For we knew that those lives were charmed.

We could not see or hear, yet we were led.

Clinging to the yak, we struggled downward and homewards, till at length out of the turmoil and the gloom its instinct brought us unharmed to the door of the monastery, where the old abbot embraced us in his joy, and the monks put up prayers of thanks.
For they were sure that we must be dead.

Through such a storm, they said, no man had ever lived before.
It was still mid-winter, and oh! the awful weariness of those months of waiting.

In our hands was the key, yonder amongst those mountains lay the door, but not yet might we set that key within its lock.