Their timidity, even when in such overwhelming numbers, was indeed beyond description; and it was entirely due to it, and not to my strength (for I had hardly any), that I was able to hold my own against them for some twenty minutes. My clothes were torn in the fight. Long ropes were thrown at me from every side, and I became so entangled in them that my movements were impeded. One rope which they flung and successfully twisted round my neck completed their victory. They pulled hard at it from the two ends, and while I panted and gasped with the exertion of fighting, they tugged and tugged to strangle me, till I felt as if my eyes would shoot out of their sockets. I was suffocating. My sight became dim, and I was in their power. Dragged down to the ground, they stamped, and kicked, and trampled upon me with their heavy nailed boots, until I was stunned. Then they tied my wrists tightly behind my back; they bound my elbows, my chest, my neck and my ankles. I was a prisoner! [Illustration: PURCHASING PONIES] [Illustration: I WAS A PRISONER] [Illustration: ROPE RIDING-WHIP] CHAPTER LXXIV Chanden Sing's plucky resistance--Mansing secured--A signal--A treacherous Lama--Confiscation of baggage--Watches, compasses and aneroids--Fear and avidity--The air-cushion--Dragged into the encampment. [Illustration: EARRING WORN BY HIGH OFFICIALS] THEY lifted me and made me stand up. The brave Chanden Sing had been struggling with all his might against fifteen or twenty foes, and had disabled several of them. He had been pounced upon at the same moment as I was, and had fought gallantly until, like myself, he had been entangled, thrown down and secured by ropes. During my struggle, I heard him call out repeatedly: "_Banduk, banduk, Mansing; jaldi, banduk!_" ("Rifle, rifle, Mansing; quick, my rifle!") but, alas, poor Mansing the leper, the weak and jaded coolie, had been sprung upon by four powerful Tibetans, who held him pinned to the ground as if he had been the fiercest of bandits. Mansing was a philosopher. He had saved himself the trouble of even offering any resistance; but he too, was ill-treated, beaten and tightly bound. At the beginning of the fight a shrill whistle had brought up four hundred[27] armed soldiers who had lain in ambush round us, concealed behind the innumerable sandhills and in the depressions in the ground. They took up a position round us and covered us with their matchlocks. [Illustration: DRAGGED INTO THE SETTLEMENT]