About fifty yards away Zaro had his snake. His stick was firmly about the writhing body a couple of inches behind the head and Zaro was sweating with the exertion of holding it there. We could not judge the size of the creature because all but about six inches of it was hidden in a hole in the sand and the wriggling power of the concealed length was slowly inching the stick back towards the hole. We were tired, weak, slow and clumsy and we ran around and got in one another’s way in an effort to help Zaro. Then Paluchowicz jabbed his stick a couple of inches behind Zaro’s. I pulled a thong from about my waist, slipped a loop about the snake against the hole and heaved. But there was too much snake inside and too little outside. It was stalemate.
Kolemenos settled the issue. The bright blade of his axe swished down and separated the snake’s head from its body. The still wriggling length was hauled into the sunlight. The thing was nearly four feet long. It was as thick as a man’s wrist, black above, with a creamy-brown belly lightening to a dull cream-white at the throat.
Zaro struck a pose. ‘There’s your dinner, boys.’
The thing still twitched as we carried it back to the fire. We laid it on my sack and, under the direction of the American, I started to skin it. The beginning of the operation was tricky. Smith said the skin could be peeled off entire but I could get no grip at the neck. Eventually I slit the skin a few inches down and with difficulty started to part the snake from its tight sheath. I had never seen an unclothed snake before. The flesh was whitish at first, but in the sun it turned a little darker while we waited for the fire to bring the flat stone to the right heat. We cut the body lengthwise and cleaned it out.
There was still a little reflex of life left as we curled the meat up on the stone over the fire. It sizzled pleasantly. Fat trickled down off the stone and made the fire spit. We streamed sweat as we sat around the fire. We could not take our eyes off the snake. With our sticks we lifted the stone off, turned the meat and put it back for the final stage of grilling, When we thought it was ready to eat we lifted it, stone and all, on to the sand to cool a little.
It lay eventually on my sack a yard or two away from the dying fire. We squatted round it but nobody seemed in a hurry to start carving it up. We looked at one another. Kolemenos spoke. ‘I am bloody hungry.’ He reached forward. We all went for it at the same time. Paluchowicz, the man without teeth, stretched his hand out to me for the knife. We ate. It was not long before the snake was reduced to a skeleton. The flesh was close- packed and filling. I had thought the taste might be powerful, even noxious. It was in fact mild, almost tasteless. It had no odour. I was faintly reminded of boiled, unseasoned fish.
‘I wish I had thought of snakes earlier,’ said Mister Smith.
We drank some more of the muddy water. We watched the sun drop from its zenith. We knew that soon we must move again, and we were reluctant to go, to leave this precious ribbon of moisture and launch out again into the unknown, heat-baked country ahead. Sprawled out there, my stomach rumbling as it contended with its barbaric new meal, I longed for a smoke. We still had newspaper but the tobacco had long gone.
No one wanted to bring up the subject of when we should leave, so we talked about other things. For the first time we exchanged ideas freely about Kristina and Makowski. Why should death have overtaken them and left the rest of us still with the strength to carry on? There was no answer to this question, but we mulled it over. We talked of them with sadness and affection. It was, I suppose, an act of remembrance for two absent friends. And it took some of the heavy load of their great loss from us.
I found myself looking at the five of them, taking stock of them, trying to assess our chances. We were all sick men. Kolemenos had his moccasins off and I could see the inflamed raw patches where blisters had formed on punctured blisters, and I knew he was no worse off in this respect than any other of us. All our faces were so disfigured that our nearest relatives would have had difficulty in recognizing us. Lips were grotesquely swollen and deeply fissured. Cheeks were sunk in. Brows overhung red-rimmed eyes which seemed to have fallen back in their sockets. We were in an advanced state of scurvy. Only the toothless Paluchowicz escaped the discomfort of teeth rocking loose in sore gums. Already Kolemenos had pulled two aching teeth out between finger and thumb for Marchinkovas and he was to practise his primitive dentistry several times more in the future for others of the party.
Lice, scurvy and the sun had played havoc with our skin. The lice had multiplied with the filthy prolificacy of their kind and swarmed about us. They fed and grew to an obscenely large size. We scratched and scratched at our intolerably irritated bodies until we broke the skin and then our sweat-soaked clothes and untended dirty finger-nails caused the tiny cuts to become septic. This unclean affliction, superficial though it was, was a constant source of depression and misery. I killed the lice when I caught them with savage joy. They were pre-eminently the symbol of our fugitive degradation.
In the end no one took the initiative over our departure. There came a time when Kolemenos and Zaro stood up together. We all rose. We adjusted the wire loops about our necks, picked up our sacks. Into my sack went the flat cooking stone. The American carefully stowed away the little pile of fuel. Grimacing, Kolemenos pulled on his moccasins. We drank a little more water. And in the late afternoon we started off.
Many miles we walked that day, until the light of day faded out and until the stars came out in a purple-black sky. We slept huddled close together and were awake before dawn to start again.
Half-an-hour later Paluchowicz stopped with a groan, clutching his belly, doubled up. In the next hour we were all seized with the most violent, griping pains. All of us were assailed with diarrhoea of an intensity that left us weak and groaning. With the frequent stops we could not have covered more than five miles by late afternoon, when the attacks began to subside.
What had caused it — the snake-meat or the water? We asked one another this question.
Said Mister Smith, ‘It might well have been the dirty water. But most probably it arises simply from the fact that our empty stomachs are reacting against the sudden load of food and water.’
‘There’s one good way to find out,’ Kolemenos said. ‘We’ll eat some more snake. I am still hungry.’
Marchinkovas shrugged his shoulders. ‘It will be snakes or nothing.’
Paluchowicz gasped with another spasm of stomach ache.
‘May God help us,’ he said, fervently.
18.
UNQUESTIONABLY the snakes of the Gobi saved us from death. We caught two within minutes of each other the next day. One was like the common European grass snake, the other arrayed in the brilliance of a silver-grey skin marked down the back with a dull red broad stripe flanked closely parallel with two thin lines of the same colour. Profiting by the experience of my difficulty in skinning the first specimen, we clubbed these two to death and held the heads in Zaro’s forked stick while I stripped off the skins.
We did not like these two coloured snakes as much as we had the first capture. They were thinner-bodied and we imagined they tasted less pleasantly. I think the colours affected our judgment. The big black was not unlike a conger eel in appearance and in the texture of the flesh. Thereafter we sought specially for this species and counted ourselves lucky when we found one.
The clear fat which oozed out over the heat of the fire we used as a balm for our lips, our sore eyes and our feet and the soothing effect lasted for hours.
Two days after leaving the creek we had visitors. First there wheeled lazily over us half-a-dozen ravens. They stayed with us throughout the morning and then made a leisurely departure as we erected our shelter at midday. We were wondering what had prompted their departure when two great shadows skimmed along the sand. We looked up and saw not twenty feet above a pair of magnificent, long-necked eagles, their plumage looking black against the sun. They passed over us several times and then alighted on the top of a sandy hillock twenty yards away and looked down on us. The spread of wings as they came in to land was enormous.
‘What do you think
The American considered. ‘It’s fairly obvious, I think, that they saw the ravens and came to investigate the prospects of food.’
Zaro said, ‘Well, they’re not having
‘Don’t worry,’ I assured him. ‘They won’t attack us.’
Zaro stood up and shouted at the great birds. He made motions of throwing. The pair disdained to notice his antics. He scratched away at the sand and produced a couple of pebbles. He aimed carefully and threw. The stone
