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Then the serpent-headed one, aided by another with dragon mask, both uttering fiendish yells, pushed his companions back to the railing, just as the Penlop spoke to one of his officials who shouted across to them an angry command to leave the white woman alone. The scared maskers tumbled over each other in their hurry to quit the balcony.
The fat old Penlop frequently looked across the quadrangle at her from his gallery and as often uttered some coarse jest about her to his grinning followers, while he raised a chased silver goblet filled with murwa, the native liquor, to his lips. It was Muriel Benson.
Colonel Dermot was anxious to investigate the activities of the Chinese Amban, reputed to reach their height in the territory just across the Indian border ruled by the Tuna Penlop and lying west of the Black Mountain range that divides Bhutan.
This great feudal chieftain was reputed to be completely under the influence of Yuan Shi Hung and both anti-British and disloyal to his overlord the Maharajah or Tongsa Penlop.
An appeal to the Maharajah of Bhutan would be equally fruitless; for his powerful vassal the Tuna Penlop was practically in rebellion against him and defied his authority. The sole hope of saving Muriel lay in Wargrave's prompt action. Yet try as the subaltern would, he and Tashi were unable at any point to pierce the cordon of guards along the frontier.
This led up towards the Bhutan Frontier, which runs among the hills at an average elevation of six thousand feet above the sea. As the Assistant Political Officer anticipated, the party had headed for the portion of the border under the control of the Amban's friend, the Penlop of Tuna.
Major Hunt smiled. "Bhutan is supposed to be ruled by a temporal monarch called the Deb Raja and also by a spiritual one, known in India as the Durma Raja. In reality it is under the sway of the most powerful of the several great feudal lords of the land, the Tongsa Penlop or Chief of Tongsa, whom we regard as the Maharajah of Bhutan.
He was the Penlop of Tuna, the great feudal lord of the province, whose high-walled jong, or castle, crowned the rocky hill on which the monastery and the town were built.
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