| caption: |
expedition in the Tangkhul area |
| caption: |
Luikai joins the expedition |
| text: |
Unexpectedly that night, in the dusk by the camp-fire, we found a new retainer. His name was Luikai. A small, grimy, snub-nosed Tangkhul, he had run himself into debt over his wife's funeral. Either in ignorance or perversity, he had given the prescribed parts of the sacrifice to the wrong people, and had had to right the matter by doing the whole ceremony again. He wanted to come along with us to earn the money. Anxious, shivering in his tattered cloth, with the compounder as advocate, he waited the verdict. I took him on. He had the itch, unfortunately; but then most Tangkhuls had. |
