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Chapter seven. Reconnaissance |
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devastation caused by hail storm |
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It was at least, as I saw when I got outside, still standing. A crowing and hysterical cook met me just short of the door. He stood there, flapping like a goose; I had to push past him to get in. Ramgakpa was sitting on the bamboo bench, looking strained but calm. The floor was streaming with melting ice, and the hut had been blown fifteen degrees from the upright; but there was no serious damage. I went out again and looked round. The ground at the back of the house was thick with a mat of white hailstones which had bounced from the back wall, the rear entrance had a two-foot drift in it, and a small grass hut left over from the old camp had been blown to ribbons. Then I turned and looked back the way the storm had come. |
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(61) There had been little damage in the lee of the Barail, but the exposed north side of our spur had been devastated. I had never seen anything like it. There was nothing left of the scrub jungle but a stripped, ripped, barren expanse of naked twigs - every leaf had been torn off in a belt a mile wide. Banana-trees were battered as though machine-gunned, their stems pitted and pulped; the bark was scarred and splintered even on the big timber. As I stood, Masang and my newly-hired caretaker came running up, shouting to know if we were safe. It then seemed that, blasted though we had been, we had still escaped more lightly than the village. Hail beat so violently into the morungs that the bucks had to shelter under the benches, and even there were hurt; and every pig, dog, goat and fowl caught in the open had been killed outright. |
