The Wonderful Mekong I51 
understood. They went on at me in Tibetan while I kicked 
the heavy wooden door and cursed them heartily; finally I 
put my shoulder against it and tried to break it open. But 
it was too strong and yielded not an inch. 
Meanwhile there was great excitement within, people 
running about with torches and shouting all kinds of things, 
but not a man would show himself, and I could not climb 
the wall. Had they seen me, all might have been well, for 
I was known in the village, but apparently it did not occur 
to them who it was, and fearing a robber ruse they would 
neither open the door nor expose themselves. 
As I kicked viciously at the door, there suddenly fell a 
great silence upon the household, which I presently noticed 
and took to heart; it was the more impressive on that dark 
night after the recent racket and the lurid glare of pine 
torches. I thought: “They have gone for their guns; I 
had better get out of the way,” so with one final effort I 
dashed against the door, which cracked, but would not 
yield, and to the accompaniment of a long Tibetan curse, | 
ran away into the darkness laughing. 
But my pony and I were now dead tired and it was 
with a sigh of relief that I eventually found the Tussu’s 
house, where we had as a matter of fact stayed on our way 
to Batang. Here at least I would be weil received, so I 
set about knocking up the household. 
There was a light burning in the big lonely house, but 
shout as I would, I could get no response. Finally tying 
up my pony, I scaled the wall; something was shaking 
itself in the darkness below, and I dropped down almost 
on the top of a big mastiff, who had roused himself, and at 
once set up a tremendous baying, so that I narrowly escaped 
with a whole skin. Before the household could be alarmed 
I had climbed up to a window, and crawling through I 
dropped to the floor and entered the big household kitchen, 
dashing straight into the midst of a crowd of children 
playing some game uncommonly like hide-and-seek ; it 
was at any rate equally noisy, which accounted for their 
disregard of my entreaties for admission. 
A panic immediately ensued, and everybody ran away 
shrieking except a few elders, who stood in the middle of 
the room staring at me with open mouths. Happily there 
