The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when a loud cry from the Shagird, and a snort and struggle from the pack-horse behind, attracted my attention.  This time the beast had slipped with a vengeance, and was half-way over the edge, making, with his fore feet, frantic efforts to regain terra firma while his hind legs and quarters dangled in mid-air.  There was no time to dismount and render assistance.  The whole thing was over in less than ten seconds.  The Shagird might, indeed, have saved the fall had he kept his head instead of losing it.  All he could do was, with a loud voice and outstretched arms, to invoke the assistance of “Allah!” We were not long in suspense.  Slowly, inch by inch, the poor brute lost his hold of the slippery ground, and disappeared, with a shrill neigh of terror, from sight.  For two or three seconds we heard him striking here and there against a jutting rock or shrub, till, with a final thud, he landed on a small plateau of deep snow-drifts at least three hundred feet below.  Here he lay motionless and apparently dead, while we could see through our glasses a thin stream of crimson flow from under him, gradually staining the white snow around.

[Illustration:  CROSSING THE KHADZAN]

A cat is popularly supposed to have nine lives.  After my experience of the Persian post-horse, I shall never believe that that rough and ill-shaped but useful animal has less than a dozen.  The fall I have described would assuredly have killed a horse of any other nationality, if I may use the word.  It seemed, on the contrary, to have a tonic and exhilarating effect on this Patchinar pony.  Before we could reach him (a work of considerable difficulty and some risk) he had risen to his feet, given himself a good shake, and was nibbling away at a bit of gorse that peeped through the snow on which he had fallen.  A deep cut on the shoulder was his only injury, and, curiously enough, our portmanteaus, with the exception of a broken strap, were unharmed.  There was, luckily, nothing breakable in either.

Kharzan, a miserable village under snow for six months of the year, was reached without further mishap.  There is no post-house, and the caravanserai was crowded with caravans.  Before sundown, however, we were comfortably installed in the house of the head-man of the place, who spread carpets of soft texture and quaint design in our honour, regaled us with an excellent “pilaff,” and produced a flask of Persian wine.  The latter would hardly have passed muster in Europe.  The cork consisted of a plug of cotton-wool plastered with clay; the contents were of a muddy-brown colour.  “It is pure Hamadan,” said our host with pride, as he placed the bottle before us.  “Perhaps the sahib did not know that our country is famous for its wines.”  It was not altogether unpalatable, something like light but rather sweet hock; very different, however, in its effects to that innocent beverage, and one could not drink much with impunity.  Its cheapness surprised me:  one shilling a quart bottle.  That, at least, is the price our host charged—­probably more than half again its real value.