XIV

WHERE THE PRISONERS DISAPPEARED

49.  Then this entry reveals the sequence: 

“We had been a number of days on the road,—­our lives imperceptibly growing into a closer and more intimate companionship as the days ambled slowly away with the bleak snow-clad mountains that we left behind....  Descending down the slopes into a fertile valley, the hillsides terraced with a series of rice yards, and our paths softly shaded with the mulberry tree....  Behind us was the white-fringed mountain of the Lama, before us loomed the SACRED PINNACLE OF OMAY and off to the south spread an ancient walled city with steeples pointing heavenward surmounted by the CROSS....  Where the pagoda stood a thousand years ago now rise the hospital and the Christian missionary school....  Here the people walk on well-paved and broad sweeping streets and the tourists spend their afternoons promenading along the smooth and high and broad city wall....  As we approached this city a stream of ’rickshas came dashing in our direction commanded by the TALL slim ‘lama’ I had supposed we left behind!...  The coolies appeared to understand their parts....  Quickly making a circle around us they pulled the women from their camels and tried to rope and bind my ‘prisoner’ and myself.

“Of course we were in full view of the consular flags of a dozen different nations; but that did not seem to bother the ringleader of this tatterdemalion mob....  My ‘prisoner’ fought like a demon....  He well remembered the lessons he received from Heath in the manly art of self-defense....  Right and left he boxed like a well-trained athlete delivering his dynamic punches well....  But finally the gang overpowered him and turned their undivided attention to me....  I was vainly attempting to reach the side of Maria and her sisters, whom the tall bully was forcing into a waiting ’ricksha manned by two barelegged men,—­a dozen coolies pounced upon me, tore my clothing into fragments, furrowed my face with their infernal nails and actually attempted to bite me on the ears!...”

“I have no notion how well or hard I fought, but as I knocked one down another took his place as I fought my way to the side of the now bound and helpless girls....  Their hair was streaming down their backs, their faces flushed, their eyes filled with tears ... that sight maddened me!...  I have been in many fights before, I have lain beside the dead in Flanders and among the Balkan highlands, I have seen blood flowing by me like a river,—­and the thought of all these seemed to electrify my soul and fill my veins with steel....  I tore madly right and left....  I never struck such herculean blows before or since.

“I literally grabbed the tall man by the heels and whirled him round like a flail and tore into that gang of snarling hellhounds with cyclonic fury....  I literally mowed them down....  But finally a dull thud sounded in my ears....  A wave of light blinded both my eyes....  I knew nothing more until this morning when I awoke in a tent.  Beside me was a loaf of bread and a canteen of cool water....  NOT ANOTHER SIGN OF A LIVING CREATURE IS IN SIGHT....  I am in a deep mountain gorge, leading to the south along a narrow roadway that has apparently witnessed the procession of unnumbered ages.”