e contents until they were
tired. I swore at them in Spanish, English, and Hindustani, but it was
small relief, as they didn't take the slightest notice, and I had
neither hands to beat them nor feet to kick them over the _khud_. My
orderly followed and told them in a mild North-Country accent that they
would be punished if they did it again; there is some absurd army
regulation about British soldiers striking followers. For all they knew,
he was addressing the stars. They dropped the thing a dozen times in ten
miles, and thought it the hugest joke in the world. I shall shy at a
hospital doolie for the rest of my natural life.

There is a certain Mongol smell which is the most unpleasant human odour
I know. It is common to Lepchas, Bhutanese, and Tibetans, but it is
found in its purest essence in these low-country, cross-bred Lepchas,
who were my close companions for two days. When we reached the heat of
the valley, they jumped into the stream and bathed, but they emerged
more unsavoury than ever. It was a relief to pass a dead mule. At the
next village they got drunk, after which they developed an amazing
surefootedness, and carried me in without mishap.

After two days with my Lepchas we reached Rungli (2,000 feet), whence
the road to the plains is almost level. Here a friend introduced me to a
Jemadar in a Gurkha regiment.

'He writes all about our soldiers and the fighting in Tibet,' he said.
'It all goes home to England on the telegraph-wire, and people at home
are reading what he says an hour or two after he has given _khubber_ to
the office here.'

'Oh yes,' said the Jemadar in Hindustani, 'and if things are well the
people in England will be very glad; and if we are ill and die, and
there is too much cold, they will be very sorry.'

The Jemadar smiled. He was most sincere and sympathetic. If an
Englishman had said the same thing, he would have been thought
half-witted, but Orientals have a way of talking platitudes as if they
were epigrams.

The Jemadar's speech was so much to the point that it called up a little
picture in my mind of the London Underground and a liveried official
dealing out _Daily Mails_ to crowds of inquirers anxious for news of
Tibet. Only the sun blazed overhead and the stream made music at our
feet.

I left the little rest-hut in the morning, resigned to the inevitable
jolting, and expecting another promiscuous collection of humanity to do
duty as _kahars_. But, to my great joy, I