280
"How are you?" she exclaimed dramatically. My prosaic reply was, "You've got here just in time to 
see me hanged!" 
Thornton gave a dinner party in our honour that night. My wife sat at his right hand. I saw that she 
was upset about something. I had no opportunity to talk to Thornon alone before dinner. He kept on 
giving a curious gesture and then raising two fingers. My stupid mind could not imagine what he was 
driving at. After dinner he took me and Rose aside for a moment. The unimaginable had happened. 
My single shot had gone clean through the abdomen of the man with the knife and lodged in the 
spine of the villain behind him. They had been taken to hospital and made a full confession of their 
crime. 
So the next morning the Standard gave me my meed of publicity. Column three of the main page 
gave the story of the attempted robbery. The man with the gun was thought to be a sailor from one 
of the ships in the harbour; the police offered a reward for his apprehension. Column five contained 
an interview with the hero of the expedition to Kangchenjunga. "They will go round the ships," said 
Thornton, "and they they'll have a shot at the hotels. Get out and get out quick!" 
"Darling sweetheart lovey-dovey silly great big she-ass!" I whispered to my wife, "would you rather 
walk across Persia or across China?" 
The wretched woman knew no geography. All she knew about Persia was rugs and Omar Khayyam; 
all she knew about China was opium smoking, porcelain and tea. She was fed up with Omar, who 
was at that time deplorably the rage in this wasp-witted country. "My ownest own," she purred, 
"let's go through China!" We hastily engaged an ayah for our baby. This female was hideous, ill-
mannered and untrustworthy; she claimed to be a Roman Catholic so as to conceal that her caste 
would have nothing to do with her, 
{458} 
but she was the only ayah available, so off we went. The one honest human being in the party was 
dear old shikari Salama Tantra. The loyal staunch old hound! He never flinched, he never failed; he 
had all the innocence of a child and all the wisdom of Pythagoras; the courage to face the unknown 
--- which Indians almost always fear to the limit --- and the gentleness which goes with great 
strength of body and soul. Peace be to thee, old friend, where'er thou be. 
{459} 
54 
The voyage to Rangoon was uneventful and delightful. The weather was perfect; for a wonder, the 
shores and spine of western Burma were on show. There was a fearful fascination in those deadly 
beauties. I cursed again the fate that had driven me back in 1902 from the sombre slopes of the 
Arakans. I had rather I had left my bones to Bleach upon those pestilential peaks. 
Yet my mind --- thanks be to the most high eternal gods! --- can never rest for more than an 
albatross's glide upon the slopes of the past. Today, writing my memories, I feel as if I were playing 
a sort of practical joke upon myself. I am hot on the trail of the future. I can imagine myself on my 
deathbed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a 
woman. 
Beyond Burma lay mysterious China; I conjured up a cloud of amusing phantasies. Romance and 
adventure. I am incurable; though I have had all the good thinks of life, nearly all my life, though I 
no longer value them or enjoy them for themselves, I still enjoy the idea of them. I embrace 
hardship and privation with ecstatic delight; I want everything that the world holds; I would go to 
prison or to the scaffold for the sake of the experience. I have never grown out of the infantile 
belief that the universe was made for me to suck. I grow delirious to contemplate the delicious 
horrors that are certain to happen to me. This is the keynote of my life, the untrammelled delight 
in every possibility of existence, potential or actual. Fear had been eliminated from me by the fact