At Toxem, to my delight, I beheld Chanden Sing still alive. He had been kept prisoner in the mud house, where he had remained tied upright to a post for over three days. For four days he had eaten no food nor drunk anything. He was told that I had been beheaded. He was in a dreadful condition—almost dying from his wounds, cold, and starvation.
We were detained for the night in one of the rooms of the mud house. The place was packed with soldiers who gambled the whole night, and sang and swore and fought, preventing us from sleeping for even a few minutes. We were half choked by the smoke from the fire.
The next day at sunrise Chanden Sing and I were placed on yaks, not on riding-saddles, but on wooden pack-saddles. Poor Mansing was made to walk, and was beaten mercilessly when, tired and worn, he fell or remained behind. Finally they tied a rope round his neck and dragged him along in a most brutal manner. A strong guard prevented our escaping. The soldiers demanded fresh relays of yaks and ponies, and food for themselves, at all the encampments, so that we travelled fast. In the first five days we covered one hundred and seventy-eight miles, the two longest marches being, respectively, forty-two and forty-five miles. Afterward we did not march quite so quickly.
We suffered considerably on these long marches. The soldiers ill-treated us, and would not allow us to eat every day for fear we should get too strong. They let us have food only every two or three days. Our exhaustion and the pain caused by riding those wretched yaks in our wounded condition were terrible.
All our property had been taken away from us. Our clothes, in rags, were swarming with vermin. We were barefooted and almost naked. The first few days we generally marched from before sunrise till an hour or two after sunset. As soon as we reached camp we were torn off our yaks, and our jailers fastened heavy rings round our ankles, in addition to those we already had round our wrists. Thus hampered with chains, the Tibetans knew we could not possibly escape. We were left to sleep out in the open without a covering of any kind. Some nights we were lying on snow; other nights we were drenched in rain. Our guard generally pitched a tent under which they slept. Even when they did not have a shelter, they usually went to brew their tea some fifty yards or so from us.
Helped by my two servants, who sat by me to keep watch and to screen me, I managed, at considerable risk, to keep a rough record of the return journey, on a small piece of paper that had remained in my pocket when I had been searched by the Tibetans. My hands being supple, I was able to draw my right hand out of its cuff. Using as a pen a small piece of bone I had picked up, and my blood as ink, I drew brief cipher notes and a rough map of the entire route back.
Necessarily I had to content myself with taking my bearings by the sun, the position of which I got fairly accurately by constantly watching the shadow projected by my body on the ground. Of course, when it rained or snowed, I had to reckon my bearings by the observations of the previous day. We travelled first west, then successively west-north-west, north-west, west, and north-west, following the Brahmaputra along a course south of the outward journey, until we reached the boundary of the Yutzang (the Lhassa) province. The soldiers of our guard were severe with us. They ill-treated us in every possible way. Only one or two of the soldiers showed thoughtfulness, bringing us a little butter or tsamba whenever they could do so unseen by their comrades. The guard was changed so frequently that we had no chance of making friends with the men. Each lot seemed worse than the last.
A curious incident happened one day, causing a scare among the Tibetans. We had halted near a cliff. The soldiers were some twenty yards off. Having exhausted all other means to inspire these ruffians with respect, as a last resort I tried ventriloquism. I spoke, and pretended to receive answers to my words from the summit of the cliff. The Tibetans were terror-stricken. They asked me who was up there. I said it was some one I knew.
"Is it a Plenki?"
"Yes."