at dawn for the gate of the village, where the caravans
were to assemble. It was still freezing hard, and the narrow streets
like sheets of solid ice, so that our horses kept their legs with
difficulty. We must have numbered fifty or sixty camels, and as many
mules and horses, all heavily laden.
Daybreak disclosed a weird, beautiful scene: a sea of snow, over which
the rising sun threw countless effects of light and colour, from the
cold slate grey immediately around us, gradually lightening to the
faintest tints of rose and gold on the eastern horizon, where stars
were paling in a cloudless sky.
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