The weary months of the rainy season dragged by; but the subaltern spent them to advantage under Colonel Dermot’s tuition and, possessing the knack of readily acquiring foreign languages, made rapid progress with Bhutanese, Tibetan and the frontier dialects, his good ear for music helping him greatly in getting the correct accent.  Another accomplishment of his, a talent for acting, was of service; for the Political Officer wished him to be capable of penetrating into Bhutan in disguise if need be.  So he taught him how to be a merchant, peasant, nobleman’s retainer or a lama Red or Yellow, of the country—­but always a man of Northern Bhutan and the Tibetan borderland, for his height and blue eyes were not unusual there, though seldom or never seen in the south.  Frank was carefully instructed in the appropriate manners, customs and expressions of each part that he played, how to eat and behave in company, how to walk, sit and sleep.  But he specialised as a lama, for in that character he would meet with the least interference in the priest-ridden country.  He was taught the Buddhist chants and how to drone them, how to carry his praying-wheel and finger a rosary to the murmured “Om mani padmi hung” of the Tibetans, and—­for he was something of an artist—­how to paint the Buddhist pictorial Wheel of Life, the Sid-pa-i Khor-lo or Cycle of Existence that the gentle Gautama, the Buddha, himself first drew and that hangs in the vestibule of every lamasery to teach priest and layman the leading law of their religion, Re-birth.

Colonel Dermot was helped in his instruction of his pupil by his chief spy and confidential messenger, an ex-monk from a great monastery in Punaka, the capital of Bhutan.  This man, Tashi, before he wearied of the cloistered life and fled to India, had been always one of the principal actors in the great miracle plays and Devil Dances of his lamasery, for he was gifted with considerable histrionic talent.  He delighted in teaching Wargrave to play his various roles, for he found the subaltern an apt pupil.

As soon as the rains ended the Political Officer began to take his disciple with him on his tours and patrols along the frontier.  Alone they roamed on Badshah among the mountains on which the border ran in a confusedly irregular line.  Sometimes with or without Tashi they crossed into Bhutan in disguise and wandered among the steep, forest-clad hills and deep, unhealthy valleys seamed with rivers prone to sudden floods that rose in a few hours thirty or forty feet.  Wargrave marvelled at the engineering skill of the inhabitants who with rude and imperfect appliances had thrown cantilever bridges over the deep gorges of this mountainous southern zone.  Among the dull-witted peasants in the villages he practised the parts that he had learned, speaking little at first and taking care to mingle Tibetan and Chinese words with the language of Bhutan to keep up the fable of his northern birth.  He soon promised to be in time as skilfull in disguise as his tutor.