apes, the white fringes around their black faces giving them a comic resemblance to aged negroes, awoke the echoes of the mountains with their deep booming cry; while in the lower valleys little brown monkeys mopped and mowed from the trees at the fugitives as they passed.  On one occasion Muriel, exhilarated by the keen, life-giving air, ran gaily on ahead of the others in a wood—­and came on a tiger enjoying its midday siesta.  But the striped brute only uttered a startled “Wough!  Wough!” like a big dog and dashed away through the undergrowth.  Another time they disturbed a red bear feeding on the carcase of a strange beast that seemed a mixture of goat, donkey and deer—­Tashi called it a serao.  And at a lower elevation they blundered on two black bears—­not flesh-eaters these, yet more dangerous—­grubbing for roots, and on another occasion saw one climbing a tree in search of wild bees’ nests.

In a dense jungle early one morning a beautiful black panther with a skin like watered silk glided stealthily by them, showing its white fangs and red mouth in an angry snarl as it went.  And deep down in a valley they espied a rhinoceros feeding a thousand feet below them.  But they came across no elephants; and Frank noted the fact despairingly as rendering even less probable a meeting with Badshah and his herd.

Bird-life abounded, from the snow partridges that flew in the hills eighteen thousand feet high to pigeons of every kind:  birds of all sizes, from great eagles to the little quails that hid in the cornfields; lammergeiers that were fed on human bodies, the dead of families of high degree, exposed on a flat rock of slate with head and shoulders tied to a wooden axle that stretched the corpse like a rack.  In Bhutan ordinary folk are cremated.

On their journey the fugitives met with wayfarers of every rank and class.  On a steep mountain track they stood aside to let a high official go by.  He was sitting pickaback in a cloth on a powerfully-built servant, the ends of the cloth knotted on the man’s forehead.  Behind trudged an escort of bare-legged swordsmen with leather shields and shining steel helmets.  Coolies, male and female, followed, carrying the great man’s baggage in baskets placed in the crutch of forked sticks tied on their backs.  Sometimes they passed a rival lama glaring with jealous eye at them.  Often they met groups of raiyats, sturdy peasants, thick-limbed, bare-footed, bare-headed, the women clear-eyed, deep-bosomed, but uglier than the males.  These did reverence to the holy men and put their modest offerings of copper coins or food into Muriel’s begging-bowl.