The man’s attitude was respectful and friendly. The bandits stayed around the camp, but the interpreter said that if the youth satisfied his companion of his abilities, it might free them, might even help them to reach their objective.
The lama had evidently been at a village not very far away: they had only to walk to that, and then, with much show of veneration for the lama, their holy man or priest, the villagers furnished ponies.
Roger, mounted and riding beside his friendly captor, with Tip and his apparatus on another pony and on a led carrier-animal, noted the tiny prayer-wheels by the ascending roadside, saw the other lamas they met with their prayer-wheels and prayer-papers, observed the reverent attitude of the peasants herding cattle or grazing sheep, and felt a renewed confidence in the outcome.
The lama could not converse with him, but the universal language of look and gesture served very well between them.
In due course, after riding up steeper and steeper paths, into the craggy, ravine-and-cliff torn mountains, they came to a great, dreary, uninviting stone monastery wherein the lamas stayed, studying, praying and conducting the strange rites of their religion.
“If you ask me,” muttered Tip, scanning the looming pile of stone, “We are a long way from the lab. What’s all them little windmills for?”
“Prayer-wheels,” Roger told him. “They say their prayers with them.”
“Well if you think I’m going to end up by spinning one of them whirligigs, you’re wrong. Tell this bird I’m incontrovertible.”
“You’re what?”
“Incontrovertible. I won’t change my religion.”