On their departure from our presence, we were congratulating ourselves upon the good fortune that continued to follow us, when to our astonishment some officials from Rudok rode in in hot haste, and throughout the night and following morning we constantly heard fresh arrivals, the rapid jingling of the bells which were hung round the ponies' necks proclaiming how hurriedly they were riding. It was dark, and we could hear men's voices from the stream that ran down the centre of the nullah, while we ourselves had encamped close to the mountain side. We could see they had lit some fires and were sitting and standing around them, occupied in eager conversation. From the light of the flames we could see their matchlocks standing up against one another on the ground. Our hopes, which only a short time ago had been so sanguine, had now received a severe blow, and we wondered, yet guessed, what the intentions of these men might be.
In order to solve this mysterious gathering we sent and invited the chief men to our tent. Two of them were before very long ushered in by Esau, intelligent-looking fellows enough and open to hear all we had to say, yet staunch in their determination to obstruct our further march onwards up the nullah we were in. Threats, bribes of money and goods, as well as every other kind of argument, entirely failed to carry any weight with these Rudok officials, for they very wisely remarked that "if we allow you to go this road, we shall for such an act of disobedience undoubtedly lose our heads, whereas if we stop you we shall receive a reward." They maintained that they would rather risk being killed in attempting to oppose us than meet with certain death for negligence of their work in letting us go through. Argue as we might, nothing would alter their determination, namely, that the only road open to us was back by the road we had come. It was by this time growing late, and the officials took their leave of us.
Throughout the still night we could hear the loud talk and peals of laughter that rang out from the groups of men who had bivouacked by the stream.
At daybreak we discovered that more men had swollen the gathering, but nevertheless we began to load up as usual, and having distributed our sporting rifles and guns amongst our muleteers, tried to impress upon them the necessity of having to fight our way through, should we meet with opposition.
A few hundred yards from our encampment, in the direction in which we were anxious to go, was a stone wall, built probably as a shelter against the wind, and behind this the Rundore and Rudok men had taken up a position, and from their demonstrations it was evident that they did not intend to let us go by easily.
X WALL BEHIND WHICH THE TIBETANS FORMED UP.
As soon as our last mule had been loaded and we had begun to move towards the wall, our opponents rushed forth and began to drive our animals back, meeting with little or no resistance from our faint-hearted followers, who had no pluck to face superior numbers, whose actions and feelings were those of fanatics. A loaded revolver pointed at a few paces distant at the chest of one of them had no other result than to induce the man to tear aside his garments, and, showing his bare flesh, point to us to shoot at it. Such frenzied determination on the part of these Tibetans proved to us that we should never make any headway in the desired direction, and that our only chance of being able to do so would have been to shoot the most determined of our obstructionists. But inasmuch as we had not started on the expedition with the remotest inclination to shoot Tibetans, we stayed our hands. Even supposing we had shot some of them, it would have been a very hazardous step to have risked a serious scrimmage almost on our very frontier. We also reflected upon the results of such an affair; not only would it bar any future travellers from peaceably entering the country from this direction, but we ourselves would be pestered for many days to come by an increasing force of Rundore and Rudok men following in our rear.
Therefore, after we had been driven back some distance and were left alone again, we pitched a fresh camp with the intention of remaining another day, in hopes that something or other would turn up in our favour. Perhaps we might get round these officials after all, or perhaps others of more influence would in the meantime arrive from Rudok and allow us to go the way we wanted, when they became convinced that we had no intention of making an attempt on Lhassa.