Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/228

 multitude of horses and of camels, resting beside the Hoang-ho.

And presently when they departed for the frontier, he followed secretly after them, with two Buddhist friends. So they came to the frontier, where the line of the fortifications stretched away lessening into the desert, with their watch-towers fantastically capped, like Mandarins. But here only the caravan could pass; for the guards had orders from the Son of Heaven to seize upon Hiouen-thsang;—and the Indian merchants rode away far beyond the line of the watch-towers; and the caravan became only a moving speck against the disk of the sun, to disappear with his setting. Yet in the night Hiouen-thsang passed with his friends, like shadows, through the line of guards, and followed the trail.

Happily the captain in charge of the next watch-tower was a holy man, and moved by the supplications of the Buddhist priests, he permitted Hiouen-thsang to pass on. But the