"It's no use," Barma Shah decided finally. "We can hardly see the slopes now. Anyone coming through those passes would have to turn back."
Biff nodded hopelessly. But as he took one last look through a pair of field glasses, he was sure he detected motion in the distant haze. Then, against the snowy background, he saw three figures. One paused as they struggled forward and waved his arms in a characteristic gesture.
Excitedly, Biff exclaimed, "Uncle Charlie!"
XVI
The Bamboo Bridge
Biff and the three boys with him started forward on the run to meet
Charles Keene and his companions. They soon saw that one of the pair was
Li, and since the other was about his size, it only took one guess for
Biff to name him: "Chuba!" But by the time the two groups met, Biff had
another name in mind as well. The first words he put were:
"Where's Muscles? Wasn't he along with you?"
"Muscles is all right," Charles Keene assured him. "We are, too, but we had to speed up our pace the last few miles, otherwise we wouldn't have made it. When I get a cup of hot coffee, I'll tell you all about it."
Li and Chuba were just too winded to talk at all. When they reached the caravan, Barma Shah decided to delay the start until they had rested. That gave Charles Keene time to tell their story. He related how clouds had enveloped their plane high in the Himalayas.
"Rather than hit a mountain," he said, "we chanced a landing in a valley. Fortunately it was a deep one, and the fog hadn't fully settled. All of a sudden, green fields smacked right up at us. We banged up the plane some, but not too badly. What happened next was the odd part."
Charles Keene paused to drink half his cup of coffee in one long, grateful swallow. Meanwhile, Li and Chuba couldn't wait to pick the story up from there.