"'Lead me from the unreal to the Real,
From darkness into Light,
From sound into Silence.'"
After meditation was over, Ghond silently walked out of our house to begin a journey from Calcutta to the Lamasery near Singalele. But before I recount his adventure there I must tell the reader how Ghond happened to be transferred from the battlefields of France to our home.
The last part of February 1915 it became quite clear to the Bengal Regiment that Gay-Neck would fly no more. Ghond, who had brought him, was no soldier. With the exception of a tiger or a leopard he had never killed anything in his life, and now that he too was sick, they were both invalided back to India together. They reached Calcutta in March. I could not believe my eyes when I saw them. Ghond looked as frightened as Gay-Neck and both of them appeared very sick.
Ghond, after he had delivered my pigeon to me, explained a few matters, before he departed to the Himalayas. "I need to be healed of fear and hate. I saw too much killing of man by man. I was invalided home for I am sick with a fell disease—sickness of fear, and I must go alone to nature to be cured of my ill."
So he went up to Singalele to the Lamasery, there to be healed by prayer and meditation. In the meantime I tried my utmost to cure Gay-Neck. His wife and full-grown children failed to help him. His children saw in him but a stranger, for he showed no care for them, but his wife interested him intensely, though even she could not make him fly. He refused steadily to do anything but hop a little, and nothing would induce him to go up in the air. I had his wings and legs examined by good pigeon doctors, who said that there was nothing wrong with him. His bones and both of his wings were sound, yet he would not fly. He refused even to open his right wing; and whenever he was not running or hopping he developed the habit of standing on one foot.
I would not have minded that, if he and his wife had not set about nesting just then. Towards the middle of April when vacation for the hot weather began, I received Ghond's letter. "Your Gay-Neck," he informed me, "should not nest yet. If there are eggs, destroy them. Do not let them hatch under any circumstances. A sick father like Gay-Neck—diseased with fright—cannot but give the world poor and sick baby pigeons. Bring him here. Before I close, I must say that I am better. Bring Gay-Neck soon; the holy Lama wishes to see you and him. Besides, all the five swifts have arrived this week from the south; they will surely divert your pet bird."
I took Ghond's advice. I put Gay-Neck in one cage and his wife in another, and set out for the north.
How different the hills were in the spring from the previous autumn. Owing to the exigencies that had arisen, my parents had opened their house in Dentam months earlier than usual. After settling down there towards the last week of April, I took Gay-Neck along with me and set out in the company of a Thibetan caravan of ponies for Singalele, leaving his wife behind, so that if he were able to fly again he would return to her—just the thing needed to cure him. She was to be the drawing card. He might do it, Ghond had hoped, in order to return and help her hatch the newly laid eggs, though the day after our departure my parents destroyed the eggs; for we did not want sick and degenerate children who would grow up to shame the name of Gay-Neck.