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body of before they could reach the exits. As the watchmen, as the garrison, the totality of the
lamas of the Kurkuma Bonnet ended annihilated by our superiority in the art of war.

Chapter XXVII

One and twenty one minutes. Karl von Grossen, Heinz, Kloster, Hans, Oskar and I, the
grupo of five lopas, and the Gurkha, saved the three hundred metres that separated us from the
left tower. We had to clean our way bloodly within the small crowd that was still running
chaotically without knowing what to do, but that escape way planned by von Grossen
demonstrated to be, if not the unique possible, one of the few that remained. Other course of
evasion, for example, could have considered the aquatic environment of the lake; what would
not be feasible to do was to return whence we came, that is, through the avenue, because the
same was similar now to a tunnel of high temperature by the effect of the general fire;
anticipated effect by the provident von Grossen.

In the centre of a lurid circle of corpses, at the foot of the stairs, we encountered with
the kâulika monk. Preceded by him, we went upwards in column to the tower and decended
rapidly with the rope to the exterior of the wall.

Without obstacles worthy of mention, we undertook the withdrawal towards the North.

Five hundred metres ahead we found the kâulika monk with the horses and we
completed the retreat, moving away quickly from the destroyed valley duskha. The path
ascended through the slope of a hill, and I could not avoid to turn back an instant to
contemplate for last time the consequence of our attack. The image that I perceived, as
corollary of the operation, was nightmarish: with the tenebrous mark of the closed night, was
distinguished clearly the inner square of the wall, illuminated by the redish flashes of the fire,
that still conserved its destructive vitality; the fire, as a ravenous beast, had decided to devour
everything, and was still consuming the sinister Monastery; the building, which was the highest
of the village, was burning freely and its flames projected a multicolor spectrum over the
immutable mirror of the lake Kyaring; beneath that light, it was even possible for me to
recognize the damn Temple of Ridgen Djapo which was constructed entirely with white stones.

The success of the attack would have been total if it could have been followed the course
of a variant planned by von Grossen, who contemplated the dynamiting of such satanic
Temple. But there was not material time available for it; that is to say, the time was employed

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