Poyning was vastly the better for his long sleep, and as eager to push on as I was, and though Philipson maintained outwardly the business-like air of reserve that had never entirely left him, I could see he was in a tremendous exultation. As he might well be. To have brought us safely over that journey from Nanking to the spot where we now stood was a feat bordering on the miraculous, and if there was another man on this earth that could have done it, I had not heard of that man. 'Breakfast first,' he said, smiling. 'None of us can afford to take liberties with himself after what we have been through. Then we will go down and explore, but we will load the rifles first. After all, we know little of these people. Who can predict what kind of welcome they will give us?' After-events showed that we couldn't. Little did we dream how we were to be received by the folk of the valley, or even how we were to get over the last lap of our tremendous journey. We made a meal of yak beef--the leathery stuff seemed much tastier now--packed up the two tents, and set out. Philipson's plan was that we should stalk the strange people very circumspectly, so that if they seemed hostile, we could at least beat a retreat up the mountain side as Sbrang Chikya had done; in which case it would be well not to have scrapped our gear. The stuff was a boon to us, later on, but by no means in the way we had expected. We had been marching down the steep slant for about an hour when Philipson halted and looked from one side to the other with an air of considerable uneasiness. We asked him what was awry. He continued halted and looking, and then: '_That!_' he cried, stretching an arm out over the great expanse of snow. At first I could see no reason for alarm, but after a minute or two I became aware that something was happening to the snow. A broad patch at about a hundred yards to our left moved. It slid downward for a few feet, then halted; and I remember having at the moment a sort of fantastic impression that the snow was gifted with sense and stopped because we were looking at it. I had had many fancies, wilder even than that, during the past few days, and I make no doubt the others had too. But what Philipson now saw alarming in a little shifting snow, I hardly understood. It looked harmless enough to me. 'I have noticed that once or twice since we started this morning,' he said, 'and I do not like it. There has been an unusually heavy fall--no doubt it came with the blizzard the other night. The mountains are top-heavy. There it is again!'