rewarded our efforts, and the men were consequently
sent out to track them.
As the day wore on the searchers returned one by
one, all with the same report—that there was no sign
of the ponies anywhere; they might have vanished
into thin air for all the trace they left behind. We
indulged in many conjectures as to the fate of our
animals : they might have been stolen by chukpas
(brigands); or the wolves, which had been howling
round the camp all night, might have driven them
away in a general stampede. In the afternoon the
situation began to look serious; were the ponies
really lost, I should not be able to move another step
forward, and Hargreaves would be waiting for me in
vain at our rendezvous. I anxiously scanned the
horizon with my glasses, but failed to see anything
beyond a dark spot that appeared to be moving miles
away across the plain.
When the sun had set, the largest possible fire was
lighted with our limited stock of fuel, to act as a guide
to the three men who were still absent. At nine o’clock
a faint shout was heard, and then, to our intense relief,
the clatter of the ponies’ hoofs, as sixteen of the truants
stumbled over the boulders on their way to the tents.
Rarely had I heard so welcome a sound !
I t appeared that they had been found in a side
nullah, about eleven miles from camp, quietly grazing
among the rocks, and quite indifferent to the anxiety
which their absence was causing to their owners. The
man who found them said that the nullah in which
they were grazing was a sportsman’s paradise—abounding
in yaks, antelope, goa, burhel and wolves. The
seventeenth pony was also found the next day, hiding
amongst some rocks several miles away ; he probably
thought that he had done enough work and deserved a