The Pombo's Tent
During the time I had been shut up, a huge white tent with blue ornaments had been pitched in front of the mud-house, and round it were hundreds of soldiers and villagers—a most picturesque sight.
As I was led nearer, I perceived that the front of the tent was wide open, and inside stood a great number of red Lamas, with shaven heads, in their long woollen tunics. The soldiers stopped me when I was about twenty yards from the tent. Additional ropes were added to those already cutting into my wrists, elbows and chest, and the others made tighter. I perceived Chanden Sing led forward, and then, instead of taking me before the Lamas, they pushed me to the rear of the solitary mud-house to preclude my witnessing the scene that followed. I heard Chanden Sing being interrogated in a loud angry tone of voice, and accused of having been my guide. Next I heard wild shouts from the crowd, then a dead silence. A few instants later I distinguished the snapping noise of a lash, followed by hoarse moans from my poor bearer, to whom they were evidently applying it.
I counted the strokes, the sickening noise of which is still well impressed on my memory, as they regularly and steadily fell one after the other to twenty, to thirty, forty, and fifty. Then there was a pause.
CHAPTER LXXVI
Led before the tribunal—The Pombo—Classical Tibetan beyond me—Chanden Sing lashed—The Lamas puzzled—A sudden change in the Pombo's attitude.
A number of soldiers now came for me, and I was first led, then pushed violently before the tribunal.