Читать книгу Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 15

They had staggered into Hukutu more dead than alive, but they left it fit, strong and fat, with four Tibetan guides and a little train of yaks. Only the Professor was not well: after having survived the bitter days above the precipice, the hunger and the wicked cold, he came down with dysentery after two days in the village. All of them had it, more or less, except Chingiz, who was salted from birth against such ills, but all of them, save the Professor, got over it quite soon: he remained weak, thin and pale, and when they left he rode the only pony that the place could provide. Ross’s fever yielded to the vile grey brew that the old woman who ruled the village forced down his throat, and his sight came back. By the time they left he was as strong and formidable as ever.

Several times on the way over the mountains Sullivan had cursed the weight of gold in his money-belt; he had even been tempted to throw it away as an encumbrance that might lose him his life; but now he was glad of it. A handful of the mixed coins – sovereigns, twenty-dollar pieces, louis d’or and even gold mohurs – bought all that the village could afford to sell. It was not much, for the Tibetans there had little more than their bare subsistence, but there was food and warmer clothing – Tibetan furs and mountain boots – as well as yaks and the solitary pony, which would suffice to carry them westwards to Tanglha-Tso, where they could buy more provisions.

They set out as soon as the Professor could ride, for they had three high passes to cross before they reached Tanglha-Tso, and an unknown number beyond that point to the distant pass that would let them down to the Mongols’ land beyond the Takla Makan. Every day counted, for it was already harvest-time, and soon the early Tibetan winter would come on and close the passes; it would close them with impassable walls of snow, and guard them with the howling tempests of wind that no man could survive. Go they must, and quickly, for not only might the passes close, but if they lingered there would be trouble: they knew very well that Tibet was a forbidden land, and if once the authorities, knowing of their presence, caught up with them, there was no telling what would happen. The best that they could hope for was interminable delay. They pressed on, therefore, and although they were kept to no greater speed than the mild walking pace of the yaks, who would not and could not be hurried, yet they covered a surprising distance in their first week.

They had been lucky in finding two men in Hukutu who had enough Mongol to understand something of what they said, and one of them, Ngandze, was a widely travelled, intelligent man. He knew the country intimately as far as Tanglha-Tso, and he spent hours with Sullivan drawing a map: they chose their route with great care to avoid the bigger lamaseries, and in one place they decided on a detour of no less than twenty miles over bad country to avoid a monastery of the militant Red-Hat lamas, for an encounter with them would be dangerous to a high degree.

The days went by peacefully, one after another: they travelled through long, empty valleys, with plenty of fuel and game, roe-deer, maral, thars and a few birds like white quail. Their shooting did not please the Tibetans, who were devout Buddhists, and killed nothing whatsoever; but this did not prevent them from coming, one by one, around the pot when Li Han was cooking one of his excellent stews.

Once they were on the march the Professor recovered his health, and he plunged with characteristic enthusiasm into the compiling of a list of Tibetan words: he was still weak, and now Li Han carried all the jade sewn into his padded clothes or into a long cummerbund which he wrapped about his middle and never took off – an inner sash that gave him the girth of a mandarin and made him waddle like a duck – but the Professor stated that he felt very like a war-horse, or at least like a convalescent war-horse; and a little while after the others had been trying to persuade him to ride and not to walk so much, with his own hands he shot a snow-leopard. They had risen for days to the last high pass before Tanglha-Tso, and they were just descending again towards the snow-line when a thar dashed across their path, leaping madly over the rocks: immediately behind it came a snow-leopard, gaining on it fast in huge bounds. The Professor, who was in front, whipped up his rifle and fired. The snow-leopard seemed to check in mid-air. It fell awkwardly on its side, staining the snow with scarlet blood. It gave a great coughing roar and came straight for them. The Professor was fumbling at his spectacles: he had knocked them sideways as he fired, and the others could not shoot without hitting him. But five yards from the Professor’s maddened pony the leopard fell, rolled, twitched and lay still. Chingiz, racing through the line of plunging, panicking yaks, put a bullet between its eyes for good measure, but the great beast was already dead. Chingiz ran forward to take its whiskers for a charm, and the others gathered round it. Lying there on the snow it looked unbelievably large, with its thick yellowish fur and its long, deep-furred tail.

‘Big, big, big,’ cried Ngandze in admiration, stretching out his hands: he bent, cut off an ear and ate it with every appearance of appetite.

‘What an extraordinarily bold creature,’ said the Professor, who was still a little flustered.

‘They are very bold,’ said Sullivan. ‘I suppose it is because so few of them are killed.’

‘Professor,’ murmured Ross in his ear, ‘you were not aiming at the thar, were you?’

‘I cannot deny it,’ replied the Professor, with a blush, ‘but they were very close together, you know, and I assure you that I did fire on purpose.’

Down they went, below the snow-line again and to the high pastures where the yaks were grazing by the small summer settlements of the herdsmen, down to the racing, ice-cold river and the hardy trees, and after three days more they saw the village of Tanglha-Tso, dominated by its high, white-walled monastery. It looked like a morning’s ride, but in that high, clear air they knew very well by now that distances were deceptive, and it did not surprise them to find that three days elapsed before they reached the little, dirty, huddled village.

This was the first inhabited lamasery that Derrick had seen, and he asked his uncle whether he could go up and look into it: he also asked whether it was not dangerous for them to stay there.

‘Didn’t you say, Uncle, that we were going to avoid lamaseries?’ he asked finally.

‘If I had asked my Uncle Paddy half so many questions,’ said Sullivan, ‘he would have kicked me from Connaught to the city of Cork, and if I had asked my Uncle Murtagh – but I am a quiet, civil-tempered man and mild to a fault. In the first place, if we were to go through Tibet without passing any villages with monasteries, we would have to have wings and feed on the air, like birds of Paradise. In the second place, this is not a Red-Hat monastery: it is a small place, of no great importance, and from what I hear the abbot is a good, gentle creature. And in the third place, if I catch you peering about that lamasery, I’ll have the hide off you with a rope’s end. We must not offend their religious ideas in any way at all, and until you know their habits there’s no telling what may upset them. The Professor is going up with the Tibetans to pay his respects: he doesn’t want the whole ship’s company hanging around and gaping like a lot of stuck pigs.’

In the evening the Professor came back. ‘I cannot tell you how charmed I am with this place,’ he said. ‘Nothing could have exceeded the friendliness of my reception. The abbot was delighted with our little offering, and he sends you each a scarf. It was extraordinarily fortunate that we arrived today, or I should have been deprived of the pleasure of his conversation: he and all his monks are to go on a pilgrimage to the Gompa Potala early tomorrow morning.’

‘Did you say conversation, Professor?’ asked Ross. ‘You must have done very well with your Tibetan vocabulary.’

‘That was the most delightful thing about it: the abbot speaks Chinese. He spent years in Peking with the Teshoo Lama many years ago – he is an old man – and he is more fluent than I am myself. He told me a great many fascinating things, and he was kind enough to say that he bitterly regretted the necessity for his journey tomorrow. He is writing a book on the ceremonies peculiar to this part of Tibet, and he gave me a detailed account of the progress of his manuscript.’

‘Did he tell you anything about our route?’ asked Sullivan.

‘Yes. But first I must give you a glimpse of the worthy abbot’s character. He astonished me by taking me for a Chinese.’

‘It is hardly so very astonishing, Professor,’ said Sullivan. ‘With your tinted glasses and in your present robes, I think you could very well pass for a Chinese of the taller kind, particularly among people who are not accustomed to Europeans.’

‘Well, be that as it may, my command of the language is hardly that of a native of the country, and when I attempted to disabuse him, he would not listen to me. With what I at first took for an unexpected discourtesy he interrupted me, and repeated emphatically that I had come from China. I agreed, but before I could go on, he said, “For all practical purposes, those who come from China are Chinese.” He then added that it would be a great pity if he or his monks were to spread it abroad that foreigners had illegally come into the land and were travelling about it without permission; whereas if it were known that a Chinese scholar was moving from point to point in a peaceable manner, no notice would be taken: the Chinese, you know, have a vague suzerainty over Tibet. I understood his meaning in time, and I thought it not improper to acquiesce in the innocent deception. I am afraid that I went so far as to describe you all as barbarian porters for whose almost-human good behaviour I could vouch. “Oh, as for the outlandish slaves,” says he, “nobody will take any notice of them, so long as you govern them strictly.”’

‘Almost human, sir?’ said Derrick.

‘I thought it necessary to flatter you, my boy,’ said the Professor kindly, ‘and seeing that I had already committed myself to deception, I felt that I might as well go on to the limit of credibility.’

‘I hope,’ said Sullivan gravely, ‘that it has not strained the abbot’s power of belief beyond all repair. But we must comfort ourselves with the reflection that he has never seen Derrick. But tell me, Professor, what did he say about our route?’

‘He was very encouraging, except for one matter; and he gave me a highly detailed map. Here it is …’ The Professor felt in his robes. ‘Bless me,’ he exclaimed after a minute, ‘I must have left it behind.’

‘Perhaps sitting upon?’ suggested Li Han deferentially.

‘Why, how very extraordinary,’ said the Professor, rising, ‘so I was. Well, here we are, you see, just by the mouth of this benign scarlet dragon. It is not, perhaps, quite as clear as your charts, but he assured me that it is accurate. No, one should hold the north to the right, thus.’ They leant over the map: it was beautifully decorated with phoenixes, dragons of different colours, and fiends, and at first it conveyed very little; but when they got used to the curious shifting scale and the various symbols, it made thoroughly good sense.

‘This is an absolute treasure,’ said Sullivan, with keen approval. ‘But what was the discouraging point he spoke about?’

‘The Red-Hats,’ replied the Professor. ‘He advised us at all costs to avoid their villages, and he has marked all the places where they are likely to be met – here, you see, and here. But there are two places where we cannot avoid them without a very long detour, and a third where it is impossible to get by without climbing a ridge that must, from his description, closely resemble the precipice that we all remember so well – only this one is higher, and the entirety of it is perpetually coated with ice. He suggested that we should so arrange our journey that we pass by this place at night by the light of the moon.’

‘That is a very sensible idea,’ said Ross. ‘I think your abbot must be a decent sort of a body.’

‘He is the most swollen of guys, I assure you,’ said the Professor. ‘It is the world’s pity that we cannot stay here a week – that is, if he were staying too – in order to become better acquainted. But, of course, we must not forget that the highest passes, here and here on the map, and here, are likely to close very early. The abbot kindly said that he would continually pray for a late winter for us.’

‘But what about this valley?’ said Sullivan, who had been studying the map intently. ‘It is surely far more direct, and it cuts off the worst Red-Hat place.’

‘Oh, yes. I had meant to ask him about that. He has, as you see, drawn his pen across the end of it – the map is very old, by the way, and he has made several alterations and additions to it here and there – and I was just about to ask him why he did so when we were interrupted.’

‘I suppose it must be blocked by an impassible ice-fall, or something of that nature,’ said Sullivan. ‘Yet it might be worth exploring: it is so very much more direct.’

He returned to this subject in the morning. ‘Do you think, Professor,’ he said, ‘that you could send a note up to the abbot asking him about that valley?’

‘But I am afraid that he is already gone. Did you not hear the horns and the gongs at the first light this morning?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t very well avoid hearing them. But Li Han could ride after him. They won’t be going very fast. And that would have the advantage of giving the other monks the impression that this is really a Chinese affair – he could be the overseer of the barbarian slaves.’

‘Of course. We could send a note. I had not thought of that. Now wait a moment: how had I better phrase it?’

Li Han hurried after the lamas with the note and a supplementary present, and before noon he came back with the answer.

‘What does he say?’ asked Sullivan eagerly.

‘Well,’ said the Professor, looking thoughtfully at the paper. ‘I am by no means sure. I am very much afraid that the dear man’s knowledge of Chinese is largely confined to the spoken language. As you know, one can speak Chinese perfectly without being able to write a single word or read one solitary character – that is the case with Derrick, for example, and the vast mass of the Chinese peasantry. Indeed, it is said that the proportion of illiteracy –’

‘But the message, Professor?’ urged Sullivan gently.

‘Yes. The message. Let us be business-like. Now the beginning is clear enough – a conventional greeting – and so is the end, which is a conventional blessing. But the middle contains a number of unrelated characters of which I can make out this one, which means impossible, and this, which resembles the character for “kwei” – that is, “devils or fiends”. Or perhaps I should say malignant demons. Then we have “pu hsing”, which means “it would not work” or, to use a colloquialism, “no go.” Then the character for impossible, with an emphatic reduplication.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Sullivan, ‘the general meaning is clear enough. It does not very much matter: now that we know exactly where the Red-Hats are, I dare say that by using a little common sense we shall be able to get by them.’

They had been very pleased with Tanglha-Tso when they reached it, but when, at the end of many days they were still there, they began to detest the place. They were in a fever to get on: every day counted, and yet they could not get away. Every day there were excuses – the yaks were still on the summer pastures far away, the barley had not yet been threshed, they could not yet spare any men for guides. They were conscious of sour looks as they walked about the village, and they began to find that their few words of Tibetan were no longer understood. Their guides from Hukutu had gone back, and these people disclaimed any knowledge at all of Mongol. Then one day two of their yaks disappeared: nobody seemed to be responsible or interested. They made gestures that appeared to mean that the yaks had run off on their own. The next day a third was gone.

‘What the devil is the matter with these people?’ cried Sullivan, in exasperation. ‘If only the abbot were here, he would set about them, I’m sure.’

‘I’ve a good mind to bang their silly heads together,’ growled Ross, who had spent most of the morning offering little drawings of yaks, loads of food and other necessities to the few men who would pay any attention. One had taken the paper and put it in his prayer-wheel, in case it might do any good, but the others had been uncomprehending and uninterested.

‘I have offered them money,’ said Sullivan, banging his fist into his palm, ‘and they just stare at it and walk away. Flaming death!’ he cried, ‘I shall start to get angry soon.’

‘I do not think that this is a case where physical violence would serve our purpose,’ said the Professor. ‘But I believe I have a clue to the trouble. It cannot have escaped your notice that Tibetan society has a matriarchal structure. The old woman in whose house we live is the virtual ruler of Tanglha-Tso – she is also, by the way, the abbot’s aunt, and in secular matters he goes in awe of her. The same applied at Hukutu. Now the Tibetan woman is not only a matriarch: she is also polyandrous.’

‘Polly Andrews!’ exclaimed Olaf.

‘I mean she has several husbands. The old woman has four. Ngandze was his wife’s second husband, and thus occupied the position of a second wife in China.’

‘Four husbands! Ay reckon she ban a wicked old beezle –’

‘Olaf, pipe down,’ cried Sullivan. ‘Please go on, Professor, and tell us more about Auntie.’

‘Well, we have these two essential facts, matriarchy and polyandry. Now let us suppose that one of these women has taken it into her head to acquire one of us as a spare husband, would not that account for the delay, the black looks of the men and the general change of attitude? We must remember that these men are as much subjected to their wives as wives are to their husbands in other countries that are more civilised – in the United States, for example,’ he said, bowing to Sullivan. ‘Does not my theory square with the facts? We have calculated delay, in order to detain the object of the woman’s passion. We have black looks from the men, either because they resent the intrusion of a stranger or because they had hoped to be chosen in his place. Furthermore, all this has taken place since the departure of the abbot, who would be the only other governing influence in the village. Does it not all point to a clearly defined intent on the part of the old lady whose name I have not yet caught, but whom, for the sake of argument, we will term Auntie?’

‘Good Lord above,’ exclaimed Ross with a groan, ‘I’m afraid you’re right.’

‘Who is the man?’ cried Sullivan, glaring round. ‘I’ll wring his – you don’t think she has picked on me, Professor, do you?’ he asked, turning suddenly pale.

‘No,’ said the Professor. ‘I have been watching closely, and incredible as it may seem, I believe it is Olaf.’

‘I never,’ roared Olaf, starting up.

‘You have been monkeying about with Auntie,’ cried Sullivan, advancing upon him.

‘No, no,’ said the Professor, waving his hand, ‘I do not think any fault is to be attributed to Olaf. The choice appears to be entirely one-sided. Though upon my word,’ he said, lowering his spectacles and gazing at Olaf over them, ‘I find it difficult to credit that a young woman … However, I am still not wholly convinced. We must watch them narrowly, cautiously, you understand, so that they will not notice, during this party to which it appears that we are invited this afternoon.’

‘Have they really picked upon Olaf?’ asked Derrick, in a wondering voice.

‘Some resemblance to heathen idol,’ said Li Han, ‘or perhaps local fabulous monster.’

‘You quit that,’ said Olaf, going redder still. ‘My face ban okay, see? Ay reckon it ban a natural choice. But Auntie … aw, shucks.’

‘It is not Auntie who is the prime mover, in my opinion,’ said the Professor. ‘It is rather that stout young matron whose name, I think, is Ayuz, Auntie’s daughter. But that, if anything, makes the choice even more extraordinary.’

‘I would believe anything of people who put butter in their tea,’ said Sullivan. After a minute of hard thought he said, ‘What are we to do? In a case of this kind it’s like being without a compass or a chart. If you’re right, and I fear you are, these infernal women will never let us get on the road until they have their way. I’ve had something to do with women, and they’re all the same: they always get you down in the end.’

‘The first thing to do is to make sure of our suspicions,’ said the Professor, ‘and then perhaps we can think of some plan to confound the sirens.’

A few hours later they were sitting in the largest room in Tanglha-Tso, facing the formidable old woman they called Auntie. Behind her stood three of her four husbands, meek men, all of them, and at her side stood the young, stout woman whom Olaf now called Polly Andrews: her hair was more thickly buttered than usual, and she wore a towering scarlet hat. In the background there were all the villagers who could squeeze in: the air was thick with smoke and heat.

‘That girl ban nuts,’ muttered Olaf. The words were hardly out of his mouth before Polly stepped forward and pinned a silver brooch, studded with turquoises, on to Olaf’s coat. He went as red as a beetroot. He sprang up, saying, ‘Why, thank you, marm,’ and crashed his head against the ceiling. He sat down again, rubbing his head and muttering, ‘Aw, shucks.’

Polly went back to stand by the old woman, and she gazed unceasingly at Olaf while the old woman poured out a flood of words, mostly directed at the Professor, but some at Olaf, who sat there with an impassive countenance, wishing, above all things, to prove his innocence to the others.

Presently tea came in, and a jar of a sticky, greenish substance, very dark. They were all given bowls of buttered tea, but Olaf alone had something from the jar. Polly squatted by him and fed it to him from a spoon. He absorbed it without any expression whatever, but Derrick, squeezed firmly against him by the villagers, felt him tremble. From time to time Polly stroked Olaf’s golden hair and murmured loving words.

There was no doubt left in their minds at all, and they watched with profound misgiving.

When the tea was being carried away, the holder of the tea-pot did not move quickly enough to please Polly: she lifted her long coat and swung her boot forward in a kick that shot the attendant far out into the darkness.

‘That young person has a will of her own,’ remarked the Professor.

‘Lifted him a yard,’ muttered Olaf, nervously wiping his brow. ‘What ban Ay let in for?’

The old woman’s flow of words became slower, more emphatic. There were several scraps of Mongol in it: she clearly meant to be understood.

The Professor replied, and the room was silent, listening intently. He broke off, consulted his list of words, and went on.

The old woman began again, and all the eyes in the room, whether they could understand or not, turned to her. Then the Professor spoke, and all the eyes swung back again. He said a long sentence. There was a gasp of horror from the Tibetans. He repeated it, pointing up towards the monastery, and they gasped again, gazing at Olaf and drawing away from him. The old woman started a long harangue, pointing at Olaf with one hand and waving a prayer-wheel with the other. The whole room stared at Olaf, edging still farther away. While they were doing this, the Professor pretended to consult his book, and behind it whispered rapidly to Sullivan, ‘Olaf must go mad when I strike the table. Let him shriek, and then knock him down. Pass it on.’ The whisper ran down the line while the old woman was still speaking, but it did not reach Derrick, who was the other side of Olaf, and who was therefore petrified when, after the Professor had pronounced another sentence that made the Tibetans gasp and recoil so that the weaker members were crushed against the wall and cried out in agony, and had held up a charm with one hand while he banged the table with the other, Olaf suddenly rose in a weird, hunched attitude, drew his face into an appallingly contorted mask and began to shriek like a steam-whistle, ‘Hoo, hooo, hoooo.’ At the same time he began to lurch madly from side to side and grasped at Derrick’s throat with hands like crooked claws. At this moment Ross and Sullivan hurled themselves upon Olaf, flung him to the earth and began to belabour him with their fists. But they could not master him: with wild heaves he flailed about, still pouring forth his hideous and deafening scream until the Professor stepped up to him, and holding the charm over him said, in a chanting voice, ‘Oh thou able seaman, hold thy tongue. Go limp, therefore, and look as meek and peaceable as thou conveniently mayest.’

Olaf relaxed, an expression of imbecile benignity overspread his weathered features, and he lay still.

But the horror and alarm – to which Derrick’s unfeigned astonishment had added – was too great for the Tibetans. They rushed madly into the night, and only the old woman and Polly, with one person who was too paralysed with fear, remained. The old woman was trembling, but she would not run: Polly, as pale as she could very well go, gestured faintly towards Olaf and whispered something. The Professor bent over Olaf, whispered, ‘Foam a little,’ and unpinned the turquoise brooch. Olaf foamed like a whirlpool and twitched horribly. Polly took her brooch and vanished.

‘I think it would be advisable if Olaf were now to crawl on his hands and knees through the street to our yaks,’ said the Professor, sitting down. ‘Dear me, what an exhausting conversation.’

‘How did you do it, Professor?’ asked Sullivan, with admiration.

‘I had in mind a passage in a book of travels by the Buddhist monk Yen Tzu, who was in these regions during the last days of the T’ang dynasty. I was by no means sure of my ability to convey the anecdote, but they seem to have caught the gist, though with heaven knows what distortions, because I have only the most general notion of the meaning of some of the words I employed. However, the story that I intended to convey was this: Yen Tzu, on one of his journeys, met a Siberian person who had captured a semi-human monster in the desert and had taken him to an abbot famous for his piety to have him entirely humanised – it appears that he was a serviceable monster. But the abbot had only been partially successful: with the waning of each moon – and I happened to notice that the moon was very small last night – the power of the charm diminished, and the monster returned to his habit of eating human flesh, female human flesh. He could only be subdued by a jade charm, and then only when it was held by his owner. This was the tale I adopted, using the convenient departure of our good friend the abbot as a circumstantial detail, and as far as I can see they understood and believed the greater part of it. At all events, I venture to prophecy that none of them will willingly encounter Olaf as he crawls about the streets, particularly if he continues to snort in that disagreeable fashion.’

From outside came the sound of Olaf’s progress as he shuffled industriously round and round the narrow streets, grunting as he went, and scratching horribly at each door to strike terror and dismay into the silent and cowering inhabitants.

‘I am really sorry to have added to the burden of superstition that weighs on these unfortunate people,’ said the Professor, in another tone. ‘It would have been inexcusable if our need had not been so pressing: but I shall leave a letter, in the simplest Chinese that I can devise, to explain the situation to the abbot on his return, and I trust that he will be able to undo at least some of the mischief.’

‘It was a wonderful feat, Professor,’ said Sullivan. ‘Now I understand why you were drawing crescents and full moons on the table. But I hope we have not overdone it. I am quite sure that they will not want to keep Olaf in their bosoms any longer, but if they get so frightened that they won’t trade with us or lend us guides, then we shall be in a pretty fix.’

‘I do not anticipate that,’ replied the Professor. ‘Auntie is a very strong-minded woman, not at all unlike a Mrs Williams, the wife of one of my colleagues. But perhaps it would be as well to restrain Olaf’s zeal at present. Derrick, will you take a chain and lead him to the yaks? He will have to spend the night out, poor fellow; but it is all in the common cause. And by the way, ask him to be so good as to provide himself with a short tail, will you? I mentioned, in passing, that he had one, in the course of my remarks. Perhaps he had better let it show a little in the morning – but discreetly, you understand?’

Sullivan’s fears were baseless. In the first light of the morning the village notables, all strong-minded females, gathered outside the house with their attendant husbands and a train of yaks. All the difficulties that had plagued them for so many days suddenly vanished: the barley was found to be threshed, men could be spared, food was abundant, the missing yaks were found, the Professor’s Tibetan was understood and several men remembered scraps of Mongol or Chinese.

Before the sun was well up the expedition was on its way again. The black looks of the men were gone, replaced by an anxious friendliness: they pressed little gifts on all the members of the party except Olaf, whom they regarded with unfeigned horror. He was obliged to walk forty yards behind the others, and whenever he approached nearer, the Tibetan guides thundered on a gong that they carried with them for the purpose, and blew on shrill-voiced horns, waving their prayer-wheels at the same time. He was obliged to be fed at a great distance from the fire, and after some days of this he became very melancholy and low in his spirits. He complained of the inconvenience of his tail, but when the Professor assured him that he would be reinstated as a human being when the new moon appeared he grew less despondent, and watched the waning moon with the keenest attention.

Their route led on and on, always to the west: it was never a marked road, except where it entered the villages, but the Tibetans followed it as though it had a pavement on either side. Up and down they went, sometimes ploughing knee-deep through the snow at fifteen thousand feet and more, sometimes panting in the heat of an enclosed valley roasting in the sun. They had game in abundance, and they dried many pounds of lean meat against emergencies to come. As the days went by they shortened Olaf’s tail inch by inch, and when the new moon showed a silvery sickle over the gleaming mountains that hemmed them in, he was allowed to put it away altogether. The Tibetans, with some misgivings, admitted him to the fireside again; but they would never sit near him if they could avoid it.

They had one bad snow-storm that caught them in one of the high passes and delayed them for two days. Olaf built one of his snow houses, but the Tibetans would have none of his monstrous practices, and huddled motionless against their shaggy beasts, who stood, quite unconcerned, while the snow covered them.

It was after this storm that they first met a great herd of yaks being brought down from the summer pastures: the next day they met two more, and they understood the herdsmen to say the early winter was coming on apace. ‘We must hurry,’ said Sullivan, with a round, seafaring oath, as he tried to urge his stolid yak to a speed greater than a crawl. ‘If only those half-witted omadhauns had let us go, we would be a hundred miles farther on by now.’

But the yaks would not be hurried: they kept to their invariable sluggish plod whatever happened, and if they were vexed with pulling, pushing or with blows they would dig all four feet in, close their large eyes and become absolutely immovable. Only when they smelt a snow-leopard – which was not rare when they were just above the snowline – would they run, and then, as often as not, they ran in the wrong direction.

But they were patient, incredibly hardy and enduring creatures, and wonderfully sure-footed. Only once did one ever fall, and that was at the ford of the river a little before the first Red-Hat monastery. The river was swollen, the load was badly tied, and the yak went down: nothing was lost except, by great bad luck, one single heavy little box that contained most of what ammunition they had not abandoned in their dreadful days above Hukutu. They dived for it in the freezing water, but it was at the bottom of a whirlpool, and they had to give it up. They were reduced now to a very few rounds apiece, and Sullivan gave the order that no one was to shoot except Ross, who could be relied upon never to waste a single shot.

They got by the first dangerous strip of country, however, with no difficulty at all, and although a week later at the second they saw what they took to be a party of lamas in the distance, they had no unpleasant encounters. The weather was holding up, and they were making good distance every day.

Their detour to pass the second lamasery had been arranged, by two forced marches, to coincide with the full moon, and it was wholly successful: they rejoined their road exactly where they meant, and followed a winding river – still clear and unfrozen – as they pushed on to Thyondze. But once the full moon began to wane, Olaf became an object of horror to the guides. He was made to keep a great way off, and this time, as the road was clear along the river-side, he elected to walk in front. Sometimes Derrick and Chingiz walked with him for company, although the Tibetans often urged them not to take the risk, and on the first day that they struck their road again, all three of them had been walking well ahead of the main party when Derrick remembered that he had left the barley-cakes and the dried meat that they were to eat at midday. He ran back to his yak. Sullivan was saying to the Professor, ‘We shall not be able to pass the third Red-Hat lamasery at Thyondze with the full moon: but I am not sure that it would not be better altogether to get by on a darker night. They tell me that there is a road so clear that we cannot miss it, and it turns so sharply to the left that we shall be out of sight of the monastery well before dawn – hullo, what’s that?’ He broke off and pointed to the river. Bobbing down towards them on the broad and rapid stream there was something floating: it came nearer, and they saw that it was a tall felt hat, a red Tibetan hat.

‘I hope some poor fellow has not fallen in,’ said the Professor.

Sullivan was already running along the bank up the stream. He turned a corner where the rocks cut out the view and saw Olaf and Chingiz coming back. In a few moments he had reached them, and Olaf said, ‘Ay didn’t mean no harm, Cap’n, but this guy wouldn’t let us pass, and the other guy fetched me a bang with his stick. It was on that bridge along for’ard,’ he said, pointing to a rough log crossing on the river.

It appeared that they had meant to cross the river and that on the bridge they had met two men. The first, a tall man with a sword, had started to shout at them in a loud, hectoring voice and had barred their way. Olaf had listened for a while, and had then tried to edge past. The tall man had drawn his sword, the shorter one had hit Olaf with his staff, and Chingiz had whipped his keen dagger through the tall man’s ribs. The tall man had fallen into the water, and the second had ran off.

‘Well, it’s no good swearing now,’ said Sullivan, running back to the yaks. ‘Professor,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m afraid we have killed a Red-Hat lama. We shall have to get out of this as quickly as we possibly can. Their monastery is some way behind us, and we may be able to get past Thyondze before they catch us up. If not, we must take the valley that the abbot marked as closed. Please find out all you can about it from the guides.’

‘As I remember from the map,’ said the Professor, ‘we should see the opening of that valley on our left quite soon.’

‘Yes. It is behind that mountain there. I am going forward to reconnoitre, and I will ask Ross to drop back as a rear-guard. In the meantime, please keep everything moving as fast as possible – no halts for food, no pitching camp tonight. I will take Olaf with me: he will only upset the Tibetans here. If anything happens, fire three shots, but only if it is absolutely necessary. We have not a round to spare.’

He vanished up the river at a long, loping run, accompanied by Olaf. The Professor walked up and down the line, urging the sluggards along and talking to the Tibetans. He had received the news with the utmost steadiness: he had changed a great deal since their first encounter with Shun Chi.

For a long time nothing happened, but in the afternoon they heard, faintly in the distance, the blaring of horns and the throbbing of a drum. Then, in the evening, they saw a file of men scrambling along the high ridge to their right: they were moving with incredible rapidity over the rocks towards Thyondze.

Sullivan came back in the moonlight, exhausted but with good news. ‘I have seen the valley,’ he said, ‘and it is not closed at all. The mouth of it runs down into this one, and there is a stream in it; it is so clear that we shall be able to strike it even in the night. There appears to be a fair-sized glacier half-way up, but from what I could see through my glasses it should not be too difficult. I could not see the pass – it was shut out by a spur running down from the left – but I could see three days’ march up it, and it looked all right to me. We shall have to take it: the men you saw on the ridge are certainly going to warn the monks at Thyondze, and if we go on we shall be caught between the two of them, exactly as it was down in the Takla Makan. What have you learnt from the Tibetans?’

‘I am sorry to say that they seem absolutely horrified by the suggestion. It was a long time before I could make them understand, but I succeeded in the end. They kept making gestures of the utmost refusal and one of them eventually whispered to me the word nahjedli, or nahjetli: he seemed unwilling even to say it, and he kept his hand over his mouth. Then, apparently as an explanation, he went over to a large patch of snow and made a hand-print in it, with another several yards away. I wish I could understand what he meant: the irritating thing is that I am almost sure that I have heard, or perhaps read, a word not unlike it. Nahjedli, nahjedli: what can it be?’ He bowed his head in thought. ‘My memory is not what it was,’ he said.

‘Would it mean devils, or something of that sort? You know how superstitious they are.’

‘That is probably it. Yet there are several other words that they use more commonly – I employed them myself, back at Tanglha-Tso. Nahjedli, nahjedli: or was it two words, nah jedli, or nah yeti?’

As he repeated the words in a meditative voice, the Tibetans approached. They were carrying their personal belongings. The leader came to the front: he was obviously in a state of terror. He said something in a low and trembling voice, pointing up towards the valley and then back down the river: then he threw down the gold coins that they had been paid, and turned about. In another moment the four of them were running at full speed down the river.