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426 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
seriously ill. He had been anything but well for several
days, although his appetite had still continued good.
Upon reaching him, I found him lying on a felt carpet
spread on the ground, but more dead than alive. His eyes
were very bright, but rigidly fixed, his cheeks deeply sunken
and pallid, and his lips ashen grey. We at once stopped
and prepared one of the tents as a hospital for the sick man.
Then we were visited by a squall, and it was so violent that
it threatened to blow our light tents clean away, or else
crush them flat under the beating rain and hail. Old
Mohammed Tokta, who had so faithfully helped to look
after the camels, was also on the sick list ; his body had
begun to swell and he had lost all sense of feeling in his
fingers, so we put him in the hospital beside Kalpet.
The night passed, however, quietly, and in the morning
I went in and talked to Kalpet for a while. He was con-
vinced it was a serious illness he had got and he complained
that one of his companions had beaten him two or three
days before. He was a poor miserable wretch ; he had
been so lonely all the time, and now nobody cared for him
one bit ; he was deserted alike by God and his fellow men !
He was so, so lonely ! Whilst I was trying to comfort him
and inspire him with courage, his consciousness darkened
and he lay staring vacantly up at the top of the tent. I
would gladly have remained there ; but unfortunately we
had neither water—for the Selling-tso was salt—nor grass.
We had no choice, therefore, but were obliged to move.
We made Kalpet as comfortable as we could on the back
of his camel, and helped Mohammed Tokta to mount his
horse, which he was able to manage himself, and on we
went again to the dull and now ominous ding-dong of the
caravan-bells.
Upon reaching the top of a low pass there burst upon our
sight the most glorious scenery we had hitherto beheld in
Tibet. Embedded in the arms of picturesque mountains
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