Straight across the whirlpools where poor Bretherton
died, our frail craft is carried creaking, twisted, awry,
as the strain comes alternately on one side and the
other. At last, however, just as it seems that we shall
be swept down beneath the chains of Chak-sam gompa,
the backwater is reached, and we come gently to rest,
nosing the bank exactly to a foot where a little ghat
had been prepared for us. For sheer skill in watermanship
it would be hard to beat the thick-skulled grinning
boatmen of Chak-sam ferry. There was never a
moment’s hesitation, there was never a moment’s
recovery. The course was as plain to these carameleyed
barbarians as if we had swung across on an aenal
wire. Another mile had to be covered before I reached
my camp that night. I dined with Wigram and Davys,
good, competent men. The latter, with unheard-of
daring, succeeded in saving for Candler the use of his
terribly maimed right hand, tying up the tendons with
complete and successful disregard of the working
drawings of his Creator. The former, after many weary
months in unthanked solitude, still spent his own money
to save his company of yaks from dying of starvation
by decree of the commissariat.
On the next morning I rode on easily to Kamba-
partsi, where the road turns abruptly up the high
mountain which separates the Yani-dok tso from the
waters of the Brahmaputra, 3,000 feet below. We
had milk at the house beside which the willow grows
which is twisted into a figure of eight. Then we
climbed, climbed steadily and wearily, thankful for
nothing except that we always kept just ahead of a
rainstorm clouding the valley 500 feet below us. We
rose and rose until at last, after many halts, we saw
the side trail which runs along the river bank to Shigatse
join us from the western slope. Then there was not
much more to do. We passed the chortens which mark
the summit of the pass, and, giving my horse to a Sikh,
I thankfully went on my own feet down the long descent
which, after giving again and again alternate views
of the great blue lake, lands one at last beside its steady,
unruffled ring of water. Then we went on again
round the spurs containing the northern shore still
blue with larkspur, here dipping far into the recesses
where some stream deposited its scanty waters in the
lake, there saving half a mile by taking the lake-shore
down where the nettles could no longer grow. Hour
after hour passed, and at last Pe-di jong, which we
had had in sight for six or seven miles, began to grow
in size. Arrived there, I made the best of my way
with Lieut. Dalmahoy to his eyrie high above the lake
in one of the few rooms in the castle which was still fit
for use. Next day was the most merciful of all the eleven
days I rode. Owing to the necessity of exchanging
mails at Ra-lung, there was no use in going farther that
day than Nagartse jong. This was easy indeed, and
quite slowly we made our way round the north-western
corner of the lake, over the causeway of Good Luck,
and round the arm of the lake to the western shore.
It was a short day, and I reached Nagartse before one
o’clock.
Here Moody told me that among the duties unexpectedly
thrown upon him was that of supplying
the bare necessities of life to the neighbouring villages
which had been mercilessly sacked by the followers
of the Tongsa Penlop. In every case we had left
in each house, sufficient to last it through the winter,