A week spent here was pleasant enough, enabling one, so to speak, to recover one's breath after descending from those heights we had left behind and before tackling those in front. I soon learnt, with the same school-boy jubilation to which I have previously alluded, that I was to accompany the advance.
Here, of course, at this rendezvous of troops many old friends ran across one another. It was sometimes difficult for two friends to recognise each other on account of the obstacles to recognition formed by their respective beards. The soldier's service beard, in its various forms and aspects, forms an interesting study. There is, of course, the ordinary dull beard grown by an adequately but not outrageously hirsute person and trimmed to a conventional shape, which makes the wearer resemble any such normal being as a naval officer, a parson, or respectable middle-aged civilian of everyday life. The only striking feature of this beard is that it is productive of unexpected likenesses. You have, for instance, known a brother officer for many years, and never found him possessed of any of the glamour of royalty; you meet him on service wearing his beard, and find he is the veritable double of the Prince of Wales.
But there are other beards. There is, for instance, what may be called the 'Infant prodigy' beard, a monstrosity adorning the chin of a quite youthful officer. The latter may be put to serve under you. And it takes time and much hardening of yourself against external influences before you have the effrontery to order the young gentleman about, or tell him off when he is in error. I remember an instance of a fairly senior captain calling on a regimental mess and being entertained during his visit by the only officer of that regiment then present. The latter possessed an 'Infant prodigy' beard, which was also flecked with a few abnormal grey hairs. I was in that mess too at the moment—in the capacity of honorary member only—and followed the interview with relish. The senior captain was becomingly deferential, and the youngster's grey beard wagged with what appeared becoming dignity. At last a light was brought in by a servant, for it was growing dark, which flashed for a moment on Mr. Greybeard's shoulder strap, and revealed two simple subaltern's stars. The gradual, almost imperceptible, change in the senior captain's manner, and the corresponding falling from his high estate of Mr. Greybeard were interesting to watch. The former soon got up to go.
'Damn that fellow! I mistook him for the colonel,' is what I am sure he said to himself when he got outside.
Then there is what may be called the 'British workman' beard—that is, the beard which is allowed to grow in its own sweet way, and may adopt any of the sizes or shapes that one sees on the faces of such British workmen as never visit a barber. This type also is productive of strange likenesses, not to public personages or one's own compeers, but to the men of the British working class whom one has known in old days. There were many officers so adorned who made excellent gamekeepers or gillies, and in particular I remember a certain stalwart major whose beard grew in two inverted horns that splayed outwards on his chest, and who was the very image of my father's old gardener. I once very nearly addressed him as 'Horton' by mistake, for that happened to have been the gardener's name.
CHAPTER VII
TO PHARI
The 'second advance' began in due course. The first few camping grounds were small, so that we had to proceed on the three days' march to Phari in several columns, two columns a day leaving Chumbi together, but halting at separate camping grounds on the way up, and meeting again at Phari.
This march to Phari was, until we actually reached the Phari plain, quite the wettest I have known. It rained incessantly. The first day we climbed a few miles up to Lingmatam. (How like one another the names of places in this part of the world are! It took me months to distinguish between Lingtam, Langram, and Lingmatam.) From Lingmatam (a sopping, spongy, flat little plain nestling in the hills, that had obviously only just missed its proper vocation of being a lake instead of a plain) we marched up a rough bridle-path through pine-woods to Dhota. We had a very long train of pack-mule transport in our column, and the checks up that steep narrow winding path were interminable, while rain fell the whole time. Whenever anything went wrong with a mule's load, which of course happened frequently owing to the steepness and roughness of the track, it was impossible to take the mule aside to adjust the load, for there was no room at the side, and the mule had to be halted where he was till the adjustment was completed. This involved the halting of say five hundred mules, who happened to be behind the mule who had first been halted. And when the latter at last moved off, it of course took an appreciable interval of time before the next mule followed suit. Multiply that appreciable interval by the number of mules in the rear, say five hundred, and you find that it takes perhaps a full half-hour before the five-hundredth is at last on the move again. Thus that initial adjustment of a refractory load has cost the rear of the column half an hour's delay, and by the end of the half-hour you may be sure that the load of another mule has got loose, and the whole process has to be repeated. This is just an instance of the trials of a transport officer, and of his faithful servants, the transport driver and the pack-mule.