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Title:      Lost Horizon (1933)
Author:     James Hilton
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Title:      Lost Horizon (1933)
Author:     James Hilton






PROLOGUE


Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the
disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have
met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they
had believed they had.  Rutherford wrote novels; Wyland was one of
the Embassy secretaries; he had just given us dinner at Tempelhof--
not very cheerfully, I fancied, but with the equanimity which a
diplomat must always keep on tap for such occasions.  It seemed
likely that nothing but the fact of being three celibate Englishmen
in a foreign capital could have brought us together, and I had
already reached the conclusion that the slight touch of priggishness
which I remembered in Wyland Tertius had not diminished with years
and an M.V.O.  Rutherford I liked more; he had ripened well out of
the skinny, precocious infant whom I had once alternately bullied
and patronized.  The probability that he was making much more money
and having a more interesting life than either of us gave Wyland and
me our one mutual emotion--a touch of envy.

The evening, however, was far from dull.  We had a good view of the
big Lufthansa machines as they arrived at the aerodrome from all
parts of Central Europe, and towards dusk, when arc flares were
lighted, the scene took on a rich, theatrical brilliance.  One of
the planes was English, and its pilot, in full flying kit, strolled
past our table and saluted Wyland, who did not at first recognize
him.  When he did so there were introductions all around, and the
stranger was invited to join us.  He was a pleasant, jolly youth
named Sanders.  Wyland made some apologetic remark about the
difficulty of identifying people when they were all dressed up in
Sibleys and flying helmets; at which Sanders laughed and answered:
"Oh, rather, I know that well enough.  Don't forget I was at
Baskul."  Wyland laughed also, but less spontaneously, and the
conversation then took other directions.

Sanders made an attractive addition to our small company, and we
all drank a great deal of beer together.  About ten o'clock Wyland
left us for a moment to speak to someone at a table nearby, and
Rutherford, into the sudden hiatus of talk, remarked:  "Oh, by the
way, you mentioned Baskul just now.  I know the place slightly.
What was it you were referring to that happened there?"

Sanders smiled rather shyly.  "Oh, just a bit of excitement we had
once when I was in the Service."  But he was a youth who could not
long refrain from being confidential.  "Fact is, an Afghan or an
Afridi or somebody ran off with one of our buses, and there was the
very devil to pay afterwards, as you can imagine.  Most impudent
thing I ever heard of.  The blighter waylaid the pilot, knocked him
out, pinched his kit, and climbed into the cockpit without a soul
spotting him.  Gave the mechanics the proper signals, too, and was
up and away in fine style.  The trouble was, he never came back."

Rutherford looked interested.  "When did this happen?"

"Oh--must have been about a year ago.  May, 'thirty-one.  We were
evacuating civilians from Baskul to Peshawar owing to the
revolution--perhaps you remember the business.  The place was in a
bit of an upset, or I don't suppose the thing could have happened.
Still, it DID happen--and it goes some way to show that clothes
make the man, doesn't it?"

Rutherford was still interested.  "I should have thought you'd have
had more than one fellow in charge of a plane on an occasion like
that?"

"We did, on all the ordinary troop carriers, but this machine was a
special one, built for some maharajah originally--quite a stunt
kind of outfit.  The Indian Survey people had been using it for
high-altitude flights in Kashmir."

"And you say it never reached Peshawar?"

"Never reached there, and never came down anywhere else, so far as
we could discover.  That was the queer part about it.  Of course,
if the fellow was a tribesman he might have made for the hills,
thinking to hold the passengers for ransom.  I suppose they all got
killed, somehow.  There are heaps of places on the frontier where
you might crash and not be heard of afterwards."

"Yes, I know the sort of country.  How many passengers were there?"

"Four, I think.  Three men and some woman missionary."

"Was one of the men, by any chance, named Conway?"

Sanders looked surprised.  "Why, yes, as a matter of fact.  'Glory'
Conway--did you know him?"

"He and I were at the same school," said Rutherford a little self-
consciously, for it was true enough, yet a remark which he was
aware did not suit him.

"He was a jolly fine chap, by all accounts of what he did at
Baskul," went on Sanders.

Rutherford nodded.  "Yes, undoubtedly . . . but how extraordinary
. . . extraordinary . . ."  He appeared to collect himself after a
spell of mind-wandering.  Then he said:  "It was never in the
papers, or I think I should have read about it.  How was that?"

Sanders looked suddenly rather uncomfortable, and even, I imagined,
was on the point of blushing.  "To tell you the truth," he replied,
"I seem to have let out more than I should have.  Or perhaps it
doesn't matter now--it must be stale news in every mess, let alone
in the bazaars.  It was hushed up, you see--I mean, about the way
the thing happened.  Wouldn't have sounded well.  The government
people merely gave out that one of their machines was missing, and
mentioned the names.  Sort of thing that didn't attract an awful
lot of attention among outsiders."

At this point Wyland rejoined us, and Sanders turned to him half-
apologetically.  "I say, Wyland, these chaps have been talking
about 'Glory' Conway.  I'm afraid I spilled the Baskul yarn--I hope
you don't think it matters?"

Wyland was severely silent for a moment.  It was plain that he was
reconciling the claims of compatriot courtesy and official
rectitude.  "I can't help feeling," he said at length, "that it's a
pity to make a mere anecdote of it.  I always thought you air
fellows were put on your honor not to tell tales out of school."
Having thus snubbed the youth, he turned, rather more graciously,
to Rutherford.  "Of course, it's all right in your case, but I'm
sure you realize that it's sometimes necessary for events up on the
frontier to be shrouded in a little mystery."

"On the other hand," replied Rutherford dryly, "one has a curious
itch to know the truth."

"It was never concealed from anyone who had any real reason for
wanting to know it.  I was at Peshawar at the time, and I can
assure you of that.  Did you know Conway well--since school days, I
mean?"

"Just a little at Oxford, and a few chance meetings since.  Did YOU
come across him much?"

"At Angora, when I was stationed there, we met once or twice."

"Did you like him?"

"I thought he was clever, but rather slack."

Rutherford smiled.  "He was certainly clever.  He had a most
exciting university career--until war broke out.  Rowing Blue and a
leading light at the Union and prizeman for this, that, and the
other--also I reckon him the best amateur pianist I ever heard.
Amazingly many-sided fellow, the kind, one feels, that Jowett would
have tipped for a future premier.  Yet, in point of fact, one never
heard much about him after those Oxford days.  Of course the war
cut into his career.  He was very young and I gather he went
through most of it."

"He was blown up or something," responded Wyland, "but nothing very
serious.  Didn't do at all badly, got a D.S.O. in France.  Then I
believe he went back to Oxford for a spell as a sort of don.  I
know he went east in 'twenty-one.  His Oriental languages got him
the job without any of the usual preliminaries.  He had several
posts."

Rutherford smiled more broadly.  "Then of course, that accounts for
everything.  History will never disclose the amount of sheer
brilliance wasted in the routine decoding F.O. chits and handing
round tea at legation bun fights."

"He was in the Consular Service, not the Diplomatic," said Wyland
loftily.  It was evident that he did not care for the chaff, and he
made no protest when, after a little more badinage of a similar
kind, Rutherford rose to go.  In any case it was getting late, and
I said I would go, too.  Wyland's attitude as we made our farewells
was still one of official propriety suffering in silence, but
Sanders was very cordial and he said he hoped to meet us again
sometime.

I was catching a transcontinental train at a very dismal hour of
the early morning, and, as we waited for a taxi, Rutherford asked
me if I would care to spend the interval at his hotel.  He had a
sitting room, he said, and we could talk.  I said it would suit me
excellently, and he answered:  "Good.  We can talk about Conway, if
you like, unless you're completely bored with his affairs."

I said that I wasn't at all, though I had scarcely known him.  "He
left at the end of my first term, and I never met him afterwards.
But he was extraordinarily kind to me on one occasion.  I was a new
boy and there was no earthly reason why he should have done what he
did.  It was only a trivial thing, but I've always remembered it."

Rutherford assented.  "Yes, I liked him a good deal too, though I
also saw surprisingly little of him, if you measure it in time."

And then there was a somewhat odd silence, during which it was
evident that we were both thinking of someone who had mattered to
us far more than might have been judged from such casual contacts.
I have often found since then that others who met Conway, even
quite formally and for a moment, remembered him afterwards with
great vividness.  He was certainly remarkable as a youth, and to
me, who had known him at the hero-worshipping age, his memory is
still quite romantically distinct.  He was tall and extremely good-
looking, and not only excelled at games but walked off with every
conceivable kind of school prize.  A rather sentimental headmaster
once referred to his exploits as "glorious," and from that arose
his nickname.  Perhaps only he could have survived it.  He gave a
Speech Day oration in Greek, I recollect, and was outstandingly
first-rate in school theatricals.  There was something rather
Elizabethan about him--his casual versatility, his good looks, that
effervescent combination of mental with physical activities.
Something a bit Philip-Sidney-ish.  Our civilization doesn't often
breed people like that nowadays.  I made a remark of this kind to
Rutherford, and he replied:  "Yes, that's true, and we have a
special word of disparagement for them--we call them dilettanti.  I
suppose some people must have called Conway that, people like
Wyland, for instance.  I don't much care for Wyland.  I can't stand
his type--all that primness and mountainous self-importance.  And
the complete head-prefectorial mind, did you notice it?  Little
phrases about 'putting people on their honor' and 'telling tales
out of school'--as though the bally Empire were the fifth form at
St. Dominic's!  But, then, I always fall foul of these sahib
diplomats."

We drove a few blocks in silence, and then he continued:  "Still, I
wouldn't have missed this evening.  It was a peculiar experience
for me, hearing Sanders tell that story about the affair at Baskul.
You see, I'd heard it before, and hadn't properly believed it.  It
was part of a much more fantastic story, which I saw no reason to
believe at all, or well, only one very slight reason, anyway.  NOW
there are TWO very slight reasons.  I daresay you can guess that
I'm not a particularly gullible person.  I've spent a good deal of
my life traveling about, and I know there are queer things in the
world--if you see them yourself, that is, but not so often if you
hear of them secondhand.  And yet . . ."

He seemed suddenly to realize that what he was saying could not
mean very much to me, and broke off with a laugh.  "Well, there's
one thing certain--I'm not likely to take Wyland into my
confidence.  It would be like trying to sell an epic poem to Tit-
Bits.  I'd rather try my luck with you."

"Perhaps you flatter me," I suggested.

"Your book doesn't lead me to think so."

I had not mentioned my authorship of that rather technical work
(after all, a neurologist's is not everybody's "shop"), and I was
agreeably surprised that Rutherford had even heard of it.  I said
as much, and he answered:  "Well, you see, I was interested,
because amnesia was Conway's trouble at one time."

We had reached the hotel and he had to get his key at the bureau.
As we went up to the fifth floor he said:  "All this is mere
beating about the bush.  The fact is, Conway isn't dead.  At least
he wasn't a few months ago."

This seemed beyond comment in the narrow space and time of an
elevator ascent.  In the corridor a few seconds later I responded:
"Are you sure of that?  How do you know?"

And he answered, unlocking his door:  "Because I traveled with him
from Shanghai to Honolulu in a Jap liner last November."  He did
not speak again till we were settled in armchairs and had fixed
ourselves with drinks and cigars.  "You see, I was in China in the
autumn on a holiday.  I'm always wandering about.  I hadn't seen
Conway for years.  We never corresponded, and I can't say he was
often in my thoughts, though his was one of the few faces that have
always come to me quite effortlessly if I tried to picture it.  I
had been visiting a friend in Hankow and was returning by the Pekin
express.  On the train I chanced to get into conversation with a
very charming Mother Superior of some French sisters of charity.
She was traveling to Chung-Kiang, where her convent was, and,
because I knew a little French, she seemed to enjoy chattering to
me about her work and affairs in general.  As a matter of fact, I
haven't much sympathy with ordinary missionary enterprise, but I'm
prepared to admit, as many people are nowadays, that the Romans
stand in a class by themselves, since at least they work hard and
don't pose as commissioned officers in a world full of other ranks.
Still, that's by the by.  The point is that this lady, talking to
me about the mission hospital at Chung-Kiang, mentioned a fever
case that had been brought in some weeks back, a man who they
thought must be a European, though he could give no account of
himself and had no papers.  His clothes were native, and of the
poorest kind, and when taken in by the nuns he had been very ill
indeed.  He spoke fluent Chinese, as well as pretty good French,
and my train companion assured me that before he realized the
nationality of the nuns, he had also addressed them in English with
a refined accent.  I said I couldn't imagine such a phenomenon, and
chaffed her gently about being able to detect a refined accent in a
language she didn't know.  We joked about these and other matters,
and it ended by her inviting me to visit the mission if ever I
happened to be thereabouts.  This, of course, seemed then as
unlikely as that I should climb Everest, and when the train reached
Chung-Kiang I shook hands with genuine regret that our chance
contact had come to an end.  As it happened, though, I was back in
Chung-Kiang within a few hours.  The train broke down a mile or two
further on, and with much difficulty pushed us back to the station,
where we learned that a relief engine could not possibly arrive for
twelve hours.  That's the sort of thing that often happens on
Chinese railways.  So there was half a day to be lived through in
Chung-Kiang--which made me decide to take the good lady at her word
and call at the mission.

"I did so, and received a cordial, though naturally a somewhat
astonished, welcome.  I suppose one of the hardest things for a non-
Catholic to realize is how easily a Catholic can combine official
rigidity with non-official broad-mindedness.  Is that too
complicated?  Anyhow, never mind, those mission people made quite
delightful company.  Before I'd been there an hour I found that a
meal had been prepared, and a young Chinese Christian doctor sat
down with me to it and kept up a conversation in a jolly mixture of
French and English.  Afterwards, he and the Mother Superior took me
to see the hospital, of which they were very proud.  I had told
them I was a writer, and they were simpleminded enough to be
aflutter at the thought that I might put them all into a book.  We
walked past the beds while the doctor explained the cases.  The
place was spotlessly clean and looked to be very competently run.
I had forgotten all about the mysterious patient with the refined
English accent till the Mother Superior reminded me that we were
just coming to him.  All I could see was the back of the man's
head; he was apparently asleep.  It was suggested that I should
address him in English, so I said 'Good afternoon,' which was the
first and not very original thing I could think of.  The man looked
up suddenly and said 'Good afternoon' in answer.  It was true; his
accent was educated.  But I hadn't time to be surprised at that,
for I had already recognized him, despite his beard and altogether
changed appearance and the fact that we hadn't met for so long.  He
was Conway.  I was certain he was, and yet, if I'd paused to think
about it, I might well have come to the conclusion that he couldn't
possibly be.  Fortunately I acted on the impulse of the moment.  I
called out his name and my own, and though he looked at me without
any definite sign of recognition, I was positive I hadn't made any
mistake.  There was an odd little twitching of the facial muscles
that I had noticed in him before, and he had the same eyes that at
Balliol we used to say were so much more of a Cambridge blue than
an Oxford.  But besides all that, he was a man one simply didn't
make mistakes about--to see him once was to know him always.  Of
course the doctor and the Mother Superior were greatly excited.  I
told them that I knew the man, that he was English, and a friend of
mine, and that if he didn't recognize me, it could only be because
he had completely lost his memory.  They agreed, in a rather amazed
way, and we had a long consultation about the case.  They weren't
able to make any suggestions as to how Conway could possibly have
arrived at Chung-Kiang in his condition.

"To make the story brief, I stayed there over a fortnight, hoping
that somehow or other I might induce him to remember things.  I
didn't succeed, but he regained his physical health, and we talked
a good deal.  When I told him quite frankly who I was and who he
was, he was docile enough not to argue about it.  He was quite
cheerful, even, in a vague sort of way, and seemed glad enough to
have my company.  To my suggestion that I should take him home, he
simply said that he didn't mind.  It was a little unnerving, that
apparent lack of any personal desire.  As soon as I could I
arranged for our departure.  I made a confidant of an acquaintance
in the consular office at Hankow, and thus the necessary passport
and so on were made out without the fuss there might otherwise have
been.  Indeed, it seemed to me that for Conway's sake the whole
business had better be kept free from publicity and newspaper
headlines, and I'm glad to say I succeeded in that.  It could have
been jam, of course, for the press.

"Well, we made our exit from China in quite a normal way.  We
sailed down the Yangtze to Nanking, and then took a train for
Shanghai.  There was a Jap liner leaving for 'Frisco that same
night, so we made a great rush and got on board."

"You did a tremendous lot for him," I said.

Rutherford did not deny it.  "I don't think I should have done
quite as much for anyone else," he answered.  "But there was
something about the fellow, and always had been--it's hard to
explain, but it made one enjoy doing what one could."

"Yes," I agreed.  "He had a peculiar charm, a sort of winsomeness
that's pleasant to remember even now when I picture it, though, of
course, I think of him still as a schoolboy in cricket flannels."

"A pity you didn't know him at Oxford.  He was just brilliant--
there's no other word.  After the war people said he was different.
I, myself, think he was.  But I can't help feeling that with all
his gifts he ought to have been doing bigger work.  All that
Britannic Majesty stuff isn't my idea of a great man's career.  And
Conway was--or should have been--GREAT.  You and I have both known
him, and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it's an
experience we shan't ever forget.  And even when he and I met in
the middle of China, with his mind a blank and his past a mystery,
there was still that queer core of attractiveness in him."

Rutherford paused reminiscently and then continued:  "As you can
imagine, we renewed our old friendship on the ship.  I told him as
much as I knew about himself, and he listened with an attention
that might almost have seemed a little absurd.  He remembered
everything quite clearly since his arrival at Chung-Kiang, and
another point that may interest you is that he hadn't forgotten
languages.  He told me, for instance, that he knew he must have had
something to do with India, because he could speak Hindostani.

"At Yokohama the ship filled up, and among the new passengers was
Sieveking, the pianist, en route for a concert tour in the States.
He was at our dining table and sometimes talked with Conway in
German.  That will show you how outwardly normal Conway was.  Apart
from his loss of memory, which didn't show in ordinary intercourse,
there couldn't have seemed much wrong with him.

"A few nights after leaving Japan, Sieveking was prevailed upon to
give a piano recital on board, and Conway and I went to hear him.
He played well, of course, some Brahms and Scarlatti, and a lot of
Chopin.  Once or twice I glanced at Conway and judged that he was
enjoying it all, which appeared very natural, in view of his own
musical past.  At the end of the program the show lengthened out
into an informal series of encores which Sieveking bestowed, very
amiably, I thought, upon a few enthusiasts grouped round the piano.
Again he played mostly Chopin; he rather specializes in it, you
know.  At last he left the piano and moved towards the door, still
followed by admirers, but evidently feeling that he had done enough
for them.  In the meantime a rather odd thing was beginning to
happen.  Conway had sat down at the keyboard and was playing some
rapid, lively piece that I didn't recognize, but which drew
Sieveking back in great excitement to ask what it was.  Conway,
after a long and rather strange silence, could only reply that he
didn't know.  Sieveking exclaimed that it was incredible, and grew
more excited still.  Conway then made what appeared to be a
tremendous physical and mental effort to remember, and said at last
that the thing was a Chopin study.  I didn't think myself it could
be, and I wasn't surprised when Sieveking denied it absolutely.
Conway, however, grew suddenly quite indignant about the matter--
which startled me, because up to then he had shown so little
emotion about anything.  'My dear fellow,' Sieveking remonstrated,
'I know everything of Chopin's that exists, and I can assure you
that he never wrote what you have just played.  He might well have
done so, because it's utterly his style, but he just didn't.  I
challenge you to show me the score in any of the editions.'  To
which Conway replied at length:  'Oh, yes, I remember now, it was
never printed.  I only know it myself from meeting a man who used
to be one of Chopin's pupils. . . .  Here's another unpublished
thing I learned from him.'"

Rutherford studied me with his eyes as he went on:  "I don't know
if you're a musician, but even if you're not, I daresay you'll be
able to imagine something of Sieveking's excitement, and mine, too,
as Conway continued to play.  To me, of course, it was a sudden and
quite mystifying glimpse into his past, the first clew of any kind
that had escaped.  Sieveking was naturally engrossed in the musical
problem, which was perplexing enough, as you'll realize when I
remind you that Chopin died in 1849.

"The whole incident was so unfathomable, in a sense, that perhaps I
should add that there were at least a dozen witnesses of it,
including a California university professor of some repute.  Of
course, it was easy to say that Conway's explanation was
chronologically impossible, or almost so; but there was still the
music itself to be explained.  If it wasn't what Conway said it
was, then what WAS it?  Sieveking assured me that if those two
pieces were published, they would be in every virtuoso's repertoire
within six months.  Even if this is an exaggeration, it shows
Sieveking's opinion of them.  After much argument at the time, we
weren't able to settle anything, for Conway stuck to his story, and
as he was beginning to look fatigued, I was anxious to get him away
from the crowd and off to bed.  The last episode was about making
some phonograph records.  Sieveking said he would fix up all
arrangements as soon as he reached America, and Conway gave his
promise to play before the microphone.  I often feel it was a great
pity, from every point of view, that he wasn't able to keep his
word."

Rutherford glanced at his watch and impressed on me that I should
have plenty of time to catch my train, since his story was
practically finished.  "Because that night--the night after the
recital--he got back his memory.  We had both gone to bed and I was
lying awake, when he came into my cabin and told me.  His face had
stiffened into what I can only describe as an expression of
overwhelming sadness--a sort of universal sadness, if you know what
I mean--something remote or impersonal, a Wehmut or Weltschmerz, or
whatever the Germans call it.  He said he could call to mind
everything, that it had begun to come back to him during
Sieveking's playing, though only in patches at first.  He sat for a
long while on the edge of my bed, and I let him take his own time
and make his own method of telling me.  I said that I was glad his
memory had returned, but sorry if he already wished that it hadn't.
He looked up then and paid me what I shall always regard as a
marvelously high compliment.  'Thank God, Rutherford,' he said,
'you are capable of imagining things.'  After a while I dressed and
persuaded him to do the same, and we walked up and down the boat
deck.  It was a calm night, starry and very warm, and the sea had a
pale, sticky look, like condensed milk.  Except for the vibration
of the engines, we might have been pacing an esplanade.  I let
Conway go on in his own way, without questions at first.  Somewhere
about dawn he began to talk consecutively, and it was breakfast-
time and hot sunshine when he had finished.  When I say 'finished'
I don't mean that there was nothing more to tell me after that
first confession.  He filled in a good many important gaps during
the next twenty-four hours.  He was very unhappy, and couldn't have
slept, so we talked almost constantly.  About the middle of the
following night the ship was due to reach Honolulu.  We had drinks
in my cabin the evening before; he left me about ten o'clock, and I
never saw him again."

"You don't mean--"  I had a picture in mind of a very calm,
deliberate suicide I once saw on the mail boat from Holyhead to
Kingstown.

Rutherford laughed.  "Oh, Lord, no--he wasn't that sort.  He just
gave me the slip.  It was easy enough to get ashore, but he must
have found it hard to avoid being traced when I set people
searching for him, as of course I did.  Afterwards I learned that
he'd managed to join the crew of a banana boat going south to
Fiji."

"How did you get to know that?"

"Quite straightforwardly.  He wrote to me, three months later, from
Bangkok, enclosing a draft to pay the expenses I'd been put to on
his account.  He thanked me and said he was very fit.  He also said
he was about to set out on a long journey--to the northwest.  That
was all."

"Where did he mean?"

"Yes, it's pretty vague, isn't it?  A good many places lie to the
northwest of Bangkok.  Even Berlin does, for that matter."

Rutherford paused and filled up my glass and his own.  It had been
a queer story--or else he had made it seem so; I hardly knew which.
The music part of it, though puzzling, did not interest me so much
as the mystery of Conway's arrival at that Chinese mission
hospital; and I made this comment.  Rutherford answered that in
point of fact they were both parts of the same problem.  "Well, how
DID he get to Chung-Kiang?" I asked.  "I suppose he told you all
about it that night on the ship?"

"He told me something about it, and it would be absurd for me,
after letting you know so much, to be secretive about the rest.
Only, to begin with, it's a longish sort of tale, and there
wouldn't be time even to outline it before you'd have to be off for
your train.  And besides, as it happens, there's a more convenient
way.  I'm a little diffident about revealing the tricks of my
dishonorable calling, but the truth is, Conway's story, as I
pondered over it afterwards, appealed to me enormously.  I had
begun by making simple notes after our various conversations on the
ship, so that I shouldn't forget details; later, as certain aspects
of the thing began to grip me, I had the urge to do more, to
fashion the written and recollected fragments into a single
narrative.  By that I don't mean that I invented or altered
anything.  There was quite enough material in what he told me: he
was a fluent talker and had a natural gift for communicating an
atmosphere.  Also, I suppose, I felt I was beginning to understand
the man himself."  He went to an attaché case, and took out a
bundle of typed manuscript.  "Well, here it is, anyhow, and you can
make what you like of it."

"By which I suppose you mean that I'm not expected to believe it?"

"Oh, hardly so definite a warning as that.  But mind, if you DO
believe, it will be for Tertullian's famous reason--you remember?
quia impossibile est.  Not a bad argument, maybe.  Let me know what
you think, at all events."

I took the manuscript away with me and read most of it on the
Ostend express.  I intended returning it with a long letter when I
reached England, but there were delays, and before I could post it
I got a short note from Rutherford to say that he was off on his
wanderings again and would have no settled address for some months.
He was going to Kashmir, he wrote, and thence "east."  I was not
surprised.



CHAPTER 1


During that third week of May the situation in Baskul had become
much worse and, on the 20th, air force machines arrived by
arrangement from Peshawar to evacuate the white residents.  These
numbered about eighty, and most were safely transported across the
mountains in troop carriers.  A few miscellaneous aircraft were
also employed, among them being a cabin machine lent by the
maharajah of Chandrapur.  In this, about 10 a.m., four passengers
embarked:  Miss Roberta Brinklow, of the Eastern Mission; Henry D.
Barnard, an American; Hugh Conway, H.M. Consul; and Captain Charles
Mallinson, H.M. Vice Consul.

These names are as they appeared later in Indian and British
newspapers.



Conway was thirty-seven.  He had been at Baskul for two years, in a
job which now, in the light of events, could be regarded as a
persistent backing of the wrong horse.  A stage of his life was
finished; in a few weeks' time, or perhaps after a few months'
leave in England, he would be sent somewhere else.  Tokyo or
Teheran, Manila or Muscat; people in his profession never knew what
was coming.  He had been ten years in the Consular Service, long
enough to assess his own chances as shrewdly as he was apt to do
those of others.  He knew that the plums were not for him; but it
was genuinely consoling, and not merely sour grapes, to reflect
that he had no taste for plums.  He preferred the less formal and
more picturesque jobs that were on offer, and as these were often
not good ones, it had doubtless seemed to others that he was
playing his cards rather badly.  Actually, he felt he had played
them rather well; he had had a varied and moderately enjoyable
decade.

He was tall, deeply bronzed, with brown short-cropped hair and
slate-blue eyes.  He was inclined to look severe and brooding until
he laughed, and then (but it happened not so very often) he looked
boyish.  There was a slight nervous twitch near the left eye which
was usually noticeable when he worked too hard or drank too much,
and as he had been packing and destroying documents throughout the
whole of the day and night preceding the evacuation, the twitch was
very conspicuous when he climbed into the aeroplane.  He was tired
out, and overwhelmingly glad that he had contrived to be sent in
the maharajah's luxurious airliner instead of in one of the crowded
troop carriers.  He spread himself indulgently in the basket seat
as the plane soared aloft.  He was the sort of man who, being used
to major hardships, expected minor comforts by way of compensation.
Cheerfully he might endure the rigors of the road to Samarkand, but
from London to Paris he would spend his last tenner on the Golden
Arrow.

It was after the flight had lasted more than an hour that Mallinson
said he thought the pilot wasn't keeping a straight course.
Mallinson sat immediately in front.  He was a youngster in his
middle twenties, pink-cheeked, intelligent without being
intellectual, beset with public school limitations, but also with
their excellences.  Failure to pass an examination was the chief
cause of his being sent to Baskul, where Conway had had six months
of his company and had grown to like him.

But Conway did not want to make the effort that an aeroplane
conversation demands.  He opened his eyes drowsily and replied that
whatever the course taken, the pilot presumably knew best.

Half an hour later, when weariness and the drone of the engine had
lulled him nearly to sleep, Mallinson disturbed him again.  "I say,
Conway, I thought Fenner was piloting us?"

"Well, isn't he?"

"The chap turned his head just now and I'll swear it wasn't he."

"It's hard to tell, through that glass panel."

"I'd know Fenner's face anywhere."

"Well, then, it must be someone else.  I don't see that it
matters."

"But Fenner told me definitely that he was taking this machine."

"They must have changed their minds and given him one of the
others."

"Well, who is this man, then?"

"My dear boy, how should I know?  You don't suppose I've memorized
the face of every flight lieutenant in the air force, do you?"

"I know a good many of them, anyway, but I don't recognize this
fellow."

"Then he must belong to the minority whom you don't know."  Conway
smiled and added:  "When we arrive in Peshawar very soon you can
make his acquaintance and ask him all about himself."

"At this rate we shan't get to Peshawar at all.  The man's right
off his course.  And I'm not surprised, either--flying so damned
high he can't see where he is."

Conway was not bothering.  He was used to air travel, and took
things for granted.  Besides, there was nothing particular he was
eager to do when he got to Peshawar, and no one particular he was
eager to see; so it was a matter of complete indifference to him
whether the journey took four hours or six.  He was unmarried;
there would be no tender greetings on arrival.  He had friends, and
a few of them would probably take him to the club and stand him
drinks; it was a pleasant prospect, but not one to sigh for in
anticipation.

Nor did he sigh retrospectively, when he viewed the equally
pleasant, but not wholly satisfying vista of the past decade.
Changeable, fair intervals, becoming rather unsettled; it had been
his own meteorological summary during that time, as well as the
world's.  He thought of Baskul, Pekin, Macao, and other places--he
had moved about pretty often.  Remotest of all was Oxford, where he
had had a couple of years of donhood after the war, lecturing on
Oriental history, breathing dust in sunny libraries, cruising down
the High on a push bicycle.  The vision attracted, but did not stir
him; there was a sense in which he felt that he was still a part of
all that he might have been.

A familiar gastric lurch informed him that the plane was beginning
to descend.  He felt tempted to rag Mallinson about his fidgets,
and would perhaps have done so had not the youth risen abruptly,
bumping his head against the roof and waking Barnard, the American,
who had been dozing in his seat at the other side of the narrow
gangway.  "My God!" Mallinson cried, peering through the window.
"Look down there!"

Conway looked.  The view was certainly not what he had expected,
if, indeed, he had expected anything.  Instead of the trim,
geometrically laid-out cantonments and the larger oblongs of the
hangars, nothing was visible but an opaque mist veiling an immense,
sun-brown desolation.  The plane, though descending rapidly, was
still at a height unusual for ordinary flying.  Long, corrugated
mountain ridges could be picked out, perhaps a mile or so closer
than the cloudier smudge of the valleys.  It was typical frontier
scenery, though Conway had never viewed it before from such an
altitude.  It was also, which struck him as odd, nowhere that he
could imagine near Peshawar.  "I don't recognize this part of the
world," he commented.  Then, more privately, for he did not wish to
alarm the others, he added into Mallinson's ear:  "Looks as if
you're right.  The man's lost his way."

The plane was swooping down at a tremendous speed, and as it did
so, the air grew hotter; the scorched earth below was like an oven
with the door suddenly opened.  One mountaintop after another
lifted itself above the horizon in craggy silhouette; now the
flight was along a curving valley, the base of which was strewn
with rocks and the debris of dried-up watercourses.  It looked like
a floor littered with nutshells.  The plane bumped and tossed in
air pockets as uncomfortably as a rowboat in a swell.  All four
passengers had to hold onto their seats.

"Looks like he wants to land!" shouted the American hoarsely.

"He can't!" Mallinson retorted.  "He'd be simply mad if he tried
to!  He'll crash and then--"

But the pilot did land.  A small cleared space opened by the side
of a gully, and with considerable skill the machine was jolted and
heaved to a standstill.  What happened after that, however, was
more puzzling and less reassuring.  A swarm of bearded and turbaned
tribesmen came forward from all directions, surrounding the machine
and effectively preventing anyone from getting out of it except the
pilot.  The latter clambered to earth and held excited colloquy
with them, during which proceeding it became clear that, so far
from being Fenner, he was not an Englishman at all, and possibly
not even a European.  Meanwhile cans of gasoline were fetched from
a dump close by, and emptied into the exceptionally capacious
tanks.  Grins and disregarding silence met the shouts of the four
imprisoned passengers, while the slightest attempt to alight
provoked a menacing movement from a score of rifles.  Conway, who
knew a little Pushtu, harangued the tribesmen as well as he could
in that language, but without effect; while the pilot's sole retort
to any remarks addressed to him in any language was a significant
flourish of his revolver.  Midday sunlight, blazing on the roof of
the cabin, grilled the air inside till the occupants were almost
fainting with the heat and with the exertion of their protests.
They were quite powerless; it had been a condition of the
evacuation that they should carry no arms.

When the tanks were at last screwed up, a gasoline can filled with
tepid water was handed through one of the cabin windows.  No
questions were answered, though it did not appear that the men were
personally hostile.  After a further parley the pilot climbed back
into the cockpit, a Pathan clumsily swung the propeller, and the
flight was resumed.  The takeoff, in that confined space and with
the extra gasoline load, was even more skillful than the landing.
The plane rose high into the hazy vapors; then turned east, as if
setting a course.  It was mid-afternoon.

A most extraordinary and bewildering business!  As the cooler air
refreshed them, the passengers could hardly believe that it had
really happened; it was an outrage to which none could recall any
parallel, or suggest any precedent, in all the turbulent records of
the frontier.  It would have been incredible, indeed, had they not
been victims of it themselves.  It was quite natural that high
indignation should follow incredulity, and anxious speculation only
when indignation had worn itself out.  Mallinson then developed the
theory which, in the absence of any other, they found easiest to
accept.  They were being kidnaped for ransom.  The trick was by no
means new in itself, though this particular technique must be
regarded as original.  It was a little more comforting to feel that
they were not making entirely virgin history; after all, there had
been kidnapings before, and a good many of them had ended up all
right.  The tribesmen kept you in some lair in the mountains till
the government paid up and you were released.  You were treated
quite decently, and as the money that had to be paid wasn't your
own, the whole business was only unpleasant while it lasted.
Afterwards, of course, the Air people sent a bombing squadron, and
you were left with one good story to tell for the rest of your
life.  Mallinson enunciated the proposition a shade nervously; but
Barnard, the American, chose to be heavily facetious.  "Well,
gentlemen, I daresay this is a cute idea on somebody's part, but I
can't exactly see that your air force has covered itself with
glory.  You Britishers make jokes about the holdups in Chicago and
all that, but I don't recollect any instance of a gunman running
off with one of Uncle Sam's aeroplanes.  And I should like to know,
by the way, what this fellow did with the real pilot.  Sandbagged
him, I bet."  He yawned.  He was a large, fleshy man, with a hard-
bitten face in which good-humored wrinkles were not quite offset by
pessimistic pouches.  Nobody in Baskul had known much about him
except that he had arrived from Persia, where it was presumed he
had something to do with oil.

Conway meanwhile was busying himself with a very practical task.
He had collected every scrap of paper that they all had, and was
composing messages in various native languages to be dropped to
earth at intervals.  It was a slender chance, in such sparsely
populated country, but worth taking.

The fourth occupant, Miss Brinklow, sat tight-lipped and straight-
backed, with few comments and no complaints.  She was a small,
rather leathery woman, with an air of having been compelled to
attend a party at which there were goings-on that she could not
wholly approve.

Conway had talked less than the two other men, for translating SOS
messages into dialects was a mental exercise requiring concentration.
He had, however, answered questions when asked, and had agreed,
tentatively, with Mallinson's kidnaping theory.  He had also
agreed, to some extent, with Barnard's strictures on the air force.
"Though one can see, of course, how it may have happened.  With the
place in commotion as it was, one man in flying kit would look very
much like another.  No one would think of doubting the bona fides
of any man in the proper clothes who looked as if he knew his job.
And this fellow MUST have known it--the signals, and so forth.
Pretty obvious, too, that he knows how to fly . . . still, I agree
with you that it's the sort of thing that someone ought to get into
hot water about.  And somebody will, you may be sure, though I
suspect he won't deserve it."

"Well, sir," responded Barnard, "I certainly do admire the way you
manage to see both sides of the question.  It's the right spirit to
have, no doubt, even when you're being taken for a ride."

Americans, Conway reflected, had the knack of being able to say
patronizing things without being offensive.  He smiled tolerantly,
but did not continue the conversation.  His tiredness was of a kind
that no amount of possible peril could stave off.  Towards late
afternoon, when Barnard and Mallinson, who had been arguing,
appealed to him on some point, it appeared that he had fallen
asleep.

"Dead beat," Mallinson commented.  "And I don't wonder at it, after
these last few weeks."

"You're his friend?" queried Barnard.

"I've worked with him at the Consulate.  I happen to know that he
hasn't been in bed for the last four nights.  As a matter of fact,
we're damned lucky in having him with us in a tight corner like
this.  Apart from knowing the languages, he's got a sort of way
with him in dealing with people.  If anyone can get us out of the
mess, he'll do it.  He's pretty cool about most things."

"Well, let him have his sleep, then," agreed Barnard.

Miss Brinklow made one of her rare remarks.  "I think he LOOKS like
a very brave man," she said.



Conway was far less certain that he WAS a very brave man.  He had
closed his eyes in sheer physical fatigue, but without actually
sleeping.  He could hear and feel every movement of the plane, and
he heard also, with mixed feelings, Mallinson's eulogy of himself.
It was then that he had his doubts, recognizing a tight sensation
in his stomach which was his own bodily reaction to a disquieting
mental survey.  He was not, as he knew well from experience, one of
those persons who love danger for its own sake.  There was an
aspect of it which he sometimes enjoyed, an excitement, a purgative
effect upon sluggish emotions, but he was far from fond of risking
his life.  Twelve years earlier he had grown to hate the perils of
trench warfare in France, and had several times avoided death by
declining to attempt valorous impossibilities.  Even his D.S.O. had
been won, not so much by physical courage, as by a certain hardly
developed technique of endurance.  And since the war, whenever
there had been danger ahead, he had faced it with increasing lack
of relish unless it promised extravagant dividends in thrills.

He still kept his eyes closed.  He was touched, and a little
dismayed, by what he had heard Mallinson say.  It was his fate in
life to have his equanimity always mistaken for pluck, whereas it
was actually something much more dispassionate and much less
virile.  They were all in a damnably awkward situation, it seemed
to him, and so far from being full of bravery about it, he felt
chiefly an enormous distaste for whatever trouble might be in
store.  There was Miss Brinklow, for instance.  He foresaw that in
certain circumstances he would have to act on the supposition that
because she was a woman she mattered far more than the rest of them
put together, and he shrank from a situation in which such
disproportionate behavior might be unavoidable.

Nevertheless, when he showed signs of wakefulness, it was to Miss
Brinklow that he spoke first.  He realized that she was neither
young nor pretty--negative virtues, but immensely helpful ones in
such difficulties as those in which they might soon find
themselves.  He was also rather sorry for her, because he suspected
that neither Mallinson nor the American liked missionaries,
especially female ones.  He himself was unprejudiced, but he was
afraid she would find his open mind a less familiar and therefore
an even more disconcerting phenomenon.  "We seem to be in a queer
fix," he said, leaning forward to her ear, "but I'm glad you're
taking it calmly.  I don't really think anything dreadful is going
to happen to us."

"I'm certain it won't if you can prevent it," she answered; which
did not console him.

"You must let me know if there is anything we can do to make you
more comfortable."

Barnard caught the word.  "Comfortable?" he echoed raucously.
"Why, of course we're comfortable.  We're just enjoying the trip.
Pity we haven't a pack of cards--we could play a rubber of bridge."

Conway welcomed the spirit of the remark, though he disliked
bridge.  "I don't suppose Miss Brinklow plays," he said, smiling.

But the missionary turned round briskly to retort:  "Indeed I do,
and I could never see any harm in cards at all.  There's nothing
against them in the Bible."

They all laughed, and seemed obliged to her for providing an
excuse.  At any rate, Conway thought, she wasn't hysterical.

All afternoon the plane had soared through the thin mists of the
upper atmosphere, far too high to give clear sight of what lay
beneath.  Sometimes, at longish intervals, the veil was torn for a
moment, to display the jagged outline of a peak, or the glint of
some unknown stream.  The direction could be determined roughly
from the sun; it was still east, with occasional twists to the
north; but where it had led depended on the speed of travel, which
Conway could not judge with any accuracy.  It seemed likely,
though, that the flight must already have exhausted a good deal of
the gasoline; though that again depended on uncertain factors.
Conway had no technical knowledge of aircraft, but he was sure that
the pilot, whoever he might be, was altogether an expert.  That
halt in the rock-strewn valley had demonstrated it, and also other
incidents since.  And Conway could not repress a feeling that was
always his in the presence of any superb and indisputable
competence.  He was so used to being appealed to for help that mere
awareness of someone who would neither ask nor need it was slightly
tranquilizing, even amidst the greater perplexities of the future.
But he did not expect his companions to share such a tenuous
emotion.  He recognized that they were likely to have far more
personal reasons for anxiety than he had himself.  Mallinson, for
instance, was engaged to a girl in England; Barnard might be
married; Miss Brinklow had her work, vocation, or however she might
regard it.  Mallinson, incidentally, was by far the least composed;
as the hours passed he showed himself increasingly excitable--apt,
also, to resent to Conway's face the very coolness which he had
praised behind his back.  Once, above the roar of the engine, a
sharp storm of argument arose.  "Look here," Mallinson shouted
angrily, "are we bound to sit here twiddling our thumbs while this
maniac does everything he damn well wants?  What's to prevent us
from smashing that panel and having it out with him?"

"Nothing at all," replied Conway, "except that he's armed and we're
not, and that in any case, none of us would know how to bring the
machine to earth afterwards."

"It can't be very hard, surely.  I daresay you could do it."

"My dear Mallinson, why is it always ME you expect to perform these
miracles?"

"Well, anyway, this business is getting hellishly on my nerves.
Can't we MAKE the fellow come down?"

"How do you suggest it should be done?"

Mallinson was becoming more and more agitated.  "Well, he's THERE,
isn't he?  About six feet away from us, and we're three men to one!
Have we got to stare at his damned back all the time?  At least we
might force him to tell us what the game is."

"Very well, we'll see."  Conway took a few paces forward to the
partition between the cabin and the pilot's cockpit, which was
situated in front and somewhat above.  There was a pane of glass,
about six inches square and made to slide open, through which the
pilot, by turning his head and stooping slightly, could communicate
with his passengers.  Conway tapped on this with his knuckles.  The
response was almost comically as he had expected.  The glass panel
slid sideways and the barrel of a revolver obtruded.  Not a word;
just that.  Conway retreated without arguing the point, and the
panel slid back again.

Mallinson, who had watched the incident, was only partly satisfied.
"I don't suppose he'd have dared to shoot," he commented.  "It's
probably bluff."

"Quite," agreed Conway, "but I'd rather leave you to make sure."

"Well, I do feel we ought to put up some sort of a fight before
giving in tamely like this."

Conway was sympathetic.  He recognized the convention, with all its
associations of red-coated soldiers and school history books, that
Englishmen fear nothing, never surrender, and are never defeated.
He said:  "Putting up a fight without a decent chance of winning is
a poor game, and I'm not that sort of hero."

"Good for you, sir," interposed Barnard heartily.  "When somebody's
got you by the short hairs you may as well give in pleasantly and
admit it.  For my part I'm going to enjoy life while it lasts and
have a cigar.  I hope you don't think a little bit of extra danger
matters to us?"

"Not so far as I'm concerned, but it might bother Miss Brinklow."

Barnard was quick to make amends.  "Pardon me, madam, but do you
mind if I smoke?"

"Not at all," she answered graciously.  "I don't do so myself, but
I just love the smell of a cigar."

Conway felt that of all the women who could possibly have made such
a remark, she was easily the most typical.  Anyhow, Mallinson's
excitement had calmed a little, and to show friendliness he offered
him a cigarette, though he did not light one himself.  "I know how
you feel," he said gently.  "It's a bad outlook, and it's all the
worse, in some ways, because there isn't much we can do about it."

"And all the better, too, in other ways," he could not help adding
to himself.  For he was still immensely fatigued.  There was also
in his nature a trait which some people might have called laziness,
though it was not quite that.  No one was capable of harder
work, when it had to be done, and few could better shoulder
responsibility; but the facts remained that he was not passionately
fond of activity, and did not enjoy responsibility at all.  Both
were included in his job, and he made the best of them, but he was
always ready to give way to anyone else who could function as well
or better.  It was partly this, no doubt, that had made his success
in the Service less striking than it might have been.  He was not
ambitious enough to shove his way past others, or to make an
important parade of doing nothing when there was really nothing
doing.  His dispatches were sometimes laconic to the point of
curtness, and his calm in emergencies, though admired, was often
suspected of being too sincere.  Authority likes to feel that a man
is imposing some effort on himself, and that his apparent
nonchalance is only a cloak to disguise an outfit of well-bred
emotions.  With Conway the dark suspicion had sometimes been
current that he really was as unruffled as he looked, and that
whatever happened, he did not give a damn.  But this, too, like the
laziness, was an imperfect interpretation.  What most observers
failed to perceive in him was something quite bafflingly simple--a
love of quietness, contemplation, and being alone.

Now, since he was so inclined and there was nothing else to do, he
leaned back in the basket chair and went definitely to sleep.  When
he woke he noticed that the others, despite their various
anxieties, had likewise succumbed.  Miss Brinklow was sitting bolt
upright with her eyes closed, like some rather dingy and outmoded
idol; Mallinson had lolled forward in his place with his chin in
the palm of a hand.  The American was even snoring.  Very sensible
of them all, Conway thought; there was no point in wearying
themselves with shouting.  But immediately he was aware of certain
physical sensations in himself, slight dizziness and heart-thumping
and a tendency to inhale sharply and with effort.  He remembered
similar symptoms once before--in the Swiss Alps.

Then he turned to the window and gazed out.  The surrounding sky
had cleared completely, and in the light of late afternoon there
came to him a vision which, for the instant, snatched the remaining
breath out of his lungs.  Far away, at the very limit of distance,
lay range upon range of snow peaks, festooned with glaciers, and
floating, in appearance, upon vast levels of cloud.  They compassed
the whole arc of the circle, merging towards the west in a horizon
that was fierce, almost garish in coloring, like an impressionist
backdrop done by some half-mad genius.  And meanwhile, the plane,
on that stupendous stage, was droning over an abyss in the face of
a sheer white wall that seemed part of the sky itself until the sun
caught it.  Then, like a dozen piled-up Jungfraus seen from Mürren,
it flamed into superb and dazzling incandescence.

Conway was not apt to be easily impressed, and as a rule he did not
care for "views," especially the more famous ones for which
thoughtful municipalities provide garden seats.  Once, on being
taken to Tiger Hill, near Darjeeling, to watch the sunrise upon
Everest, he had found the highest mountain in the world a definite
disappointment.  But this fearsome spectacle beyond the window-pane
was of different caliber; it had no air of posing to be admired.
There was something raw and monstrous about those uncompromising
ice cliffs, and a certain sublime impertinence in approaching them
thus.  He pondered, envisioning maps, calculating distances,
estimating times and speeds.  Then he became aware that Mallinson
had wakened also.  He touched the youth on the arm.



CHAPTER 2


It was typical of Conway that he let the others waken for
themselves, and made small response to their exclamations of
astonishment; yet later, when Barnard sought his opinion, gave it
with something of the detached fluency of a university professor
elucidating a problem.  He thought it likely, he said, that they
were still in India; they had been flying east for several hours,
too high to see much, but probably the course had been along some
river valley, one stretching roughly east and west.  "I wish I
hadn't to rely on memory, but my impression is that the valley of
the upper Indus fits in well enough.  That would have brought us by
now to a very spectacular part of the world, and, as you see, so it
has."

"You know where we are, then?" Barnard interrupted.

"Well, no--I've never been anywhere near here before, but I
wouldn't be surprised if that mountain is Nanga Parbat, the one
Mummery lost his life on.  In structure and general layout it seems
in accord with all I've heard about it."

"You are a mountaineer yourself?"

"In my younger days I was keen.  Only the usual Swiss climbs, of
course."

Mallinson intervened peevishly:  "There'd be more point in
discussing where we're going to.  I wish to God somebody could tell
us."

"Well, it looks to me as if we're heading for that range yonder,"
said Barnard.  "Don't you think so, Conway?  You'll excuse me
calling you that, but if we're all going to have a little adventure
together, it's a pity to stand on ceremony."

Conway thought it very natural that anyone should call him by his
own name, and found Barnard's apologies for so doing a trifle
needless.  "Oh, certainly," he agreed, and added:  "I think that
range must be the Karakorams.  There are several passes if our man
intends to cross them."

"Our man?" exclaimed Mallinson.  "You mean our maniac!  I reckon
it's time we dropped the kidnaping theory.  We're far past the
frontier country by now, there aren't any tribes living around
here.  The only explanation I can think of is that the fellow's a
raving lunatic.  Would anybody except a lunatic fly into this sort
of country?"

"I know that nobody except a damn fine airman COULD," retorted
Barnard.  "I never was great at geography, but I understand that
these are reputed to be the highest mountains in the world, and if
that's so, it'll be a pretty first-class performance to cross
them."

"And also the will of God," put in Miss Brinklow unexpectedly.

Conway did not offer his opinion.  The will of God or the lunacy of
man--it seemed to him that you could take your choice, if you
wanted a good enough reason for most things.  Or, alternatively
(and he thought of it as he contemplated the small orderliness of
the cabin against the window background of such frantic natural
scenery), the will of man and the lunacy of God.  It must be
satisfying to be quite certain which way to look at it.  Then,
while he watched and pondered, a strange transformation took place.
The light turned to bluish over the whole mountain, with the lower
slopes darkening to violet.  Something deeper than his usual
aloofness rose in him--not quite excitement, still less fear, but a
sharp intensity of expectation.  He said:  "You're quite right,
Barnard, this affair grows more and more remarkable."

"Remarkable or not, I don't feel inclined to propose a vote of
thanks about it," Mallinson persisted.  "We didn't ask to be
brought here, and heaven knows what we shall do when we get THERE,
wherever THERE is.  And I don't see that it's any less of an
outrage because the fellow happens to be a stunt flyer.  Even if he
is, he can be just as much a lunatic.  I once heard of a pilot
going mad in midair.  This fellow must have been mad from the
beginning.  That's my theory, Conway."

Conway was silent.  He found it irksome to be continually shouting
above the roar of the machine, and after all, there was little
point in arguing possibilities.  But when Mallinson pressed for an
opinion, he said:  "Very well-organized lunacy, you know.  Don't
forget the landing for gasoline, and also that this was the only
machine that could climb to such a height."

"That doesn't prove he isn't mad.  He may have been mad enough to
plan everything."

"Yes, of course, that's possible."

"Well, then, we've got to decide on a plan of action.  What are we
going to do when he comes to earth?  If he doesn't crash and kill
us all, that is.  What are we going to do?  Rush forward and
congratulate him on his marvelous flight, I suppose."

"Not on your life," answered Barnard.  "I'll leave you to do all
the rushing forward."

Again Conway was loth to prolong the argument, especially since the
American, with his levelheaded banter, seemed quite capable of
handling it himself.  Already Conway found himself reflecting that
the party might have been far less fortunately constituted.  Only
Mallinson was inclined to be cantankerous, and that might partly be
due to the altitude.  Rarefied air had different effects on people;
Conway, for instance, derived from it a combination of mental
clarity and physical apathy that was not unpleasant.  Indeed, he
breathed the clear cold air in little spasms of content.  The whole
situation, no doubt, was appalling, but he had no power at the
moment to resent anything that proceeded so purposefully and with
such captivating interest.

And there came over him, too, as he stared at that superb mountain,
a glow of satisfaction that there were such places still left on
earth, distant, inaccessible, as yet unhumanized.  The icy rampart
of the Karakorams was now more striking than ever against the
northern sky, which had become mouse-colored and sinister; the
peaks had a chill gleam; utterly majestic and remote, their very
namelessness had dignity.  Those few thousand feet by which they
fell short of the known giants might save them eternally from the
climbing expedition; they offered a less tempting lure to the
record-breaker.  Conway was the antithesis of such a type; he was
inclined to see vulgarity in the Western ideal of superlatives, and
"the utmost for the highest" seemed to him a less reasonable and
perhaps more commonplace proposition than "the much for the high."
He did not, in fact, care for excessive striving, and he was bored
by mere exploits.

While he was still contemplating the scene, twilight fell, steeping
the depths in a rich, velvet gloom that spread upwards like a dye.
Then the whole range, much nearer now, paled into fresh splendor; a
full moon rose, touching each peak in succession like some
celestial lamplighter, until the long horizon glittered against a
blue-black sky.  The air grew cold and a wind sprang up, tossing
the machine uncomfortably.  These new distresses lowered the
spirits of the passengers; it had not been reckoned that the flight
could go on after dusk, and now the last hope lay in the exhaustion
of gasoline.  That, however, was bound to come soon.  Mallinson
began to argue about it, and Conway, with some reluctance, for he
really did not know, gave as his estimate that the utmost distance
might be anything up to a thousand miles, of which they must
already have covered most.  "Well, where would that bring us?"
queried the youth miserably.

"It's not easy to judge, but probably some part of Tibet.  If these
are the Karakorams, Tibet lies beyond.  One of the crests, by the
way, must be K2, which is generally counted the second highest
mountain in the world."

"Next on the list after Everest," commented Barnard.  "Gee, this is
some scenery."

"And from a climber's point of view much stiffer than Everest.  The
Duke of Abruzzi gave it up as an absolutely impossible peak."

"OH, GOD!" muttered Mallinson testily, but Barnard laughed.  "I
guess you must be the official guide on this trip, Conway, and I'll
admit that if I only had a flash of café cognac I wouldn't care if
it's Tibet or Tennessee."

"But what are we going to do about it?" urged Mallinson again.
"Why are we here?  What can be the point of it all?  I don't see
how you can make jokes about it."

"Well, it's as good as making a scene about it, young fellow.
Besides, if the man IS off his nut, as you've suggested, there
probably ISN'T any point."

"He MUST be mad.  I can't think of any other explanation.  Can you,
Conway?"

Conway shook his head.

Miss Brinklow turned round as she might have done during the
interval of a play.  "As you haven't asked my opinion, perhaps I
oughtn't to give it," she began, with shrill modesty, "but I should
like to say that I agree with Mr. Mallinson.  I'm sure the poor man
can't be quite right in his head.  The pilot, I mean, of course.
There would be no excuse for him, anyhow, if he were NOT mad."  She
added, shouting confidentially above the din:  "And do you know,
this is my first trip by air!  My very first!  Nothing would ever
induce me to do it before, though a friend of mine tried her very
best to persuade me to fly from London to Paris."

"And now you're flying from India to Tibet instead," said Barnard.
"That's the way things happen."

She went on:  "I once knew a missionary who had been to Tibet.  He
said the Tibetans were very odd people.  They believe we are
descended from monkeys."

"Real smart of 'em."

"Oh, dear, no, I don't mean in the modern way.  They've had the
belief for hundreds of years, it's only one of their superstitions.
Of course I'm against all of it myself, and I think Darwin was far
worse than any Tibetan.  I take my stand on the Bible."

"Fundamentalist, I suppose?"

But Miss Brinklow did not appear to understand the term.  "I used
to belong to the L.M.S.," she shrieked, "but I disagreed with them
about infant baptism."

Conway continued to feel that this was a rather comic remark long
after it had occurred to him that the initials were those of the
London Missionary Society.  Still picturing the inconveniences of
holding a theological argument at Euston Station, he began to think
that there was something slightly fascinating about Miss Brinklow.
He even wondered if he could offer her any article of his clothing
for the night, but decided at length that her constitution was
probably wirier than his.  So he huddled up, closed his eyes, and
went quite easily and peacefully to sleep.

And the flight proceeded.

Suddenly they were all wakened by a lurch of the machine.  Conway's
head struck the window, dazing him for the moment; a returning
lurch sent him floundering between the two tiers of seats.  It was
much colder.  The first thing he did, automatically, was to glance
at his watch; it showed half-past one, he must have been asleep for
some time.  His ears were full of a loud, flapping sound, which he
took to be imaginary until he realized that the engine had been
shut off and that the plane was rushing against a gale.  Then he
stared through the window and could see the earth quite close,
vague and snail-gray, scampering underneath.  "He's going to land!"
Mallinson shouted; and Barnard, who had also been flung out of his
seat, responded with a saturnine:  "If he's lucky."  Miss Brinklow,
whom the entire commotion seemed to have disturbed least of all,
was adjusting her hat as calmly as if Dover Harbor were just in
sight.

Presently the plane touched ground.  But it was a bad landing this
time--"Oh, my God, damned bad, DAMNED bad!" Mallinson groaned as he
clutched at his seat during ten seconds of crashing and swaying.
Something was heard to strain and snap, and one of the tires
exploded.  "That's done it," he added in tones of anguished
pessimism.  "A broken tailskid, we'll have to stay where we are
now, that's certain."

Conway, never talkative at times of crisis, stretched his stiffened
legs and felt his head where it had banged against the window.  A
bruise, nothing much.  He must do something to help these people.
But he was the last of the four to stand up when the plane came to
rest.  "Steady," he called out as Mallinson wrenched open the door
of the cabin and prepared to make the jump to earth; and eerily, in
the comparative silence, the youth's answer came:  "No need to be
steady--this looks like the end of the world--there's not a soul
about, anyhow."

A moment later, chilled and shivering, they were all aware that
this was so.  With no sound in their ears save the fierce gusts of
wind and their own crunching footsteps, they felt themselves at the
mercy of something dour and savagely melancholy--a mood in which
both earth and air were saturated.  The moon looked to have
disappeared behind clouds, and starlight illumined a tremendous
emptiness heaving with wind.  Without thought or knowledge, one
could have guessed that this bleak world was mountain-high, and
that the mountains rising from it were mountains on top of
mountains.  A range of them gleamed on a far horizon like a row of
dogteeth.

Mallinson, feverishly active, was already making for the cockpit.
"I'm not scared of the fellow on land, whoever he is," he cried.
"I'm going to tackle him right away. . . ."

The others watched apprehensively, hypnotized by the spectacle of
such energy.  Conway sprang after him, but too late to prevent the
investigation.  After a few seconds, however, the youth dropped
down again, gripping his arm and muttering in a hoarse, sobered
staccato:  "I say, Conway, it's queer. . . .  I think the fellow's
ill or dead or something . . . I can't get a word out of him.  Come
up and look. . . .  I took his revolver, at any rate."

"Better give it to me," said Conway, and though still rather dazed
by the recent blow on his head, he nerved himself for action.  Of
all times and places and situations on earth, this seemed to him to
combine the most hideous discomforts.  He hoisted himself stiffly
into a position from which he could see, not very well, into the
enclosed cockpit.  There was a strong smell of gasoline, so he did
not risk striking a match.  He could just discern the pilot,
huddled forward, his head sprawling over the controls.  He shook
him, unfastened his helmet, and loosened the clothes round his
neck.  A moment later he turned round to report:  "Yes, there's
something happened to him.  We must get him out."  But an observer
might have added that something had happened to Conway as well.
His voice was sharper, more incisive; no longer did he seem to be
hovering on the brink of some profound doubtfulness.  The time, the
place, the cold, his fatigue, were now of less account; there was a
job that simply had to be done, and the more conventional part of
him was uppermost and preparing to do it.

With Barnard and Mallinson assisting, the pilot was extracted from
his seat and lifted to the ground.  He was unconscious, not dead.
Conway had no particular medical knowledge, but, as to most men who
have lived in outlandish places, the phenomena of illness were
mostly familiar.  "Possibly a heart attack brought on by the high
altitude," he diagnosed, stooping over the unknown man.  "We can do
very little for him out here--there's no shelter from this infernal
wind.  Better get him inside the cabin, and ourselves too.  We
haven't an idea where we are, and it's hopeless to make a move
until daylight."

The verdict and the suggestion were both accepted without dispute.
Even Mallinson concurred.  They carried the man into the cabin and
laid him full length along the gangway between the seats.  The
interior was no warmer than outside, but offered a screen to the
flurries of wind.  It was the wind, before much time had passed,
that became the central preoccupation of them all--the leitmotif,
as it were, of the whole mournful night.  It was not an ordinary
wind.  It was not merely a strong wind or a cold wind.  It was
somehow a frenzy that lived all around them, a master stamping and
ranting over his own domain.  It tilted the loaded machine and
shook it viciously, and when Conway glanced through the windows it
seemed as if the wind were whirling splinters of light out of the
stars.

The stranger lay inert, while Conway, with difficulty in the
dimness and confined space, made what examination he could by the
light of matches.  But it did not reveal much.  "His heart's
faint," he said at last, and then Miss Brinklow, after groping in
her handbag, created a small sensation.  "I wonder if this would be
any use to the poor man," she proffered condescendingly.  "I never
touch a drop myself, but I always carry it with me in case of
accidents.  And this IS a sort of accident, isn't it?"

"I should say it was," replied Conway with grimness.  He unscrewed
the bottle, smelt it, and poured some of the brandy into the man's
mouth.  "Just the stuff for him.  Thanks."  After an interval the
slightest movement of eyelids was visible.  Mallinson suddenly
became hysterical.  "I can't help it," he cried, laughing wildly.
"We all look such a lot of damn fools striking matches over a
corpse. . . .  And he isn't much of a beauty, is he?  Chink, I
should say, if he's anything at all."

"Possibly."  Conway's voice was level and rather severe.  "But he's
not a corpse yet.  With a bit of luck we may bring him round."

"Luck?  It'll be his luck, not ours."

"Don't be too sure.  And shut up for the time being, anyhow."

There was enough of the schoolboy still in Mallinson to make him
respond to the curt command of a senior, though he was obviously in
poor control of himself.  Conway, though sorry for him, was more
concerned with the immediate problem of the pilot, since he, alone
of them all, might be able to give some explanation of their
plight.  Conway had no desire to discuss the matter further in a
merely speculative way; there had been enough of that during the
journey.  He was uneasy now beyond his continuing mental curiosity,
for he was aware that the whole situation had ceased to be
excitingly perilous and was threatening to become a trial of
endurance ending in catastrophe.  Keeping vigil throughout that
gale-tormented night, he faced facts nonetheless frankly because he
did not trouble to enunciate them to the others.  He guessed that
the flight had progressed far beyond the western range of the
Himalayas towards the less known heights of the Kuen-Lun.  In that
event they would by now have reached the loftiest and least
hospitable part of the earth's surface, the Tibetan plateau, two
miles high even in its lowest valleys, a vast, uninhabited, and
largely unexplored region of windswept upland.  Somewhere they
were, in that forlorn country, marooned in far less comfort than on
most desert islands.  Then abruptly, as if to answer his curiosity
by increasing it, a rather awe-inspiring change took place.  The
moon, which he had thought to be hidden by clouds, swung over the
lip of some shadowy eminence and, whilst still not showing itself
directly, unveiled the darkness ahead.  Conway could see the
outline of a long valley, with rounded, sad-looking low hills on
either side jet-black against the deep electric blue of the night
sky.  But it was to the head of the valley that his eyes were led
irresistibly, for there, soaring into the gap, and magnificent in
the full shimmer of moonlight, appeared what he took to be the
loveliest mountain on earth.  It was an almost perfect cone of
snow, simple in outline as if a child had drawn it, and impossible
to classify as to size, height or nearness.  It was so radiant, so
serenely poised, that he wondered for a moment if it were real at
all.  Then, while he gazed, a tiny puff clouded the edge of the
pyramid, giving life to the vision before the faint rumble of the
avalanche confirmed it.

He had an impulse to rouse the others to share the spectacle, but
decided after consideration that its effect might not be
tranquilizing.  Nor was it so, from a commonsense viewpoint; such
virgin splendors merely emphasized the facts of isolation and
danger.  There was quite a probability that the nearest human
settlement was hundreds of miles away.  And they had no food; they
were unarmed except for one revolver; the aeroplane was damaged and
almost fuel-less, even if anyone had known how to fly.  They had no
clothes suited to the terrific chills and winds; Mallinson's
motoring coat and his own ulster were quite inadequate, and even
Miss Brinklow, woolied and mufflered as for a polar expedition
(ridiculous, he had thought, on first beholding her), could not be
feeling happy.  They were all, too, except himself, affected by the
altitude.  Even Barnard had sunk into melancholy under the strain.
Mallinson was muttering to himself; it was clear what would happen
to him if these hardships went on for long.  In face of such
distressful prospects Conway found himself quite unable to restrain
an admiring glance at Miss Brinklow.  She was not, he reflected, a
normal person, no woman who taught Afghans to sing hymns could be
considered so.  But she was, after every calamity, still normally
abnormal, and he was deeply obliged to her for it.  "I hope you're
not feeling too bad?" he said sympathetically, when he caught her
eye.

"The soldiers during the war had to suffer worse things than this,"
she replied.

The comparison did not seem to Conway a very valuable one.  In
point of fact, he had never spent a night in the trenches quite so
thoroughly unpleasant, though doubtless many others had.  He had
concentrated his attention on the pilot, now breathing fitfully and
sometimes slightly stirring.  Probably Mallinson was right in
guessing the man Chinese.  He had the typical Mongol nose and
cheekbones, despite his successful impersonation of a British
flight lieutenant.  Mallinson had called him ugly, but Conway, who
had lived in China, thought him a fairly passable specimen, though
now, in the burnished circle of match flame, his pallid skin and
gaping mouth were not pretty.

The night dragged on, as if each minute were something heavy and
tangible that had to be pushed to make way for the next.  Moonlight
faded after a time, and with it that distant specter of the
mountain; then the triple mischiefs of darkness, cold, and wind
increased until dawn.  As though at its signal, the wind dropped,
leaving the world in compassionate quietude.  Framed in the pale
triangle ahead, the mountain showed again, gray at first, then
silver, then pink as the earliest sun rays caught the summit.  In
the lessening gloom the valley itself took shape, revealing a floor
of rock and shingle sloping upwards.  It was not a friendly
picture, but to Conway, as he surveyed, there came a queer
perception of fineness in it, of something that had no romantic
appeal at all, but a steely, almost an intellectual quality.  The
white pyramid in the distance compelled the mind's assent as
passionlessly as a Euclidean theorem, and when at last the sun rose
into a sky of deep delphinium blue, he felt only a little less than
comfortable again.

As the air grew warmer the others wakened, and he suggested
carrying the pilot into the open, where the sharp dry air and the
sunlight might help to revive him.  This was done, and they began a
second and pleasanter vigil.  Eventually the man opened his eyes
and began to speak convulsively.  His four passengers stooped over
him, listening intently to sounds that were meaningless except to
Conway, who occasionally made answers.  After some time the man
became weaker, talked with increasing difficulty, and finally died.
That was about mid-morning.



Conway then turned to his companions.  "I'm sorry to say he told me
very little--little, I mean, compared with what we should like to
know.  Merely that we are in Tibet, which is obvious.  He didn't
give any coherent account of why he had brought us here, but he
seemed to know the locality.  He spoke a kind of Chinese that I
don't understand very well, but I think he said something about a
lamasery near here, along the valley, I gathered, where we could
get food and shelter.  Shangri-La, he called it.  La is Tibetan for
mountain pass.  He was most emphatic that we should go there."

"Which doesn't seem to me any reason at all why we should," said
Mallinson.  "After all, he was probably off his head.  Wasn't he?"

"You know as much about that as I do.  But if we don't go to this
place, where else are we to go?"

"Anywhere you like, I don't care.  All I'm certain of is that this
Shangri-La, if it's in that direction, must be a few extra miles
from civilization.  I should feel happier if we were lessening the
distance, not increasing it.  Damnation, man, aren't you going to
get us back?"

Conway replied patiently:  "I don't think you properly understand
the position, Mallinson.  We're in a part of the world that no one
knows very much about, except that it's difficult and dangerous
even for a fully equipped expedition.  Considering that hundreds of
miles of this sort of country probably surround us on all sides,
the notion of walking back to Peshawar doesn't strike me as very
hopeful."

"I don't think I could possibly manage it," said Miss Brinklow
seriously.

Barnard nodded.  "It looks as if we're darned lucky, then, if this
lamasery IS just around the corner."

"Comparatively lucky, maybe," agreed Conway.  "After all, we've no
food, and as you can see for yourselves, the country isn't the kind
it would be easy to live on.  In a few hours we shall all be
famished.  And then tonight, if we were to stay here, we should
have to face the wind and the cold again.  It's not a pleasant
prospect.  Our only chance, it seems to me, is to find some other
human beings, and where else should we begin looking for them
except where we've been told they exist?"

"And what if it's a trap?" asked Mallinson, but Barnard supplied an
answer.  "A nice warm trap," he said, "with a piece of cheese in
it, would suit me down to the ground."

They laughed, except Mallinson, who looked distraught and nerve-
racked.  Finally Conway went on:  "I take it, then, that we're all
more or less agreed?  There's an obvious way along the valley; it
doesn't look too steep, though we shall have to take it slowly.  In
any case, we could do nothing here.  We couldn't even bury this man
without dynamite.  Besides, the lamasery people may be able to
supply us with porters for the journey back.  We shall need them.
I suggest we start at once, so that if we don't locate the place by
late afternoon we shall have time to return for another night in
the cabin."

"And supposing we DO locate it?" queried Mallinson, still
intransigeant.  "Have we any guarantee that we shan't be murdered?"

"None at all.  But I think it is a less, and perhaps also a
preferable risk to being starved or frozen to death."  He added,
feeling that such chilly logic might not be entirely suited for the
occasion:  "As a matter of fact, murder is the very last thing one
would expect in a Buddhist monastery.  It would be rather less
likely than being killed in an English cathedral."

"Like Saint Thomas of Canterbury," said Miss Brinklow, nodding an
emphatic agreement, but completely spoiling his point.  Mallinson
shrugged his shoulders and responded with melancholy irritation:
"Very well, then, we'll be off to Shangri-La.  Wherever and
whatever it is, we'll try it.  But let's hope it's not half-way up
that mountain."

The remark served to fix their glances on the glittering cone
towards which the valley pointed.  Sheerly magnificent it looked in
the full light of day; and then their gaze turned to a stare, for
they could see, far away and approaching them down the slope, the
figures of men.  "Providence!" whispered Miss Brinklow.



CHAPTER 3


Part of Conway was always an onlooker, however active might be the
rest.  Just now, while waiting for the strangers to come nearer, he
refused to be fussed into deciding what he might or mightn't do in
any number of possible contingencies.  And this was not bravery, or
coolness, or any especially sublime confidence in his own power to
make decisions on the spur of the moment.  It was, if the worst
view be taken, a form of indolence, an unwillingness to interrupt
his mere spectator's interest in what was happening.

As the figures moved down the valley they revealed themselves to be
a party of a dozen or more, carrying with them a hooded chair.  In
this, a little later, could be discerned a person robed in blue.
Conway could not imagine where they were all going, but it
certainly seemed providential, as Miss Brinklow had said, that such
a detachment should chance to be passing just there and then.  As
soon as he was within hailing distance he left his own party and
walked ahead, though not hurriedly, for he knew that Orientals
enjoy the ritual of meeting and like to take their time over it.
Halting when a few yards off, he bowed with due courtesy.  Much to
his surprise the robed figure stepped from the chair, came forward
with dignified deliberation, and held out his hand.  Conway
responded, and observed an old or elderly Chinese, gray-haired,
clean-shaven, and rather pallidly decorative in a silk embroidered
gown.  He in his turn appeared to be submitting Conway to the same
kind of reckoning.  Then, in precise and perhaps too accurate
English, he said:  "I am from the lamasery of Shangri-La."

Conway bowed again, and after a suitable pause began to explain
briefly the circumstances that had brought him and his three
companions to such an unfrequented part of the world.  At the end
of the recital the Chinese made a gesture of understanding.  "It is
indeed remarkable," he said, and gazed reflectively at the damaged
aeroplane.  Then he added:  "My name is Chang, if you would be so
good as to present me to your friends."

Conway managed to smile urbanely.  He was rather taken with this
latest phenomenon, a Chinese who spoke perfect English and observed
the social formalities of Bond Street amidst the wilds of Tibet.
He turned to the others, who had by this time caught up and were
regarding the encounter with varying degrees of astonishment.
"Miss Brinklow . . . Mr. Barnard, who is an American . . . Mr.
Mallinson . . . and my own name is Conway.  We are all glad to see
you, though the meeting is almost as puzzling as the fact of our
being here at all.  Indeed, we were just about to make our way to
your lamasery, so it is doubly fortunate.  If you could give us
directions for the journey--"

"There is no need for that.  I shall be delighted to act as your
guide."

"But I could not think of putting you to such trouble.  It is
exceedingly kind of you, but if the distance is not far--"

"It is not far, but it is not easy, either.  I shall esteem it an
honor to accompany you and your friends."

"But really--"

"I must insist."

Conway thought that the argument, in its context of place and
circumstance, was in some danger of becoming ludicrous.  "Very
well," he responded.  "I'm sure we are all most obliged."

Mallinson, who had been somberly enduring these pleasantries, now
interposed with something of the shrill acerbity of the barrack
square.  "Our stay won't be long," he announced curtly.  "We shall
pay for anything we have, and we should like to hire some of your
men to help us on our journey back.  We want to return to
civilization as soon as possible."

"And are you so very certain that you are away from it?"

The query, delivered with much suavity, only stung the youth to
further sharpness.  "I'm quite sure I'm far away from where I want
to be, and so are we all.  We shall be grateful for temporary
shelter, but we shall be more grateful still if you'll provide
means for us to return.  How long do you suppose the journey to
India will take?"

"I really could not say at all."

"Well, I hope we're not going to have any trouble about it.  I've
had some experience of hiring native porters, and we shall expect
you to use your influence to get us a square deal."

Conway felt that most of all this was rather needlessly truculent,
and he was just about to intervene when the reply came, still with
immense dignity:  "I can only assure you, Mr. Mallinson, that you
will be honorably treated and that ultimately you will have no
regrets."

"ULTIMATELY!" Mallinson exclaimed, pouncing on the word, but there
was greater ease in avoiding a scene since wine and fruit were now
on offer, having been unpacked by the marching party, stocky
Tibetans in sheepskins, fur hats, and yak-skin boots.  The wine had
a pleasant flavor, not unlike a good hock, while the fruit included
mangoes, perfectly ripened and almost painfully delicious after so
many hours of fasting.  Mallinson ate and drank with incurious
relish; but Conway, relieved of immediate worries and reluctant to
cherish distant ones, was wondering how mangoes could be cultivated
at such an altitude.  He was also interested in the mountain beyond
the valley; it was a sensational peak, by any standards, and he was
surprised that some traveler had not made much of it in the kind of
book that a journey in Tibet invariably elicits.  He climbed it in
mind as he gazed, choosing a route by col and couloir until an
exclamation from Mallinson drew his attention back to earth; he
looked round then and saw the Chinese had been earnestly regarding
him.  "You were contemplating the mountain, Mr. Conway?" came the
enquiry.

"Yes.  It's a fine sight.  It has a name, I suppose?"

"It is called Karakal."

"I don't think I ever heard of it.  Is it very high?"

"Over twenty-eight thousand feet."

"Indeed?  I didn't realize there would be anything on that scale
outside the Himalayas.  Has it been properly surveyed?  Whose are
the measurements?"

"Whose would you expect, my dear sir?  Is there anything
incompatible between monasticism and trigonometry?"

Conway savored the phrase and replied:  "Oh, not at all--not at
all."  Then he laughed politely.  He thought it a poorish joke, but
one perhaps worth making the most of.  Soon after that the journey
to Shangri-La was begun.



All morning the climb proceeded, slowly and by easy gradients; but
at such height the physical effort was considerable, and none had
energy to spare for talk.  The Chinese traveled luxuriously in his
chair, which might have seemed unchivalrous had it not been absurd
to picture Miss Brinklow in such a regal setting.  Conway, whom the
rarefied air troubled less than the rest, was at pains to catch the
occasional chatter of the chair-bearers.  He knew a very little
Tibetan, just enough to gather that the men were glad to be
returning to the lamasery.  He could not, even had he wished, have
continued to converse with their leader, since the latter, with
eyes closed and face half-hidden behind curtains, appeared to have
the knack of instant and well-timed sleep.

Meanwhile the sun was warm; hunger and thirst had been appeased, if
not satisfied; and the air, clean as from another planet, was more
precious with every intake.  One had to breathe consciously and
deliberately, which, though disconcerting at first, induced after a
time an almost ecstatic tranquillity of mind.  The whole body moved
in a single rhythm of breathing, walking, and thinking; the lungs,
no longer discrete and automatic, were disciplined to harmony with
mind and limb.  Conway, in whom a mystical strain ran in curious
consort with skepticism, found himself not unhappily puzzled over
the sensation.  Once or twice he spoke a cheerful word to
Mallinson, but the youth was laboring under the strain of the
ascent.  Barnard also gasped asthmatically, while Miss Brinklow was
engaged in some grim pulmonary warfare which for some reason she
made efforts to conceal.  "We're nearly at the top," Conway said
encouragingly.

"I once ran for a train and felt just like this," she answered.

So also, Conway reflected, there were people who considered cider
was just like champagne.  It was a matter of palate.

He was surprised to find that beyond his puzzlement he had few
misgivings, and none at all on his own behalf.  There were moments
in life when one opened wide one's soul just as one might open wide
one's purse if an evening's entertainment were proving unexpectedly
costly but also unexpectedly novel.  Conway, on that breathless
morning in sight of Karakal, made just such a willing, relieved,
yet not excited response to the offer of new experience.  After ten
years in various parts of Asia he had attained to a somewhat
fastidious valuation of places and happenings; and this he was
bound to admit promised unusually.

About a couple of miles along the valley the ascent grew steeper,
but by this time the sun was overclouded and a silvery mist
obscured the view.  Thunder and avalanches resounded from the
snowfields above; the air took chill, and then, with the sudden
changefulness of mountain regions, became bitterly cold.  A flurry
of wind and sleet drove up, drenching the party and adding
immeasurably to their discomfort; even Conway felt at one moment
that it would be impossible to go much further.  But shortly
afterwards it seemed that the summit of the ridge had been reached,
for the chair-bearers halted to readjust their burden.  The
condition of Barnard and Mallinson, who were both suffering
severely, led to continued delay; but the Tibetans were clearly
anxious to press on, and made signs that the rest of the journey
would be less fatiguing.

After these assurances it was disappointing to see them uncoiling
ropes.  "Do they mean to hang us already?" Barnard managed to
exclaim, with desperate facetiousness; but the guides soon showed
that their less sinister intention was merely to link the party
together in ordinary mountaineering fashion.  When they observed
that Conway was familiar with rope craft, they became much more
respectful and allowed him to dispose the party in his own way.  He
put himself next to Mallinson, with Tibetans ahead and to the rear,
and with Barnard and Miss Brinklow and more Tibetans further back
still.  He was prompt to notice that the men, during their leader's
continuing sleep, were inclined to let him deputize.  He felt a
familiar quickening of authority; if there were to be any difficult
business he would give what he knew was his to give--confidence and
command.  He had been a first-class mountaineer in his time, and
was still, no doubt, pretty good.  "You've got to look after
Barnard," he told Miss Brinklow, half jocularly, half meaning it;
and she answered with the coyness of an eagle:  "I'll do my best,
but you know, I've never been roped before."

But the next stage, though occasionally exciting, was less arduous
than he had been prepared for, and a relief from the lung-bursting
strain of the ascent.  The track consisted of a traverse cut along
the flank of a rock wall whose height above them the mist obscured.
Perhaps mercifully it also obscured the abyss on the other side,
though Conway, who had a good eye for heights, would have liked to
see where he was.  The path was scarcely more than two feet wide in
places, and the manner in which the bearers maneuvered the chair at
such points drew his admiration almost as strongly as did the
nerves of the occupant who could manage to sleep through it all.
The Tibetans were reliable enough, but they seemed happier when the
path widened and became slightly downhill.  Then they began to sing
amongst themselves, lilting barbaric tunes that Conway could
imagine orchestrated by Massenet for some Tibetan ballet.  The rain
ceased and the air grew warmer.  "Well, it's quite certain we could
never have found our way here by ourselves," said Conway intending
to be cheerful, but Mallinson did not find the remark very
comforting.  He was, in fact, acutely terrified, and in more danger
of showing it now that the worst was over.  "Should we be missing
much?" he retorted bitterly.  The track went on, more sharply
downhill, and at one spot Conway found some edelweiss, the first
welcome sign of more hospitable levels.  But this, when he
announced it, consoled Mallinson even less.  "Good God, Conway,
d'you fancy you're pottering about the Alps?  What sort of hell's
kitchen are we making for, that's what I'd like to know?  And
what's our plan of action when we get to it?  WHAT ARE WE GOING TO
DO?"

Conway said quietly, "If you'd had all the experiences I've had,
you'd know that there are times in life when the most comfortable
thing is to do nothing at all.  Things happen to you and you just
let them happen.  The war was rather like that.  One is fortunate
if, as on this occasion, a touch of novelty seasons the
unpleasantness."

"You're too confoundedly philosophic for me.  That wasn't your mood
during the trouble at Baskul."

"Of course not, because then there was a chance that I could alter
events by my own actions.  But now, for the moment at least,
there's no such chance.  We're here because we're here, if you want
a reason.  I've usually found it a soothing one."

"I suppose you realize the appalling job we shall have to get back
by the way we've come.  We've been slithering along the face of a
perpendicular mountain for the last hour--I've been taking notice."

"So have I."

"Have you?" Mallinson coughed excitedly.  "I daresay I'm being a
nuisance, but I can't help it.  I'm suspicious about all this.  I
feel we're doing far too much what these fellows want us to.
They're getting us into a corner."

"Even if they are, the only alternative was to stay out of it and
perish."

"I know that's logical, but it doesn't seem to help.  I'm afraid I
don't find it as easy as you do to accept the situation.  I can't
forget that two days ago we were in the consulate at Baskul.  To
think of all that has happened since is a bit overwhelming to me.
I'm sorry.  I'm overwrought.  It makes me realize how lucky I was
to miss the war; I suppose I should have got hysterical about
things.  The whole world seems to have gone completely mad all
round me.  I must be pretty wild myself to be talking to you like
this."

Conway shook his head.  "My dear boy, not at all.  You're twenty-
four years old, and you're somewhere about two and a half miles up
in the air: those are reasons enough for anything you may happen to
feel at the moment.  I think you've come through a trying ordeal
extraordinarily well, better than I should at your age."

"But don't YOU feel the madness of it all?  The way we flew over
those mountains and that awful waiting in the wind and the pilot
dying and then meeting these fellows, doesn't it all seem
nightmarish and incredible when you look back on it?"

"It does, of course."

"Then I wish I knew how you manage to keep so cool about
everything."

"Do you really wish that?  I'll tell you if you like, though you'll
perhaps think me cynical.  It's because so much else that I can
look back on seems nightmarish too.  This isn't the only mad part
of the world, Mallinson.  After all, if you MUST think of Baskul,
do you remember just before we left how the revolutionaries were
torturing their captives to get information?  An ordinary washing
mangle, quite effective, of course, but I don't think I ever saw
anything more comically dreadful.  And do you recollect the last
message that came through before we were cut off?  It was a
circular from a Manchester textile firm asking if we knew of any
trade openings in Baskul for the sale of corsets!  Isn't that mad
enough for you?  Believe me, in arriving here the worst that can
have happened is that we've exchanged one form of lunacy for
another.  And as for the war, if you'd been in it you'd have done
the same as I did, learned how to funk with a stiff lip."

They were still conversing when a sharp but brief ascent robbed
them of breath, inducing in a few paces all their earlier strain.
Presently the ground leveled, and they stepped out of the mist into
clear, sunny air.  Ahead, and only a short distance away, lay the
lamasery of Shangri-La.



To Conway, seeing it first, it might have been a vision fluttering
out of that solitary rhythm in which lack of oxygen had encompassed
all his faculties.  It was, indeed, a strange and half-incredible
sight.  A group of colored pavilions clung to the mountainside with
none of the grim deliberation of a Rhineland castle, but rather
with the chance delicacy of flower petals impaled upon a crag.  It
was superb and exquisite.  An austere emotion carried the eye
upward from milk-blue roofs to the gray rock bastion above,
tremendous as the Wetterhorn above Grindelwald.  Beyond that, in a
dazzling pyramid, soared the snow slopes of Karakal.  It might well
be, Conway thought, the most terrifying mountainscape in the world,
and he imagined the immense stress of snow and glacier against
which the rock functioned as a gigantic retaining wall.  Someday,
perhaps, the whole mountain would split, and a half of Karakal's
icy splendor come toppling into the valley.  He wondered if the
slightness of the risk combined with its fearfulness might even be
found agreeably stimulating.

Hardly less an enticement was the downward prospect, for the
mountain wall continued to drop, nearly perpendicularly, into a
cleft that could only have been the result of some cataclysm in the
far past.  The floor of the valley, hazily distant, welcomed the
eye with greenness; sheltered from winds, and surveyed rather than
dominated by the lamasery, it looked to Conway a delightfully
favored place, though if it were inhabited its community must be
completely isolated by the lofty and sheerly unscalable ranges on
the further side.  Only to the lamasery did there appear to be any
climbable egress at all.  Conway experienced, as he gazed, a slight
tightening of apprehension; Mallinson's misgivings were not,
perhaps, to be wholly disregarded.  But the feeling was only
momentary, and soon merged in the deeper sensation, half-mystical,
half-visual, of having reached at last some place that was an end,
a finality.

He never exactly remembered how he and the others arrived at the
lamasery, or with what formalities they were received, unroped, and
ushered into the precincts.  That thin air had a dream-like
texture, matching the porcelain-blue of the sky; with every breath
and every glance he took in a deep anesthetizing tranquillity that
made him impervious alike to Mallinson's uneasiness, Barnard's
witticisms, and Miss Brinklow's portrayal of a lady well prepared
for the worst.  He vaguely recollected surprise at finding the
interior spacious, well warmed, and quite clean; but there was no
time to do more than notice these qualities, for the Chinese had
left his hooded chair and was already leading the way through
various antechambers.  He was quite affable now.  "I must
apologize," he said, "for leaving you to yourselves on the way, but
the truth is, journeys of that kind don't suit me, and I have to
take care of myself.  I trust you were not too fatigued?"

"We managed," replied Conway with a wry smile.

"Excellent.  And now, if you will come with me, I will show you to
your apartments.  No doubt you would like baths.  Our accommodation
is simple, but I hope adequate."

At this point Barnard, who was still affected by shortness of
breath, gave vent to an asthmatic chuckle.  "Well," he gasped, "I
can't say I like your climate yet--the air seems to stick on my
chest a bit--but you've certainly got a darned fine view out of
your front windows.  Do we all have to line up for the bathroom, or
is this an American hotel?"

"I think you will find everything quite satisfactory, Mr. Barnard."

Miss Brinklow nodded primly.  "I should hope so, indeed."

"And afterwards," continued the Chinese, "I should be greatly
honored if you will all join me at dinner."

Conway replied courteously.  Only Mallinson had given no sign of
his attitude in the face of these unlooked-for amenities.  Like
Barnard, he had been suffering from the altitude, but now, with an
effort, he found breath to exclaim:  "And afterwards, also, if you
don't mind, we'll make our plans for getting away.  The sooner the
better, so far as I'm concerned."



CHAPTER 4


"So you see," Chang was saying, "we are less barbarian than you
expected. . . ."

Conway, later that evening, was not disposed to deny it.  He was
enjoying that pleasant mingling of physical ease and mental
alertness which seemed to him, of all sensations, the most truly
civilized.  So far, the appointments of Shangri-La had been all
that he could have wished, certainly more than he could ever have
expected.  That a Tibetan monastery should possess a system of
central heating was not, perhaps, so very remarkable in an age that
supplied even Lhasa with telephones; but that it should combine the
mechanics of Western hygiene with so much that was Eastern and
traditional, struck him as exceedingly singular.  The bath, for
instance, in which he had recently luxuriated, had been of a
delicate green porcelain, a product, according to inscription, of
Akron, Ohio.  Yet the native attendant had valeted him in Chinese
fashion, cleansing his ears and nostrils, and passing a thin, silk
swab under his lower eyelids.  He had wondered at the time if and
how his three companions were receiving similar attentions.

Conway had lived for nearly a decade in China, not wholly in the
bigger cities; and he counted it, all things considered, the
happiest part of his life.  He liked the Chinese, and felt at home
with Chinese ways.  In particular he liked Chinese cooking, with
its subtle undertones of taste; and his first meal at Shangri-La
had therefore conveyed a welcome familiarity.  He suspected, too,
that it might have contained some herb or drug to relieve
respiration, for he not only felt a difference himself, but could
observe a greater ease among his fellow guests.  Chang, he noticed,
ate nothing but a small portion of green salad, and took no wine.
"You will excuse me," he had explained at the outset, "but my diet
is very restricted: I am obliged to take care of myself."

It was the reason he had given before, and Conway wondered by what
form of invalidism he was afflicted.  Regarding him now more
closely, he found it difficult to guess his age; his smallish and
somehow undetailed features, together with the moist clay texture
of his skin, gave him a look that might either have been that of a
young man prematurely old or of an old man remarkably well
preserved.  He was by no means without attractiveness of a kind; a
certain stylized courtesy hung about him in a fragrance too
delicate to be detected till one had ceased to think about it.  In
his embroidered gown of blue silk, with the usual side-slashed
skirt and tight-ankled trousers, all the hue of watercolor skies,
he had a cold metallic charm which Conway found pleasing, though he
knew it was not everybody's taste.

The atmosphere, in fact, was Chinese rather than specifically
Tibetan; and this in itself gave Conway an agreeable sensation of
being at home, though again it was one that he could not expect the
others to share.  The room, too, pleased him; it was admirably
proportioned, and sparingly adorned with tapestries and one or two
fine pieces of lacquer.  Light was from paper lanterns, motionless
in the still air.  He felt a soothing comfort of mind and body, and
his renewed speculations as to some possible drug were hardly
apprehensive.  Whatever it was, if it existed at all, it had
relieved Barnard's breathlessness and Mallinson's truculence; both
had dined well, finding satisfaction in eating rather than talk.
Conway also had been hungry enough, and was not sorry that
etiquette demanded gradualness in approaching matters of
importance.  He had never cared for hurrying a situation that was
itself enjoyable, so that the technique well suited him.  Not,
indeed, until he had begun a cigarette did he give a gentle lead to
his curiosity; he remarked then, addressing Chang:  "You seem a
very fortunate community, and most hospitable to strangers.  I
don't imagine, though, that you receive them often."

"Seldom indeed," replied the Chinese, with measured stateliness.
"It is not a traveled part of the world."

Conway smiled at that.  "You put the matter mildly.  It looked to
me, as I came, the most isolated spot I ever set eyes on.  A
separate culture might flourish here without contamination from the
outside world."

"Contamination, would you say?"

"I use the word in reference to dance bands, cinemas, electric
signs, and so on.  Your plumbing is quite rightly as modern as you
can get it, the only certain boon, to my mind, that the East can
take from the West.  I often think that the Romans were fortunate;
their civilization reached as far as hot baths without touching the
fatal knowledge of machinery."

Conway paused.  He had been talking with an impromptu fluency
which, though not insincere, was chiefly designed to create and
control an atmosphere.  He was rather good at that sort of thing.
Only a willingness to respond to the superfine courtesy of the
occasion prevented him from being more openly curious.

Miss Brinklow, however, had no such scruples.  "Please," she said,
though the word was by no means submissive, "will you tell us about
the monastery?"

Chang raised his eyebrows in very gentle deprecation of such
immediacy.  "It will give me the greatest of pleasure, madam, so
far as I am able.  What exactly do you wish to know?"

"First of all, how many are there of you here, and what nationality
do you belong to?"  It was clear that her orderly mind was
functioning no less professionally than at the Baskul mission
house.

Chang replied:  "Those of us in full lamahood number about fifty,
and there are a few others, like myself, who have not yet attained
to complete initiation.  We shall do so in due course, it is to be
hoped.  Till then we are half-lamas, postulants, you might say.  As
for our racial origins, there are representatives of a great many
nations among us, though it is perhaps natural that Tibetans and
Chinese make up the majority."

Miss Brinklow would never shirk a conclusion, even a wrong one.  "I
see.  It's really a native monastery, then.  Is your head lama a
Tibetan or a Chinese?"

"No."

"Are there any English?"

"Several."

"Dear me, that seems very remarkable."  Miss Brinklow paused only
for breath before continuing:  "And now, tell me what you all
believe in."

Conway leaned back with somewhat amused expectancy.  He had always
found pleasure in observing the impact of opposite mentalities; and
Miss Brinklow's girl-guide forthrightness applied to Lamaistic
philosophy promised to be entertaining.  On the other hand, he did
not wish his host to take fright.  "That's rather a big question,"
he said, temporizingly.

But Miss Brinklow was in no mood to temporize.  The wine, which had
made the others more reposeful, seemed to have given her an extra
liveliness.  "Of course," she said with a gesture of magnanimity,
"I believe in the true religion, but I'm broad-minded enough to
admit that other people, foreigners, I mean, are quite often
sincere in their views.  And naturally in a monastery I wouldn't
expect to be agreed with."

Her concession evoked a formal bow from Chang.  "But why not,
madam?" he replied in his precise and flavored English.  "Must we
hold that because one religion is true, all others are bound to be
false?"

"Well, of course, that's rather obvious, isn't it?"

Conway again interposed.  "Really, I think we had better not argue.
But Miss Brinklow shares my own curiosity about the motive of this
unique establishment."

Chang answered rather slowly and in scarcely more than a whisper:
"If I were to put it into a very few words, my dear sir, I should
say that our prevalent belief is in moderation.  We inculcate the
virtue of avoiding excess of all kinds--even including, if you will
pardon the paradox, excess of virtue itself.  In the valley which
you have seen, and in which there are several thousand inhabitants
living under the control of our order, we have found that the
principle makes for a considerable degree of happiness.  We rule
with moderate strictness, and in return we are satisfied with
moderate obedience.  And I think I can claim that our people are
moderately sober, moderately chaste, and moderately honest."

Conway smiled.  He thought it well expressed, besides which it made
some appeal to his own temperament.  "I think I understand.  And I
suppose the fellows who met us this morning belonged to your valley
people?"

"Yes.  I hope you had no fault to find with them during the
journey?"

"Oh, no, none at all.  I'm glad they were more than moderately
surefooted, anyhow.  You were careful, by the way, to say that the
rule of moderation applied to THEM--am I to take it that it does
not apply to your priesthood also?"

But at that Chang could only shake his head.  "I regret, sir, that
you have touched upon a matter which I may not discuss.  I can only
add that our community has various faiths and usages, but we are
most of us moderately heretical about them.  I am deeply grieved
that at the moment I cannot say more."

"Please don't apologize.  I am left with the pleasantest of
speculations."  Something in his own voice, as well as in his
bodily sensations, gave Conway a renewed impression that he had
been very slightly doped.  Mallinson appeared to have been
similarly affected, though he seized the present chance to remark:
"All this has been very interesting, but I really think it's time
we began to discuss our plans for getting away.  We want to return
to India as soon as possible.  How many porters can we be supplied
with?"

The question, so practical and uncompromising, broke through the
crust of suavity to find no sure foothold beneath.  Only after a
longish interval came Chang's reply:  "Unfortunately, Mr.
Mallinson, I am not the proper person to approach.  But in any
case, I hardly think the matter could be arranged immediately."

"But something has GOT to be arranged!  We've all got our work to
return to, and our friends and relatives will be worrying about us.
We simply MUST return.  We're obliged to you for receiving us like
this, but we really can't slack about here doing nothing.  If it's
at all feasible, we should like to set out not later than tomorrow.
I expect there are a good many of your people who would volunteer
to escort us--we should make it well worth their while, of course."

Mallinson ended nervously, as if he had hoped to be answered before
saying so much; but he could extract from Chang no more than a
quiet and almost reproachful:  "But all this, you know, is scarcely
in my province."

"Isn't it?  Well, perhaps you can do SOMETHING, at any rate.  If
you could get us a large-scale map of the country, it would help.
It looks as if we shall have a long journey, and that's all the
more reason for making an early start.  You have maps, I suppose?"

"Yes, we have a great many."

"We'll borrow some of them, then, if you don't mind.  We can return
them to you afterwards.  I suppose you must have communications
with the outer world from time to time.  And it would be a good
idea to send messages ahead, also, to reassure our friends.  How
far away is the nearest telegraph line?"

Chang's wrinkled face seemed to have acquired a look of infinite
patience, but he did not reply.

Mallinson waited a moment and then continued:  "Well, where do you
send to when you want anything?  Anything civilized, I mean."  A
touch of scaredness began to appear in his eyes and voice.
Suddenly he thrust back his chair and stood up.  He was pale, and
passed his hand wearily across his forehead.  "I'm so tired," he
stammered, glancing round the room.  "I don't feel that any of you
are really trying to help me.  I'm only asking a simple question.
It's obvious you must know the answer to it.  When you had all
these modern baths installed, how did they get here?"

There followed another silence.

"You won't tell me, then?  It's part of the mystery of everything
else, I suppose.  Conway, I must say I think you're damned slack.
Why don't YOU get at the truth?  I'm all in, for the time being--
but--tomorrow, mind--we MUST get away tomorrow--it's essential--"

He would have slid to the floor had not Conway caught him and
helped him to a chair.  Then he recovered a little, but did not
speak.

"Tomorrow he will be much better," said Chang gently.  "The air
here is difficult for the stranger at first, but one soon becomes
acclimatized."

Conway felt himself waking from a trance.  "Things have been a
little trying for him," he commented with rather rueful mildness.
He added, more briskly:  "I expect we're all feeling it somewhat.
I think we'd better adjourn this discussion and go to bed.
Barnard, will you look after Mallinson?  And I'm sure YOU'RE in
need of sleep too, Miss Brinklow."  There had been some signal
given, for at that moment a servant appeared.  "Yes, we'll get
along--good night--good night--I shall soon follow."  He almost
pushed them out of the room, and then, with a scantness of ceremony
that was in marked contrast with his earlier manner, turned to his
host.  Mallinson's reproach had spurred him.

"Now, sir, I don't want to detain you long, so I'd better come to
the point.  My friend is impetuous, but I don't blame him, he's
quite right to make things clear.  Our return journey has to be
arranged, and we can't do it without help from you or from others
in this place.  Of course, I realize that leaving tomorrow is
impossible, and for my own part I hope to find a minimum stay quite
interesting.  But that, perhaps, is not the attitude of my
companions.  So if it's true, as you say, that you can do nothing
for us yourself, please put us in touch with someone else who can."

The Chinese answered:  "You are wiser than your friends, my dear
sir, and therefore you are less impatient.  I am glad."

"That's not an answer."

Chang began to laugh, a jerky high-pitched chuckle so obviously
forced that Conway recognized in it the polite pretense of seeing
an imaginary joke with which the Chinese "saves face" at awkward
moments.  "I feel sure you have no cause to worry about the
matter," came the reply, after an interval.  "No doubt in due
course we shall be able to give you all the help you need.  There
are difficulties, as you can imagine, but if we all approach the
problem sensibly, and without undue haste--"

"I'm not suggesting haste.  I'm merely seeking information about
porters."

"Well, my dear sir, that raises another point.  I very much doubt
whether you will easily find men willing to undertake such a
journey.  They have their homes in the valley, and they don't care
for leaving them to make long and arduous trips outside."

"They can be prevailed upon to do so, though, or else why and where
were they escorting you this morning?"

"This morning?  Oh, that was quite a different matter."

"In what way?  Weren't you setting out on a journey when I and my
friends chanced to come across you?"

There was no response to this, and presently Conway continued in a
quieter voice:  "I understand.  Then it was not a chance meeting.
I had wondered all along, in fact.  So you came there deliberately
to intercept us.  That suggests you must have known of our arrival
beforehand.  And the interesting question is, HOW?"

His words laid a note of stress amidst the exquisite quietude of
the scene.  The lantern light showed up the face of the Chinese; it
was calm and statuesque.  Suddenly, with a small gesture of the
hand, Chang broke the strain; pulling aside a silken tapestry, he
undraped a window leading to a balcony.  Then, with a touch upon
Conway's arm, he led him into the cold crystal air.  "You are
clever," he said dreamily, "but not entirely correct.  For that
reason I should counsel you not to worry your friends by these
abstract discussions.  Believe me, neither you nor they are in any
danger at Shangri-La."

"But it isn't danger we're bothering about.  It's delay."

"I realize that.  And of course there MAY be a certain delay, quite
unavoidably."

"If it's only for a short time, and genuinely unavoidable, then
naturally we shall have to put up with it as best we can."

"How very sensible, for we desire nothing more than that you and
your companions should enjoy your stay here."

"That's all very well, and as I told you, in a personal sense I
can't say I shall mind a great deal.  It's a new and interesting
experience, and in any case, we need some rest."

He was gazing upward to the gleaming pyramid of Karakal.  At that
moment, in bright moonlight, it seemed as if a hand reached high
might just touch it; it was so brittle-clear against the blue
immensity beyond.

"Tomorrow," said Chang, "you may find it even more interesting.
And as for rest, if you are fatigued, there are not many better
places in the world."

Indeed, as Conway continued to gaze, a deeper repose overspread
him, as if the spectacle were as much for the mind as for the eye.
There was hardly any stir of wind, in contrast to the upland gales
that had raged the night before; the whole valley, he perceived,
was a landlocked harbor, with Karakal brooding over it, lighthouse-
fashion.  The smile grew as he considered it, for there was
actually light on the summit, an ice-blue gleam that matched the
splendor it reflected.  Something prompted him then to enquire the
literal interpretation of the name, and Chang's answer came as a
whispered echo of his own musing.  "Karakal, in the valley patois,
means Blue Moon," said the Chinese.



Conway did not pass on his conclusion that the arrival of himself
and party at Shangri-La had been in some way expected by its
inhabitants.  He had had it in mind that he must do so, and he was
aware that the matter was important; but when morning came his
awareness troubled him so little, in any but a theoretical sense,
that he shrank from being the cause of greater concern in others.
One part of him insisted that there was something distinctly queer
about the place, that the attitude of Chang on the previous evening
had been far from reassuring, and that the party were virtually
prisoners unless and until the authorities chose to do more for
them.  And it was clearly his duty to compel them to do this.
After all, he was a representative of the British government, if
nothing else; it was iniquitous that the inmates of a Tibetan
monastery should refuse him any proper request. . . .  That, no
doubt, was the normal official view that would be taken; and part
of Conway was both normal and official.  No one could better play
the strongman on occasions; during those final difficult days
before the evacuation he had behaved in a manner which (he
reflected wryly) should earn him nothing less than a knighthood and
a Henty school prize novel entitled With Conway at Baskul.  To have
taken on himself the leadership of some scores of mixed civilians,
including women and children, to have sheltered them all in a small
consulate during a hot-blooded revolution led by anti-foreign
agitators, and to have bullied and cajoled the revolutionaries into
permitting a wholesale evacuation by air, it was not, he felt, a
bad achievement.  Perhaps by pulling wires and writing interminable
reports, he could wangle something out of it in the next New Year
Honors.  At any rate it had won him Mallinson's fervent admiration.
Unfortunately, the youth must now be finding him so much more of a
disappointment.  It was a pity, of course, but Conway had grown
used to people liking him only because they misunderstood him.  He
was not genuinely one of those resolute, strong-jawed, hammer-and-
tongs empire builders; the semblance he had given was merely a
little one-act play, repeated from time to time by arrangement with
fate and the foreign office, and for a salary which anyone could
turn up in the pages of Whitaker.

The truth was, the puzzle of Shangri-La, and of his own arrival
there, was beginning to exercise over him a rather charming
fascination.  In any case he found it hard to feel any personal
misgivings.  His official job was always liable to take him into
odd parts of the world, and the odder they were, the less, as a
rule, he suffered from boredom; why, then, grumble because accident
instead of a chit from Whitehall had sent him to this oddest place
of all?

He was, in fact, very far from grumbling.  When he rose in the
morning and saw the soft lapis blue of the sky through his window,
he would not have chosen to be elsewhere on earth either in
Peshawar or Piccadilly.  He was glad to find that on the others,
also, a night's repose had had a heartening effect.  Barnard was
able to joke quite cheerfully about beds, baths, breakfasts, and
other hospitable amenities.  Miss Brinklow admitted that the most
strenuous search of her apartment had failed to reveal any of the
drawbacks she had been well prepared for.  Even Mallinson had
acquired a touch of half-sulky complacency.  "I suppose we shan't
get away today after all," he muttered, "unless somebody looks
pretty sharp about it.  Those fellows are typically Oriental, you
can't get them to do anything quickly and efficiently."

Conway accepted the remark.  Mallinson had been out of England just
under a year; long enough, no doubt, to justify a generalization
which he would probably still repeat when he had been out for
twenty.  And it was true, of course, in some degree.  Yet to Conway
it did not appear that the Eastern races were abnormally dilatory,
but rather that Englishmen and Americans charged about the world in
a state of continual and rather p