As arranged, at one of the halting places, during the night, the quartet, met by guides and bearers as arranged for by the caravan leader, quietly forsook the caravan, and rode, on wiry ponies, into darkness and a land over which brooded the mysterious, terrible Himalayas.
Far away, in a city laboratory, with Roger’s chum, Billy Summers, an expert radio “op,” Grover tuned a set, amplified, increasing output strength; and then, as Roger, in the Tibetan night, increased his own signal power as Tip ground at the generator, each knew that with the other all was well. Yes. Just then!
Chapter 14
CAPTIVE ROGER
Across the Tibetan plain, with its sparse vegetation and occasional small and always distant group of rude huts surrounded by the grazing herd of the tiny community, the party made its way uneventfully.
Steadily the ground grew higher. Constantly the Backbone of the World, the great, forbidding, brooding Himalayan range, was a larger part of the landscape ahead.
The guides, through an interpreter whose English was almost minus, but who could understand Doctor Ryder’s pantomime and few recalled Tibetan phrases, had agreed reluctantly that they would avoid settled parts and keep away from villages. His hesitation was due, as was explained, to the greater danger of being set upon by bandits, or rough peasants who amounted to the same thing. Yet that experience came.
At dusk, as they ate tinned food and the natives laid aside packs, cared for the wiry ponies and made camp, the chief guide discerned the approach of a dozen riders, galloping their sturdy mounts in a cluster toward them.
Tip, with a grunt, snatched at his revolver. Mr. Clark, almost in a snarl, ordered him not to show it.
“We must be diplomatic,” the man added; and Doctor Ryder agreed.
“Roger,” he said to the excited, trembling young scientific representative, “can’t you get something ready that might startle them or look like magic?”