World, the story presents difficulties to me. Yet it may be that the
devastation wrought by Time is merely local, and that outside the
scope of his destruction old songs are still being sung by those that
we deem dead. I try to hope so. And yet the more I investigate the
story that the long porter told me in the town of Tong Tong Tarrup the
more plausible the alternative theory appears--that that grizzled man
is a liar.





The Loot of Loma

Coming back laden with the loot of Loma, the four tall men looked
earnestly to the right; to the left they durst not, for the precipice
there that had been with them so long went sickly down on to a bank of
clouds, and how much further below that only their fears could say.

Loma lay smoking, a city of ruin, behind them, all its defenders dead;
there was no one left to pursue them, and yet their Indian instincts
told them that all was scarcely well. They had gone three days along
that narrow ledge: mountain quite smooth, incredible, above them, and
precipice as smooth and as far below. It was chilly there in the
mountains; at night a stream or a wind in the gloom of the chasm below
them went like a whisper; the stillness of all things else began to
wear the nerve--an enemy's howl would have braced them; they began to
wish their perilous path were wider, they began to wish that they had
not sacked Loma.