ban.

The speech was emphatically a 'straight talk,' the key-note seeming to
be that the Tibetans had been very foolish in opposing and flouting us
in the past, but that they were now going to be good boys. They were
going to be well treated when they came to visit us, and were not going
to misbehave themselves in any way, should we again come near them.
There was more said, about trade relations with India, in recognition of
the Chinese suzerainty, and in encouragement of the Tibetan traditional
methods of treating outsiders, when those outsiders did not happen to be
ourselves.

The council of three seemed to take it all 'lying down.'

More tea was drunk: the press correspondents busied themselves with the
telegrams that they were sending down by post to Gyantse, bringing the
wires there and then to the press censor, whose blue pencil I saw freely
wielded: more handshaking, and then the party broke up.

As we left the now close atmosphere of the audience hall, we felt that
we had just witnessed a matinee performance in a theatre. The
spectacular effects throughout had been impressive. The first act had
been brisk, the second had dragged, but the last had been thrilling. It
had indeed been a fine play that we had seen enacted--the simple sane
perseverance of British diplomacy fighting on its own ground a unique
section of the mysterious and gorgeous East, not bluffed by its
indignant protests, not deceived by its spurious promises, not wearied
by its endless delays, not impatient of its crass ignorance, but gaining
its objects slowly and surely, and coming out victorious.

CHAPTER XXIII

BACK TO INDIA

Thereafter, like the man in the sycamore tree, we made haste to come
down. Sixteen days later the column left Lhassa. A few functions
intervened, such as the formal release of our prisoners and the bestowal
of money in charity on the poor of Lhassa. I missed these functions,
having been sent on ahead to the Tsangpo, where preparations for the
return crossing were now afoot. The column at length arrived at the
river. We crossed this time at Parte, where a certain single channel of
moderate breadth, but very deep and therefore not very swift, served our
purposes far better than the double channel at Chaksam. The Sappers and
Miners and coolis had made all things ready, towing the two heavy ferry
boats up many miles of swift current, and rigging up the mysterious
engineering paraphernalia which were needed to