Caravans By Night Part 41

The caravan-men and the pack-animals were ahead, moving with a slow, uneven rhythm, the long line of laden beasts casting distorted shadows upon the road.

"O Arnold Trent, I could cry for sheer joy!" whispered the girl. "Can't you feel the night singing in your veins? Tibet! To think I should ever reach it!"

Trent's throat tightened, and the wind sang one word--_Tibet!

Tibet!_--over and over in his ears. He rode on, so flooded with awe, with an overwhelming sense of majesty, that it was impossible to speak.

Presently the girl, obeying an impulse, tore off her turban. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, and the wind caught truant strands and made sport of them.

Through the night they traveled; traveled until the high walls broke up into lower ridges and ravines; until the moon rolled over the peaks and into oblivion, and the stars pa.s.sed, as tapers that grow dim and die.

The gorge opened its mouth into a valley that lay between green, snow-tipped mountains. With dawn they came to a halt, and the muleteers set up the shelters. The girl, tired from the long ride, fell asleep almost instantly, but Trent sat in front of his tent for nearly an hour, smoking and gazing into the haze of ruddy gold that hid the City of the Falcon.

3

Looking back upon the journey to Shingtse-lunpo, Trent saw it in a series of pictures--the days painted with vivid, glaring pigments, the nights pasteled in blended hues. It was not the Tibet of his imagination, the Tibet of drear, waterless stretches shut in by bastioned mountains, unscalable, snow-helmeted guards. True, for two days after the pa.s.sing of the Chino-Tibetan divide and the Mekong (they were swung across this great river, at a giddy height, on a rope bridge) bleak ranges lifted themselves in heaps of purple and dun, crowned with flame as the sun gilded their snowy ramparts; but after that the ground was mildly undulating--nullahs and hills and thin forests.

The fourth day marked their entrance into a country of little vegetation, a world of dull tints--those lifeless shades of brown found in a camel's coat. The earth was sterile; even the sky seemed unyielding, an aching womb of light. Fine dust settled upon the body and in the nostrils and throat.

Of people they saw comparatively little. The villages generally consisted of a huddle of houses close to a spur of ground, upon the highest point of which a lamasery perched, like a _lammergier_ hovering over mulch and decay. The lamas, Trent learned, were of the Yellow Cap Order--a sullen, suspicious lot.

Trent tried, whenever it was practicable, to avoid human beings; he was not so much afraid of the penetrability of his own disguise as that of the girl. The caravans they encountered now and then--strings of men and mules and yaks--were a constant dread to him; not the Tibetans (they were a careless, friendly type, these men and women of Kham), but the priests who usually accompanied them. In every instance the lamas inquired through Kee Meng the destination of the pack-train.

The wind was usually chilling, except at midday when the earth quivered behind a bra.s.sy curtain of mirage and the glare of sunlight on quartz-like rocks was blinding. Sunset--a phenomenon of Tibet--was a source of never-ending wonder to both Trent and Dana Charteris. It flared in five distinct bars, like a crimson aurora, and died away when dusk swept a mauve brush across the west. Nightfall brought bitter winds. Stars glittered coldly, points of whitest flame; and when the moon came out it glistened like an icy planet reeling through s.p.a.ce.

Trent grew to trust Kee Meng and his comrades--to a degree. It was a common occurrence for him to catch one or the other stealing from the provisions, and more than once he discovered gold and turquoise ornaments filched from a temple in some village where they remained overnight. Twice Trent's electric pocket-lamp disappeared, only to be found each time among the possessions of Kee Meng, who burned with a steady pa.s.sion to own it. Trent maintained rigid discipline over his quartet of genial young brigands, who would have been impossible to rule otherwise; and whereas they learned he was master of the caravan and to be obeyed at all times, he could not tear down the walls of instinct which generations of _hung-hu-tzee_ ancestors had fixed so immovably in them.

... The journey wove into a tapestry of monotonous colors stretching over a loom of many days, and through it all, like a silver thread, ran his a.s.sociation with Dana Charteris. His every chord of feeling responded to the age-old symphony of a woman unfolding to a man (the glorious hymn of the universe).... He knew there were times, after he had wrapped himself in his blanket for the night, that she wept from sheer exhaustion, tortured physically by the hard travel and mentally by the ever-present portent of danger which the very atmosphere seemed to speak. But not once did he see evidence of it, nor did she complain.

After a day of riding, himself sweaty and caked with dust, his every sinew strained to the utmost, the moral effect of her presence was a narcotic.

Despite the discomforts and the uncertainty of what lay ahead, something serene came to him out of the silence. He saw it in the girl's eyes, too--this intangible thing that the far s.p.a.ces breed in the hearts of men and that lies slumbering until they have returned to civilization, where, in the midst of crowded, suffocating cities, it awakens suddenly, drawing them back to the trackless wastes they once had hated and cursed. The intense light on the hills; the glow of firelight in the dusk; the cry of a wolf wavering through the night--they were the small incidents that would cling to the memory and, later, seem the salient features of a weird, fascinating scroll of recollections.

Green-roofed temples and whitewashed lamaseries daily became more numerous. They squatted on every eminence and were habited by crimson-togaed monks--hundreds of men and boys who rattled prayer-wheels and muttered "_Om mani Padme hums_" before greasy idols.

The presence of women in those lamaist communities ceased to be a novelty; rather, a question. They were not unlovely, in their loose garments and turquoise-studded bandeaus, but their instinctive hostility toward any form of ablution disqualified them from meeting Western standards of beauty.

Thus the journey wore on, and thus, on the evening of the seventh day, they camped on the edge of a marshy lake, within view of scarped hills behind which Shingtse-lunpo, the mysterious, lay.

CHAPTER XI

CITY OF THE FALCON

Dawn gave birth to a day that for Trent and Dana Charteris was surcharged with expectancy and apprehension. Ridges broke up the horizon, hiding the country beyond, as though fate and nature had conspired to preclude until the last moment a view of Shingtse-lunpo.

Before another night they should be within the walls of the city.

Just before noon they rode over a crest and saw a high _tchorten_, or rock pyramid. Yak-hair tents were pitched at its base, and a band of men, mounted on white ponies and carrying yellow-pennoned lances, clattered across the valley to meet them.

"They are soldiers of the Golden Army," Kee Meng announced.

As the hors.e.m.e.n drew nearer, Trent could see that they wore neutral-colored tunics and black leather caps, the latter having a strap under the chin and a golden, flame-shaped ornament attached to the top.

Gold-hilted swords glittered in black belts, and several of the men carried queer, ancient-looking guns embossed with turquoise and coral.

They came up in a cloud of dust, like figures riding out of history, and the leader stuck out his tongue by way of greeting. He examined their pa.s.sports and a.s.signed two soldiers--"to accompany us to Amber Bridge,"

Kee Meng explained.

With their escort they rode on toward the heat-twisted, quivering horizon that, in its very illusiveness, symbolized the uncertainty that filled both Trent and the girl. Neither spoke, but sat erect on their mounts, staring steadily, until their eyes ached, into the white sunlight.

The hot midday was waning when they reached the top of a shoulder of ground and looked upon the city. At first it was a long white blur upon the distant ranges, separated from the plain that surrounded it by a belt of green; then it a.s.sumed shape and form, and they saw it, walls and golden roofs, floating like a fabulous Atlantis in the liquid sunlight. A white bulk, seeming the extravagant creation of a mirage, towered above the walls. Gradually it emerged from the deceptive heat-waves and stood out, defined, a ma.s.sive building, dominating the crenellated heap of masonry at its feet. The city's ramparts were high, yielding only a glimpse of roof-tops and the b.u.t.tressed structure that was silhouetted in blinding white upon the aquamarine sky.

"The great building," said Kee Meng, "is Lhakang-gompa, of which I told you--the palace and temple of the Grand Lama."

As they rode nearer, pa.s.sing barley fields and isolated groups of houses, it became evident that the belt of green encircling Shingtse-lunpo was a marsh. Apparently an outer fortification at one time stood in the swamp, for piles of broken stone reared themselves at intervals from the rush-enc.u.mbered quagmires, like the bones of a half-buried and bleaching skeleton. On the edge of the mora.s.s, flung across a stream, was a bridge; a stone causeway, perhaps a mile in length, linked it with what Trent imagined was the main gate of the city proper. The bridge itself--"Amber Bridge," Kee Meng had called it--was of mellowed stone, its enclosing walls supporting a roof glazed with tiles and inset with great lumps of raw amber. Prayer-flags drooped from the top.

Thus Shingtse-lunpo, the City of the Falcon, revealed herself to them for the first time, like an orient dream-city in the golden noonday.

As they approached Amber Bridge, two familiar lines sprang into Trent's mind and repeated themselves over and over:

With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze, And burnished domes half seen through luminous haze.

In the silence, sovereign but for the footfalls of the animals and the creak of sweaty saddles, he heard the swift breathing of the girl who rode at his side--saw the wonderment, the expression of fascination, of awe, that reflected in her face. Brown eyes were deep with mystery.

At the bridge they were halted by more leather-helmeted guards who, after glancing at their pa.s.sports, held a short conversation with the two soldiers from the outpost, then explained, through the usual channel of translation, that Trent's caravan would have to remain at Amber Bridge until the news of their arrival was communicated to "certain authorities" in the city.

A soldier dashed off along the causeway, while Trent, vaguely troubled, allowed his pony to be led into a mud-walled compound at one side of the road. There he and the other members of the caravan dismounted, and there they waited, somewhat apprehensive, for over an hour.

When the messenger returned he was accompanied by a small cortege, all soldiers but one, who, from his dress, was a dignitary of the city. He rode a white horse and wore a robe of orange-yellow brocaded silk, its wide sleeves faced with peac.o.c.k-blue. A mushroom-shaped hat surmounted copper-hued Tibetan features. He greeted Trent very graciously in English and informed him that he was Na-chung, a member of the Higher Council, that meaning, he explained, those who a.s.sisted the Governor. He said that no doubt it was surprising to hear him speak English, but that he had learned it from a British officer at Gyangtse, at the time of the expedition to Lha.s.sa.... His Transparency the Governor, he stated, had been expecting him for several days and his delay had caused his Transparency no small concern. Then he looked over Trent's men--and when his eyes reached Dana Charteris they halted. It was, for Trent, a breathless moment. But Na-chung smiled amiably and said:

"I understood there were to be only _four_ caravaneers. You have _five_."

Trent replied that none of the four a.s.signed to him at Tali-fang spoke Tibetan--and how could he travel in Tibet without an interpreter?

Therefore, he had presumed to add another to his caravan....

Na-chung continued to smile. "I see," he commented. "And this is the one you added?"--with a gesture toward the girl.

"No," returned Trent. "This one"--indicating Kee Meng.

"I see," repeated Na-chung. "We shall go into the city now, to the house which the Governor has provided for you."

The incident at Amber Bridge had a depressing effect upon Trent and he scarcely heard the inconsequential talk of Na-chung as they moved slowly over the causeway toward the ramparts of Shingtse-lunpo. But when they pa.s.sed the gates--formidable, iron-studded affairs, with turrets at either side--his fears were temporarily thrust into the background. For the walls of Shingtse-lunpo only hinted at what they enclosed.

Beyond the main town, which sloped down into a depression and was a wilderness of narrow streets and dazzling whitewashed houses (some roofed with blue tiles, others with burnished gold), the ground rose to the one dominating structure--the Lamasery that stood, sheer-walled, upon sharply truncated rocks. Its ma.s.sive bulk--longer than two city blocks, Trent hazarded--was pierced by row upon row of windows that seemed no larger than loopholes, and naked walls fell away from torn roofs and terrace-like additions. There were other large buildings and tiers of houses, the doors of the upper rows opening upon the roofs of those below, but they cowered beneath the regal ma.s.s of Lhakang-gompa, an architectural masterpiece that rose at least two hundred feet from its natural foundations and which Trent could compare only with the descriptions he had heard of the Potala at Lha.s.sa.

From the main gate the road cleaved between brick-walled enclosures and hedges of bamboo. Beggars, ragged, repulsive-looking creatures, whined at the roadside, and dogs and swine nosed in the black, bubbling mud of the gutters. Blenching human bones lay beside discolored slabs of stone, and mailed dragonflies, drawn by the smell of carrion flesh, hovered near.[1]

[Footnote 1: In Tibet it is the custom to deliver the dead to a sect of professional body-hackers, who, in turn, feed the remains to the dogs and vultures. Thus merit is acquired by the family of the deceased.]

From this filthy quarter they pa.s.sed over another bridge and into a highway that lay in the shadows of fortress-like buildings. It was crowded with tonsured, magenta-robed priests. Mounted soldiers, the majority in neutral-tinted tunics, but some few wearing royal-blue and apricot-hued uniforms, threaded across the crimson swarm in a human shuttle, while men and women in less gaudy apparel moved inconspicuously through the throng. Yak-hair curtains and prayer-flags drooped from the windows of houses.