to see it they would be at once shot down. For the
moment it was two men against all the enemy that
were in the jong— for the third man slipped and carried
away in his fall his immediate successor— and it was
patent enough to all of us that if the Tibetans had but
reserved their fire and waited in the bastions, they
might well have picked off, one by one, each man as his
head appeared above the breach.
But hardly a shot was fired. The Tibetans had
apparently seen in the cessation of the cannonade
only a lucky opportunity for their own escape, and
forty or fifty of them were seen crawling and clambering
back up and across the rock face to the sangars near the
barrack and the postern gate. Here, for a moment,
they did indeed turn and use their matchlocks, but
these were their last shots. Dividing in a panic into
two streams, part made for the postern gate, part for the
extreme western cliff of the rock where a way had been
beaten through the wall of the citadel, and two long
ropes were hanging down over the precipice below, their
ends resting on the shelf a hundred feet beneath. From
this coign the Tibetans could, with danger and difficulty,
scramble down to the shelter of the houses at the foot
of the rock.
Meanwhile, Gurkhas, to the number of some twenty
or thirty, had collected at the breach on the east, and
slowly moved forward, carefully testing the absence of
the enemy from each building and sangar as they went.
Some of the Tibetans fled into hiding among the cellars
of the rock. The jong, like most other Tibetan buildings,
is, underground, a labyrinth of dark rooms, tortuous
passages and low storehouses. Into them the remnant
of the enemy fled, hidden in the impenetrable obscurity
or concealed beneath stacks of dry grass or heaps of
rubbish. It was dangerous work getting them out, as
most of them still retained their arms. One small
party pushed on straight ahead into the citadel, and
at last, after meeting with a few spasmodic attempts
at resistance, climbed from storey to storey up the
1
The last of the main gateway of Gyantse jong, finally blown up by us on July loth.
ricketty, slippery ladders, to the topmost roof of all,
where,. attached to a prayer-pole which the Tibetans
had but recently put up, the Union Jack was again seen
rippling in the strengthening breeze.
It was a gallant and successful finale. The climax
was a dramatic scene which those who saw it will never
forget. And though it may be invidious to mention
them, the names of Lieutenant Grant, Colonel Campbell