CHAPTER LV
A NEW CHAPTER
As soon as we were ready we mounted our horses and rode down to Drugub. Soon the old village came in sight with the house in which I had dwelt six years before, and the garden in which we had halted in the year 1906. On a terrace below the village stood our three tents and a fourth. The jamadar Ishe, old Hiraman, who never omitted to greet me, and young Anmar Ju, another of my old friends, salaamed and presented to me my new men. These three had orders from the tesildar to accompany me to Shyok.
“Who is the caravan bashi?” I asked.
“I am,” answered a little wrinkled old man called Abdul Kerim, and wearing a large yellow skin-coat (Illust. 289).
“What are the names of the others?”
“Kutus, Gulam, Suen, Abdul Rasak, Sedik, Lobsang, Kunchuk, Gaffar, Abdullah, and Sonam Kunchuk.”
“You are then eleven men altogether—three Lamaists and eight Mohammedans?”