“Me Hu Dra,” he explained over and over again, in vain repetition.
“Ye're Tsing Hi, I tell yer. Ye're Tsing Hi in the name of Her Majesty. Haven't I arrested ye as sich?”
“Me Hu Dra,” reiterated the captive as they jogged on. “Me come Coo'tow' one yar.”
“Shut yer mout! Didn't I tell yer before that ye're Tsing Hi? Didn't yer wilfully and knowingly escaape from me whin I was having a bite to ate, and I had yer tied to the post at the shanty back beyant there! Naw, I'll hear no more of yer Hu Rahin'. Kape a civil tongue betune yer taath, or, be gorra, worse 'll happen yer.”
Hu Dra was patient. He thought of his pilgrimage long ago to the top of Mount Omei. Was this the reward he had gained?
He solaced his soul by murmuring the pious invocation which all pilgrims to the Sacred Mount have perpetually on their lips—“Om mane padme om!”
Torn from his secluded garden and happy and profitable toil, bruised and manacled, bundled on to a fear-provoking horse, hurried off he knew not whither, through a drought-stricken land under a searing sun, the road reeking with dust—what a plight for a devout Buddhist, who had sought to avert calamity and prolong life by the ascent of the chill mount where, alone in all the world, is revealed the “Glory of Buddha.”
Mystic that he was, he found sure comfort in pious meditations. Present pains of body and mind vanished as with half-shut eyes he drifted into the chill realm where he hearkened to chants of priests, the tinkling of the temple bells, the fervent response of hundreds of pilgrims as meek as himself—“Om mane padme om!”
Such was the potency of the mechanical repetition of the all-healing words that Tim presently found himself echoing them, and brought himself up with a jerk.
“It's all haythen rubbish and cussing. The pore fule's daft wid the hate and the dust and the welt I give him. Shure it's the way I have to be sorry for the crature.”