Conway then turned to his companions. “I’m sorry to say he told me very little – little, I mean, compared with what we should like to know. Merely that we are in Tibet, which is obvious. He didn’t give any coherent account of why he had brought us here, but he seemed to know the locality. He spoke a kind of Chinese that I don’t understand very well, but I think he said something about a lamasery near here, along the valley, I gathered, where we could get food and shelter. Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain pass. He was most emphatic that we should go there.”
“Which doesn’t seem to me any reason at all why we should,” said Mallinson. “After all, he was probably off his head. Wasn’t he?”
“You know as much about that as I do. But if we don’t go to this place, where else are we to go?”
“Anywhere you like, I don’t care. All I’m certain of is that this Shangri-La, if it’s in that direction, must be a few extra miles from civilization. I should feel happier if we were lessening the distance, not increasing it. Damnation, man, aren’t you going to get us back?”
Conway replied patiently: “I don’t think you properly understand the position, Mallinson. We’re in a part of the world that no one knows very much about, except that it’s difficult and dangerous even for a fully equipped expedition. Considering that hundreds of miles of this sort of country probably surround us on all sides, the notion of walking back to Peshawar doesn’t strike me as very hopeful.”
“I don’t think I could possibly manage it,” said Miss Brinklow seriously.
Barnard nodded. “It looks as if we’re darned lucky, then, if this lamasery is just around the corner.”
“Comparatively lucky, maybe,” agreed Conway. “After all, we’ve no food, and as you can see for yourselves, the country isn’t the kind it would be easy to live on. In a few hours we shall all be famished. And then to-night, if we were to stay here, we should have to face the wind and the cold again. It’s not a pleasant prospect. Our only chance, it seems to me, is to find some other human beings, and where else should we begin looking for them except where we’ve been told they exist?”
“And what if it’s a trap?” asked Mallinson, but Barnard supplied an answer. “A nice warm trap,” he said, “with a piece of cheese in it, would suit me down to the ground.”
They laughed, except Mallinson, who looked distraught and nerve-racked. Finally Conway went on: “I take it, then, that we’re all more or less agreed? There’s an obvious way along the valley; it doesn’t look too steep, though we shall have to take it slowly. In any case, we could do nothing here. We couldn’t even bury this man without dynamite. Besides, the lamasery people may be able to supply us with porters for the journey back. We shall need them. I suggest we start at once, so that if we don’t locate the place by late afternoon we shall have time to return for another night in the cabin.”
“And supposing we do locate it?” queried Mallinson, still intransigeant. “Have we any guarantee that we shan’t be murdered?”
“None at all. But I think it is a less, and perhaps also a preferable risk to being starved or frozen to death.” He added, feeling that such chilly logic might not be entirely suited for the occasion: “As a matter of fact, murder is the very last thing one would expect in a Buddhist monastery. It would be rather less likely than being killed in an English cathedral.”
“Like Saint Thomas of Canterbury,” said Miss Brinklow, nodding an emphatic agreement, but completely spoiling his point. Mallinson shrugged his shoulders and responded with melancholy irritation: “Very well, then, we’ll be off to Shangri-La. Wherever and whatever it is, we’ll try it. But let’s hope it’s not half-way up that mountain.”
The remark served to fix their glances on the glittering cone towards which the valley pointed. Sheerly magnificent it looked in the full light of day; and then their gaze turned to a stare, for they could see, far away and approaching them down the slope, the figures of men. “Providence!” whispered Miss Brinklow.