e rough path I
reflected that this was but little help--when we arrived at the
second set of chains. My foot was already beginning to give me pain,
but under any circumstances this would have been by far the worst of
the ascent. All around us stretched darkness void and horrible,
leading, for all that we could see, down through veils of curling
mist into illimitable depths. In front the rock was almost
perpendicular. The fascination of gazing down was wellnigh
resistless, but Peter ahead continually cried 'Hurry!' and the voice
of Paul behind repeated 'Hurry!' so that panting, gasping, and fit to
faint, with fingers clinging to the chain until the skin was
blistered, with every nerve throbbing and every muscle strained to
its utmost tension, I clambered, clambered, until with one supreme
effort I swung myself up to the brink, staggered rather than ran up
the last few feet of rock, and as my guides bent and with
outstretched palms raised the cry '_Saadoo! Saadoo!_' I fell
exhausted before the very steps of Buddha's shrine.

"When I recovered, I saw just above me the open shrine perched on a
tiny terrace and surrounded by low walls of stone; a yard or two from
me the tiny hut in which its guardians live; and all around the
expanse of sky. Dawn was stealing on; already its pale light was
creeping up the east, and a bar or two of vivid fire proclaimed the
coming of the sun. The priests were astir to receive the early
pilgrims, and as Paul led me to the edge of the parapet I could see
far away below the torches of the new-comers dotted in thin lines of
fire down the mountain-side. Some pilgrims had arrived before us,
and stood shivering in their thin white garments about the summit.

"Presently the distant sound of measured chanting came floating up on
the tranquil air, sank and died away, and rose again more loudly.
Paler and paler grew the heavens, nearer and nearer swept the
chanting; and now the first pilgrim swung himself up into our view,
quenched his torch and bowed in homage. Others following did the
same, all adoring, until the terrace was crowded with worshippers
gazing eager and breathless into the far east, where brighter and
brighter the crimson bars of morning were widening.

"Then with a leap flashed up the sun, the dazzling centre of a flood
of golden light. Godlike and resplendent he rode up on wreaths of
twirling-mist, and with one stroke sent the shadows quivering back to
the very corners of h