"Mongolia can assert her rights—by force."
Trent lowered his eyes to the indistinct outline of the Mongol's face.
"She hasn't arms or ammunition or organization—and, furthermore, what good would a revolution do?"
Hsien Sgam answered the latter half of his question.
"It would give Mongolia self-government; and she could refuse a concession to any power to construct a railway through her territory. Organization? You spoke of that. No, they have no organization. But I have a dream—an ultimate—do you say Utopia? It is a union of the Mongols of Barga, the Buriats of Transbaikalia, the Chakhar tribe, the Khalkas, and even the Hung-hu-tzees, into a single unit—or, if you wish it, an empire. Tibet might be included. But that—that is only a dream. There is but one man who could possibly bring that about—and he is a pawn of China. The Dalai Lama...."
In the pause that followed, the glow of his cigarette showed Trent an imperial profile—like a bronze head of some Mongol conqueror he had once seen. A queer analogy struck him. Timur the Lame, who seared Asia with his vitriol. But there was an alien element in the likeness that he conjured—dust on the reflection. It haunted Trent and eluded analysis.
"The Church dominates Mongolia," the quiet voice went on, "and the Dalai Lama is its—how do you say it, Pope? He lost much power when the English drove him from Lhassa, but after years of wandering he came into his pontificate again. However, the President of China had a purpose in restoring him. He knew the power of Tubdan Gyatso—knew also that he would be safer in Tibet than Mongolia."
They smoked on. Presently Trent asked other questions, about customs and people and history. The subject swung to literature. Hsien Sgam talked at random of Chinese philosophers and poets: Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tzü, Yang Chu, Kang-hsi. There were giant dimensions of mentality behind his speech. Every word was surcharged with restless energy; thoughts hot from the vortices of emotion. But, underneath, was a current of bitterness that surged up at intervals and injected into his usual calm a passionate, almost terrible, intensity. It was more evident when he referred to his affliction.
"My father, who was a prince of the house of Hlaje Khan, believed that one of his sons should be sent into your world and acquire learning and enlighten the people," he said. "I, being lame and never entering into physical activities, was considered a student—and I was sent. Among the elders it was looked upon as an honor, but those with whom I played as a boy and grew up.... Well, in Mongolia, as elsewhere, virtue is in muscle and cowardice in morality. I went into your world and—I say this with no meanness—it hurt me. I took back wounds. Many things I was taught, among them a realization of the truth of a certain Manchu proverb about women. Yes—I wonder, my friend, why I tell you this, but perhaps it is the night and the sea—a woman entered my life for the first time—a woman who came as a leopard and left the mark of her claws."
As he talked on, unfolding with a readiness that puzzled yet did not fail to interest Trent, the latter closed his eyes and smoked, and imagined he was transported, through some reversed medium of metempsychosis, across a dead interval of time and was listening to the voice of Timur the Lame. The stars drowsed above them, like sleepy eyes, and the ship was a dim, prowling world when they parted.