Poor Mansing, who, worn out and in great pain, was sitting close by me, looking vaguely at the lake, had an extraordinary vision, the result, probably, of fever or exhaustion.
"Oh, sir," said he, as if in a dream, though he was quite awake, "look, look! Look at the crowd of people walking on the water! There must be more than a thousand men! Oh, how big they are getting!... And there is God!... No; they are Tibetans; they are coming to kill us; they are Lamas! Oh, come, sahib, they are near!... Oh, they are flying!..."
"Where are they?" I asked.
"They have all disappeared!" he exclaimed, as I placed my hand on his forehead and he woke from his trance.
I could see that the poor fellow was under an hallucination. His forehead was burning, and he had a high fever.
He seemed quite stupefied for a few moments. On my inquiring of him later whether he had seen the phantom crowd again, he could not remember ever having seen it at all.
The natives came to visit us in the serai during the evening. We had great fun with them. The Tibetans were full of humor and had comical ways. Now that we were only two marches from Taklakot, it was but natural that our spirits were high. Only two more days of captivity, and then a prospect of freedom!
It was still dark when we were roused and ordered to start. The soldiers dragged us out of the serai. We entreated them to let us have another plunge in the sacred Mansarowar, and the three of us were eventually allowed to do so. The water was bitterly cold, and we had nothing to dry ourselves with.
It was about an hour before sunrise when we were placed on our yaks and, surrounded by some thirty soldiers, rode off.
When we had been marching for several hours our guard halted to have their tea. A trader named Suna, and his brother and son, whom I had met in Garbyang, halted near us. From them I heard that news had arrived in India that my two men and I had been beheaded, and that thereupon Doctor Wilson and the British Political Officer, Karak Sing, had crossed over the frontier to ascertain the facts, and to attempt to recover my baggage, etc. My joy was intense when I heard that they were still at Taklakot. I persuaded Suna to return as fast as he could to inform Wilson that I was a prisoner, and to tell him my whereabouts. I had barely given Suna this message when our guard seized the man and his brother and roughly dismissed them, preventing them from having any further communication with us.