[42] The ancient Greek legend of the Pleiades is that they were the daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and that the seventh, Merope, concealed herself out of shame for having loved a mortal. But the legend is doubtless vastly older than the Greeks and has an esoteric, or hidden meaning. A telescope reveals hundreds of stars in the constellation.
In this sense we are our brothers’ keepers: that if we injure them we are responsible. Therefore, our duty is, so vigilantly to control ourselves that we may injure none; and for this there is no substitute; all other duties take a lower place and are dependent on it.
From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE LAMA’S HOME.
When Ommony recovered consciousness it was some time before he was sure he was not dreaming. There was no sense of stability. The universe appeared to sway beneath him, and the sky, when he opened his eyes at last, swung like a compass-card. He closed his eyes, heard voices, and presently discovered he was in a stretcher being borne on men’s heads. When he opened his eyes again the first thing he saw was Diana looking down at him from a rock. She barked when he moved his hand.
It was a very rough stretcher made of poles and hide. His feet were loosely tied to it and a rope was passed over his breast, but he could get his hands under the rope, and its purpose was explained when the stretcher became tilted at an acute angle and he rode for a while with his feet pointed at the sky. On either hand were sloping limestone cliffs and he was being carried up a dry watercourse between them.
He felt no impulse to ask questions, but was curious about his own condition. He recalled rather vividly a time, ten years ago, when he was carried to an operating room. When the stretcher returned to the horizontal and he cautiously tested each muscle, he discovered that his leg-sinews were so stiff that he could hardly bear to move them. Then he remembered; every step of the climb up that titanic stairway came back to him like a nightmare.
He craned his neck looking for the sirdar, but failed to discover him. He could not see the stretcher-bearers, but there were eight Ahbors walking behind, ready to relieve them—hairy, savage-looking men, possessed of that air of deliberate indifference that usually hides extreme fanaticism; their eyes were large, like those of deer, and the hair came close up to their cheek-bones. They all had weapons; two were armed with bow and arrows; but no two weapons were alike, and no two were dressed exactly alike.