We three pilgrims rode on south-eastwards, and pitched our tent on open ground by a brook twenty-five miles farther on. Our positions were now reversed; Shagdur was the important man and I was only a mule-driver. With the Cossacks I always spoke Russian, but now no language must be used but Mongolian, which the Lama had been teaching me for a long time previously. After dinner I slept till eight o'clock in the evening, and when I awoke I found my two comrades in a state of the greatest anxiety, for they had seen three Tibetan horsemen spying upon us from a long distance. We must therefore expect fresh trouble at any moment. The night was divided into three watches, from nine o'clock to midnight, midnight to three o'clock, and three o'clock to six o'clock, and usually I took the first and the Lama the last. The animals were tethered to a rope fastened to the ground in the lee of the tent, and Tiger was tied up in front of them and Lilliput behind them. At half-past eight Shagdur and the Lama were asleep in the tent, and my first night watch began. I strolled backwards and forwards between Tiger and Lilliput, who whined with pleasure when I stroked them. The sky was covered with dense black clouds, lighted from within by flashes of lightning, while thunder rolled around us and rain streamed down in a perfect deluge. It beat and rang on the Mongolian stewpans left out at the fireplace. Sometimes I tried to get a little shelter in the tent opening, but as soon as the dogs growled I had to hurry out again. At last it is midnight and my watch is at an end; but Shagdur is sleeping so soundly that I cannot find it in my heart to waken him. I am just thinking of shortening his watch by half an hour when both dogs begin to bark furiously. The Lama wakes up and rushes out, and we steal off with our weapons in the direction in which we hear the tramp of a horse going away through the mud. In a little while all is quiet again, and the dogs cease to bark. I wake up Shagdur and creep into my berth in my wet coat. Next day we travel on under a sky as heavy as lead. No human beings or nomad tents are to be seen, but we find numerous tracks of flocks of sheep and yaks, and old camping-grounds. The danger of meeting people increased hourly, and so did my anxiety as to how the Tibetans would treat us when we were at last discovered. On July 31 the rain was still pouring down. We were following a clear, well-trodden path, along which a herd of yaks had recently been driven. After a while we came up with a party of Tangut pilgrims, with fifty yaks, two horses, and three dogs. The Tanguts are a nomadic people in northeastern Tibet, and almost every second Tangut is also a robber. We passed them safely, however, and for the first time encamped near a Tibetan nomad tent occupied by a young man and two women.