Adventure Magazine Cover, November 10, 1924 — page 116: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

114 through the town streets, drawing the crowd after them, and there were no spec- tators when the gate at the opposite end of the compound opened and the lama’s long procession—camels, elephants and this time mules as well—swayed toward open country. The same Tibetan shared a howdah with Ommony, Dawa Tsering and Diana, and was just as uncommunicative as before, but when Ommony complained of the heat he made no objection to pulling aside the curtains sufficiently to afford a glimpse of sky. So, although there was no moon, and it was not possible to watch the shad- owy landscape, the polestar crossed the line of vision now and then and by keeping his eye on that whenever possible Ommony could guess the direction roughly. They were traveling northeastward; but as he did not know the name of the town they had left behind the information was of little value. They crossed a railway line, for he heard an engine whistle and had to cling to the howdah when the elephant climbed an embankment and descended on the far side; and once there was hollow thunder underfoot as the procession crossed a long bridge. The pace was much more leisurely than on the first night, and there were fewer in- terruptions; but twice out of the darkness, once in the gloom of overhanging trees, and once where the crimson glow of a bonfire shone through the howdah curtains, mut- tered orders came from men on foot and the direction changed. About two hours before dawn a halt was called in what appeared to be some kind of royal park; there was a wall all around it and there were peculiar walled sub- divisions, but nothing to show who the owner might be. The elephants, camels and mules returned by the way they had come, leaving the baggage heaped in a clearing between trees. Somebody shouted a long series of in- comprehensible commands, repeating it all three times, and Ommony was hurried away to a tent in a triangular space with a stone wall on either hand and trees in front. There was a good bed in the tent, and a generous meal all ready on a linen-covered table. For Dawa Tsering there was a mattress under the tent fly; and for Diana a prodigious heap of rice and bones near some sacks spread out for her to sleep on—they Adventure were beef bones, which hardly looked as if the owner of the place were a Hindu. No owner put in an appearance; there was nothing, except that detail of the beef bones, to suggest what kind of man he might or might not be. When Ommony had finished eating Sam- ding emerged out of the darkness like a ghost and stood framed in the tent opening, looking like a cameo against the sky. “Tsiang Samdup sends a blessing,” he said calmly. “He requests that you will not leave this enclosure. Kindly do not go beyond the trees.” He disappeared again. It was not until he had gone that it occurred to Ommony the language he had used was English. Speaking, thinking in two languages con- currently, occasionally listening to a third, one does not identify them without an effort. 7 For a minute or two Ommony sat still, trying to recall the chela’s voice, intona- tion and accent; it seemed to him that if the words had not been perfectly pro- nounced he would have noticed instantly that the chela was talking English, not Urdu. He recalled the exact werds one by one. “Blessing,” “enclosure” and ‘“‘the”’ were key-words that would inevitably have betrayed a foreign accent had there been one; as far as he could remember all three words had been stressed exactly as a well- educated Englishman would use them; he was sure there had been no accent on the vowel in “the’—a shibboleth that ever- lastingly betrays the Asian born. “Pll swear that youngster is European. I'll pretty nearly swear he’s English,” he thought—and then laughed at himself. No European, certainly no English youth, ever had it in him to seem so saintly and at the same time to be so inoffensive. There would have been an almost irresistible im- pulse to kick any western youth who dared to look as virtuous as that. One did not want to kick Samding. _ Then again, he himself was utterly fagged out from physical strain and lack of sleep. He could hardly keep his eyes open. Why then was Samding not even more tired? He had worked harder, had presumably had less sleep, and had traveled in the same dis- comfort. Even the Tibetans, who ap- peared to have been chosen for physique as well as their amenity to discipline, were go- ing about their duties in a sort of weary CoMmicboolk Wh) (© 5}