nted tsampa, and this was obviously merely a ruse to detain you from
your quest. British choler would then rise, and, going out of the temple
with somewhat irreverent haste, you would begin to express yourself
forcibly in terms which you made the interpreter translate. The
interpreter had probably an axe of his own to grind, and it was doubtful
how many of your trenchant phrases, even if fit to repeat in a
monastery, got actually translated. But after a great show of meaning
business, and a few threats of stronger measures in the background, you
probably got, say, fifty maunds of tsampa from a proper storeroom which
the lamas had previously refrained from showing you. A little later a
few more threats and the threatening crack of a whip round the head of a
'chela' or two would send the monks all skipping about in trepidation,
and the door of the main storeroom would be opened to you, in which you
would find, it might be, two hundred maunds (or three days' supply for
the force) of the desired article. After this you were all friends. No
ill-will was borne on either side. The junior monks or 'chelas' would
assist in bagging the flour, and in carrying it down to the place where
the mules were waiting for it. The money would be doled out and counted
with the greatest good humour, there would be another proffer of parched
wheat and rotten eggs, and you would depart with the head lama's
blessing.

After one such visit I dreamed a dream. I knocked in a boisterous
swash-buckling manner at Tom Gate, the main gate of my old
college--Christ Church. Behind me, stretching up St. Aldate's to Carfax,
were a string of pack mules, fitted with empty bags, forage nets, and
loading ropes. The gate was opened by those of the porters whom I knew
years ago. One, an old soldier, saluted me. Then it occurred to me that
I was a Japanese officer, and that in the year 2004 the Japanese army
were invading England. I was at the head of a foraging party, and we had
come to loot the House. We had a fine time. We started of course by
ringing up the Dean. He too blessed me, and when I asked him for some of
that old Burgundy that I know was a speciality of the senior common-room
cellar, he showed me round the cathedral and pointed out the restored
shrine of St. Frideswide. This was not what I wanted, and I told him so.
I brought the mules in from outside, and set them to graze on the neat
plots of turf that encircle 'Mercury' the fountain, and told him th