“Verdammt!  Verdammt!” he muttered.

The match burned out, and for a while he listened to the wind wailing about the hut, plucking at the door and the shutters of the window.  He climbed down from the shelf with a rustle of straw, walked lightly for a moment or two about the hut, and then pulled open the door quickly.  As quickly he shut it again.

From the shelf Linforth spoke: 

“It is bad, Peter?”

“It is impossible,” replied Peter in English with a strong German accent.  For the last three years he and his brother had acted as guides to the same two men who were now in the Meije hut.  “We are a strong party, but it is impossible.  Before I could walk a yard from the door, I would have to lend a lantern.  And it is after four o’clock!  The water is frozen in the pail, and I have never known that before in August.”

“Very well,” said Linforth, turning over in his blankets.  It was warm among the blankets and the straw, and he spoke with contentment.  Later in the day he might rail against the weather.  But for the moment he was very clear that there were worse things in the world than to lie snug and hear the wind tearing about the cliffs and know that there was no chance of facing it.

“We will not go back to La Berarde,” he said.  “The storm may clear.  We will wait in the hut until tomorrow.”

And from a third figure on the shelf there came in guttural English: 

“Yes, yes.  Of course.”

The fourth man had not wakened from his sleep, and it was not until he was shaken by the shoulder at ten o’clock in the morning that he sat up and rubbed his eyes.

The fourth man was Shere Ali.

“Get up and come outside,” said Linforth.

Ten years had passed since Shere Ali had taken his long walk from Kohara up the valley in the drawing-room of his house-master at Eton.  And those ten years had had their due effect.  He betrayed his race nowadays by little more than his colour, a certain high-pitched intonation of his voice and an extraordinary skill in the game of polo.  There had been a time of revolt against discipline, of inability to understand the points of view of his masters and their companions, and of difficulty to discover much sense in their institutions.

It is to be remembered that he came from the hill-country, not from the plains of India.  That honour was a principle, not a matter of circumstance, and that treachery was in itself disgraceful, whether it was profitable or not—­here were hard sayings for a native of Chiltistan.  He could look back upon the day when he had thought a public-house with a great gilt sign or the picture of an animal over the door a temple for some particular sect of worshippers.

“And, indeed, you are far from wrong,” his tutor had replied to him.  “But since we do not worship at that fiery shrine such holy places are forbidden us.”