stunned. Then they tied my wrists tightly
behind my back; they bound my elbows, my chest, my neck and my ankles. I
was a prisoner!

[Illustration: PURCHASING PONIES]

[Illustration: I WAS A PRISONER]

[Illustration: ROPE RIDING-WHIP]

CHAPTER LXXIV

Chanden Sing's plucky resistance--Mansing secured--A signal--A
treacherous Lama--Confiscation of baggage--Watches, compasses and
aneroids--Fear and avidity--The air-cushion--Dragged into the
encampment.

[Illustration: EARRING WORN BY HIGH OFFICIALS]

THEY lifted me and made me stand up. The brave Chanden Sing had been
struggling with all his might against fifteen or twenty foes, and had
disabled several of them. He had been pounced upon at the same moment as
I was, and had fought gallantly until, like myself, he had been
entangled, thrown down and secured by ropes. During my struggle, I heard
him call out repeatedly: "_Banduk, banduk, Mansing; jaldi, banduk!_"
("Rifle, rifle, Mansing; quick, my rifle!") but, alas, poor Mansing the
leper, the weak and jaded coolie, had been sprung upon by four powerful
Tibetans, who held him pinned to the ground as if he had been the
fiercest of bandits. Mansing was a philosopher. He had saved himself the
trouble of even offering any resistance; but he too, was ill-treated,
beaten and tightly bound. At the beginning of the fight a shrill whistle
had brought up four hundred[27] armed soldiers who had lain in ambush
round us, concealed behind the innumerable sandhills and in the
depressions in the ground. They took up a position round us and covered
us with their matchlocks.

[Illustration: DRAGGED INTO THE SETTLEMENT]

All was now over, and, bound like a dangerous criminal, I looked round
to see what had become of my men. When I realised that it took the
Tibetans five hundred men[28] all counted to arrest a starved Englishman
and his two half-dying servants, and that, even then, they dared not do
it openly, but had to resort to abject treachery; when I found that these
soldiers were picked troops from Lhassa and Sigatz (Shigatze), despatched
on purpose to arrest our progress and capture us, I could not restrain a
smile of contempt for those into whose hands we had at last fallen.

[Illustration: A SPEAR]

My blood boiled when, upon the order of the Lama, who the previous night
had professed to be our friend, several men advanced and searched our
pockets. They rifled us of everything we possessed, and