ned meats and mixed drinks, from
ammoniated quinine to white vodka, for they had taken their full share
in the overnight loot. The neat Continental tents had been cut up and
shared long ago, and there were patent aluminium saucepans abroad.

But they considered the lama's presence a perfect safeguard against all
consequences, and impenitently brought Kim of their best--even to a
drink of chang--the barley-beer that comes from Ladakh-way. Then they
thawed out in the sun, and sat with their legs hanging over infinite
abysses, chattering, laughing, and smoking. They judged India and its
Government solely from their experience of wandering Sahibs who had
employed them or their friends as shikarris. Kim heard tales of shots
missed upon ibex, serow, or markhor, by Sahibs twenty years in their
graves--every detail lighted from behind like twigs on tree-tops seen
against lightning. They told him of their little diseases, and, more
important, the diseases of their tiny, sure-footed cattle; of trips as
far as Kotgarh, where the strange missionaries live, and beyond even to
marvellous Simla, where the streets are paved with silver, and anyone,
look you, can get service with the Sahibs, who ride about in
two-wheeled carts and spend money with a spade. Presently, grave and
aloof, walking very heavily, the lama joined himself to the chatter
under the eaves, and they gave him great room. The thin air refreshed
him, and he sat on the edge of precipices with the best of them, and,
when talk languished, flung pebbles into the void. Thirty miles away,
as the eagle flies, lay the next range, seamed and channelled and
pitted with little patches of brush--forests, each a day's dark march.
Behind the village, Shamlegh hill itself cut off all view to southward.
It was like sitting in a swallow's nest under the eaves of the roof of
the world.

From time to time the lama stretched out his hand, and with a little
low-voiced prompting would point out the road to Spiti and north across
the Parungla.

'Beyond, where the hills lie thickest, lies De-ch'en' (he meant
Han-le'), 'the great Monastery. s'Tag-stan-ras-ch'en built it, and of
him there runs this tale.' Whereupon he told it: a fantastic piled
narrative of bewitchment and miracles that set Shamlegh a-gasping.
Turning west a little, he steered for the green hills of Kulu, and
sought Kailung under the glaciers. 'For thither came I in the old, old
days. From Leh I came, over the Bara