I listened to the halting dialogue, and the longer I listened the more familiar the sounds became. It was something that had reached my ears before, and that recently. Then, with a violent start, I remembered where. This language, or something very like it, was the one I had heard Philipson use on the balcony of Nanking, and again in the pass of the _obo_. 'What the devil are you talking to them, Poyning?' I cried. He turned to me with an uncommonly excited look. 'It seems that my qualifications can be of use in the East after all,' he replied. 'I have been speaking to these men in Greek.' Then it dawned on me. That was why the language had seemed so strangely familiar. I knew Greek, but not the Greek that Poyning spoke. I had learned to pronounce my Greek in the straightforward, almost phonetic manner of a schoolboy of the nineties. Poyning, coming later, had been taught the pronunciation that modern pundits imagined to have been used in the days of Pericles and Aristotle. Here was a race speaking Greek--apparently ancient Greek--in a way that Poyning, if with considerable difficulty, could understand. It must have been the most triumphant vindication of an educational theory in history. 'I have told them we have comrades yet to pick up,' said Poyning, 'and I have given parole that we will not run away. These people will help us search.' 'But how in the name of riddles did you tumble to what they're saying? I don't understand a word of it.' 'Nor could I for some time. It's a much more melodious version of the language than ours, and there are words I have to guess the meaning of, but once I got a hint what to listen for, it began to come clearer. God knows who these people are, Mirlees. They're certainly speaking classical Greek.' The strangers, directed by the tall greyhead, got into extended order with the silent precision of men accustomed to discipline, and worked slowly up the mountain side. We were soon back into deep snow, and it was hereabouts we made our first discovery--a melancholy one. A brown hand was sticking out of the white pall. A moment later I was looking at the dead bodies of our two Chinese servants, the faithful Lo Eng and Ah Sing. They were bruised all over, but it seemed they had met their end by suffocation under the overwhelming torrent. A space was bared on the hillside, and the dead men laid out on it. Poyning turned to me, his face twisted with grief. 'Philipson must be lower down--buried, too, or we should have seen him,' he said.