“To-morrow we’ll all go up, leaving Firoz and Sadiq here with the camels. We’ll take every bit of rope we can scratch together, as well as the two one hundred fifty foot lengths of Alpine rope. Alec is going to make a shot at getting up the seam by himself. He says it’s no good two men going, because the rock is so sheer that if one slipped the other would be pulled off, too, and it’s no good chucking away two lives. I wanted to go, but he insisted, and as he’s done more climbing than I, although I’ve done a lot of crag-work at home in Durham, I caved in. “If he can get up he’ll fix the rope, and you’ll follow, and then we’ll get Aryenis up. Then I and Payindah will go back to camp. Aryenis will have to get you out of the caves and through the cliffs, and then--since she says it’s in her country--you ought to find friends and be able to come back in the afternoon or else next morning with men and get the rest of us and the kit up.” We went to bed early that night, and perhaps were not quite so cheery as we had been the previous evenings. To-morrow’s dawn was going to solve a big question for us--the biggest one in the world probably--since my evening’s look at the camels somehow did not seem to fit with sixteen days’ journey back across the desert. Wrexham, Forsyth, and Payindah started first, carrying the ropes, a lantern for use in the caves, two rifles, our _poshtins_, and a bundle of food. I was deputed to look after Aryenis, and so relieved of a load. Wrexham might have saved his forethought, for she climbed better than I, and I don’t consider myself a bad hand at mountaineering. But Aryenis hung out over bare rock without a tremor, and smiled at me struggling behind. She said they had a house in the hills--by which I supposed she referred to the high mountain--and that she had climbed ever since she was a child. As we reached the foot of the arch, I caught sight of Payindah squatting on the rock, just where the slope hid the rest of the arch from us. Looking at it, I wondered how they had got their kit up, for it was pretty steep. But there were certain projections and jagged bits that gave foot- and hand-hold, and the slope of the arch made it easier. As a matter of fact, it was only the first fifty or sixty feet that was so difficult. Above that, although it did not show from below, the curve forward became more pronounced, and the rock much rougher and easier to move over without fear of slipping. The whole arch was not unlike an old flying-buttress, steepish at the foot and with a more gradual curve afterwards. “Come along,” said Aryenis, all impatience to get in sight of the caves. “Wait till they let down the rope,” I replied. I thought she would want a rope there. She looked at me as if I were daft, and before I could say another word had sprung up the rock and stood balancing on nothing ten feet over my head. “Come,” she said, and went on.