We went into a cavern whose floor was cup-shaped. Nearly all the way around the rim of the cup was an irregular ledge averaging twenty feet in width; with that exception, the whole interior was shaped like an enormous egg with its narrow end upward. The bottom was nowhere less than a hundred feet across, and was reached by steps cut irregularly downward from the rim.
At intervals around the ledge were seated about a score of men, some solitary, some in groups of three; some were naked, others wore loin-cloths; all were silent, but they all took an obvious interest in us, and some of them were grinning. A few of them squatted, with their legs tucked under them, but most of them let their legs hang over the edge, and they all had an air of perfect familiarity with the surroundings as well as what can be best described as a "team look." You see the same air of careless competence around a well-managed circus lot.
King and I followed the Gray Mahatma down into the bowl, and under his directions seated ourselves exactly in the middle, King and I back to back and the Mahatma a little way from us and also with his back turned. In that position my back was toward the door we had entered by, but I was able to see nine narrow openings in the opposite wall about twenty feet higher than the ledge, and those openings may have had something to do with what followed, although I can't prove it.
Old gray-beard, who had admitted us, stood on the ledge like a picture of St. Simon Stylites, folding his arms under his flowing beard and looking almost ready to plunge downward, as if the bowl were a swimming tank.
However, he suddenly filled his great scrawny breast with air and boomed out one word. The golden light ceased to exist. There was no period of going, as there is even with electric light. He spoke, and it was not. Nothing whatever was visible. I held a finger up, and poked my eye before I knew it.
Then all at once there began the most delicious music, like Ariel singing in mid-air. It was subdued, but as clear as the ripple of a mountain stream over pebbles, and there was absolutely no locating it, for it seemed to come from everywhere at once, even from underneath us. And simultaneously with the music there began to be a dim light, which was all the more impossible to locate because it was never the same color in two places, nor even in one place for longer than a note of music lasted.
"Observe!" boomed the Gray Mahatma's solemn voice. "Color and sound are one. Both are vibration. You shall behold the color harmonies."
Presently the connection between sound and color began to be obvious. Each note had its color, and as that note was sounded the color appeared in a thousand places.
It was Eastern music. It filled the cavern, and as the pulse of it quickened the light danced, colors shooting this and that way like shuttles weaving a new sky. But there were no drum-beats yet, and the general effect was rather of dreaminess.
When the old gray-beard's voice boomed out at last from the ledge above us, and light and music ceased simultaneously, the effect was nauseating. It went to the pit of your stomach. The instantaneous darkness produced vertigo. You felt as if you were falling down an endless pit, and King and I clutched each other. The mere fact that we were squatting on a hard floor did not help matters, for the floor seemed to be falling too and to be turning around bewilderingly, just as the whorls of colored light had done. The gray-beard's voice boomed again; whereat there was more music, and light in tune to it.
This time, of all unexpected things, Beethoven's Overture to Leonore began to take visible form in the night, and I would rather be able to set down what we saw than write Homer's Iliad! It must be that we knew then all that Beethoven did. It was not just wind music, or mere strings, but a whole, full-volumed orchestra—where or whence there was no guessing; the music came at you from everywhere at once, and with it light, interpreting the music.
To me that has always been the most wonderful overture in the world anyhow, for it seems to describe creation when the worlds took form in the void; but with that light, each tone and semi-tone and chord and harmony expressed in the absolutely pure color that belonged to it, it was utterly beyond the scope of words. It was a new unearthly language, more like a glimpse of the next world than anything in this.
The combination of color and music was having a highly desirable effect on me. Nothing could have done more to counteract the effects of the godless din that bowled me over in the other cavern.
But King was having a rotten time. He was heaving now as he tried to master himself. I heard him exclaiming—
"Oh my God!" as if the physical torture were unbearable.
The Gray Mahatma was not troubling about King. He had shifted his position so as to watch me, and he seemed to expect me to collapse. So I showed as little as possible of my real feelings, and shut my eyes at intervals as if bewildered. Then he cried out just as the gray-beard on the ledge had done.
The overture to Leonore ceased. The colors gave place to the restful golden light. King had not collapsed yet, and his usual Spartan self-mastery prevented him then from betraying much in the way of symptoms. So I clutched my head and tried to look all-in, which gave me a chance to whisper to King under my arm.
"Can you hang on?"
"Dunno. How are you doing?"
"Fine."
The Gray Mahatma seemed to think that I was appealing to King for help. He looked delighted. Between my fingers I could see him signaling to the gray-beard on the ledge. The golden light vanished again. And now once more they gave us Eastern music, awful stuff, pulsating with a distant drumbeat like the tramp of an army of devils. The colors were angry and glowering now. The shapes they took as they plaited and wove themselves into one another were all involuted, everything turning itself inside out, and the end of every separate movement was blood-red.
King groaned aloud and rolled over on his side, just as the stuff became so dim and dreadful that you could hardly see your hand before your face, and a noise like the rushing of the wind between the worlds made every inch of your skin prickly with goose-flesh. Low though the colors were, when you shut your eyes you could still see them, but I could not see the Gray Mahatma, and I was sure he could not see me. He would not know which of us was down and out.
So I seized King and dragged him across the floor to the point where the irregular stone steps provided the only way of escape. There I hove him like a sack on to my shoulders. In that drunken, throbbing twilight it would have been easy for some of the gray-beard's crew to lean from the ledge and send me reeling back again; the best chance was to climb quickly before they were aware of me.
When I reached the ledge it was deserted. There was nothing whatever to indicate where the gray-beard and his crew were. I could not remember exactly the direction of the entrance, but made for the wall, intending to feel my way along it; and just as I started to do that I heard the Gray Mahatma climbing up behind me.
He made hardly more noise than a cat. But though the Mahatma was stealthy, he came swiftly, and in a moment I felt his hand touch me. That was exactly at the moment when the music and colors were subdued to a sort of hell-brew twilight—the kind of glow you might expect before the overwhelming of the world.
"You are as strong as the buffalo himself," he said, mistaking me for King. "Leave that fool here, and come with me."
My right hand was free, but the Gray Mahatma had plenty of assistance at his beck and call.
So I put my hand in the small of his back and shoved him along in front of me. If he should learn too soon that King, and not I, was down and out he might decide to have done with us both there and then. My task was to get out of that cavern before the golden light came on again.
The Gray Mahatma led the way to the door, and it was just as well that he did, for there was some secret way of opening it that I should almost certainly have failed to find. I pushed him through ahead of me.
And then we were in pitch darkness. There was neither light, nor room to turn, and nothing for it but for the Mahatma to lead the way along, and I had to be careful in carrying King not to injure him against the rock in the places where the passage narrowed.
However, he began to recover gradually as we neared the end of the long passage, regaining consciousness by fits and starts like a man coming out of anesthesia, and commencing to kick so that I had hard work to preserve him from injury. When his feet were not striking out against the walls his head was, and I finally shook him violently. That had the desired effect. It was just as if fumes had gone out of his head. His body grew warmer almost in a moment, and I felt him break out into a sweat. Then he groaned, and asked me where we were; and a moment later he seemed to understand what was happening, for he struggled to free himself.
"All right," he whispered. "Let me walk."
So I let him slip down to his feet in front of me, and holding him beneath the armpits repeated our lock-step trick with positions reversed; and when we reached the outer door that gave on to the narrow main passage he was going fairly strong. The Mahatma opened the door and stepped out into the light; but it was the strange peculiarity of that light that it did not flow beyond its appointed boundaries, and we continued to be in darkness as long as we did not follow him through the door.
So when King stepped out ahead of me, the Mahatma had no means of knowing what a mistake he had been making all along. He naturally jumped to the conclusion that King had been carrying me.
When I stepped out of the pitch blackness he looked more than a little surprised at my appearance, and I grinned back at him as sheepishly as I could manage, hoping he would not see the red patch on my shoulder caused by the pressure of King's weight, or the scratches made by King's fingernails when he was beginning to recover consciousness. Nevertheless, he did see, and understood.
"Lead on, MacDuff!" I said in plain English, and perhaps he did not dislike me so immensely after all, for he smiled as he turned his back to lead the way.
We passed, without meeting anybody, out through the narrow door where the first tall speechless showman had admitted us, into the cave where the lingam reposed on its stone altar; and there the Mahatma resumed the lantern he had left.
When we climbed the oval stairway and emerged on the platform under the cupola the dawn was just about to break. The Gray Mahatma raised the stone lid with an ease that betrayed unsuspected strength and dropped it into place, where it fitted so exactly that no one ignorant of the secret would ever have guessed the existence of a hidden stairway.
Swinging his lantern the Mahatma led into the temple, where the enormous idols loomed in quivering shadow, and made straight for the biggest one of all—the four-headed one that faced the marble screen. I thought he was going to bow down and worship it. He actually did go down on hands and knees, and I turned to King in amazement, thus missing my chance to see what he was really up to.
So I don't know how he managed it; but suddenly the whole lower part of the idol, including the thighs, swung outward and disclosed a dark passage, into which he led us, and the stone swung back into place at our backs as if balanced by weights.
At the far end the Mahatma led into a square-mouthed tunnel, darker if that were possible than the vaulted gloom we had left, and as we entered in single file I thought I heard the splashing of water underneath.
About a minute after that the Mahatma stopped and let King draw abreast; then, continuing to swing the lantern he started forward again. I don't know whether it was fear, intuition, or just curiosity that made me wonder why he should change the formation in that way, but quite absurdly I deduced that he wished King to walk into a trap. It was that that saved me.
"Look out, King!" I warned.
Exactly as I spoke I set my foot on a yielding stone trap-door—felt a blast of cool air—and heard water unmistakably. The air brought a stagnant smell with it. I slid forward and downward, but sprang simultaneously, managing to get my fingers on the edge of the stone in front. But the balanced trap-door, resuming its equilibrium, caught me on the back of the head, half-stunning me, and in another second I would have gone down into the dark among the alligators. I just had enough consciousness left to realize that I was hanging over the covered end of the alligator tank.
But the faint outer circle of light cast by the Mahatma's lantern just reached me, and as King turned his head to acknowledge my warning he saw me fall. He sprang back, and seized my wrists, just as my fingers began slipping on the smooth stone; but my weight was almost too much for him, and I came so near to dragging him through after me that the stone trap got past my head and jammed against my elbows.
Then I heard King yelling for the Mahatma to bring the lantern back, and after what seemed an interminable interval the Mahatma came and set one foot on the stone, so that it swung past my head again, nearly braining me in its descent. I don't know whether he intended that or not.
"There is more in this than accident," he said, his voice booming hollow as he bent to let the light fall on me. "Very well; pull up your buffalo, and you shall have him!"
It was no easy task for the two of them to haul me up, because the moment the Mahatma removed his foot from the lid of the trap the thing swung upward and acted like the tongue of a buckle to keep me from coming through. When he set his foot on it again, the other foot did not give him sufficient purchase. Finally King managed to pull his loin-cloth off and pass it around under my armpits, after which the two together hauled me clear, minus in the aggregate about a half square foot of skin that I left on the edge of the stone.
Off the Mahatma went alone again, swinging his lantern, and apparently at peace with himself and the whole universe.
Thereafter, King and I walked arm-in-arm, thinking in that way to lessen the risk of further pitfalls. But there was no more. The Mahatma reached at last what looked like a blind stone wall at the end of the tunnel; but there was a flagstone missing from the floor in front of it, and he disappeared down a black-dark flight of steps.
We followed him into a cellar, whose walls wept moisture, but we saw no cobras; and then up another flight of steps on the far side into a chamber that I thought I recognized. He disappeared through a door in the corner of that, and by the time we had groped our way after him he was sitting in the old black panther's cage with the brute's head in his lap, stroking and twisting its ears as if it were a kitten. The cage door was wide open, and the day was already growing hot and brassy in the east.
King and I hurried out of the cage, for the panther showed his fangs at us; the Mahatma followed us out and snapped the door shut. Instantly the panther sprang at us, trying to bend the bars together. Failing in that, he lay close and shoved his whole shoulder through, clawing at us. It was hardly any wonder that that secret, yet so simply discoverable door between Yasmini's palace and the temple-caverns was unknown.
We swung along through the great bronze gate and into the courtyard where the shrubs all stood reflected along with the marble stairway in a square pool. We plunged right in without as much as hesitating on the brink, dragging the Mahatma with us—not that he made the least objection. He laughed, and seemed to regard it as thoroughly good fun.
We splashed and fooled for a few minutes, standing neck-deep and kicking at an occasional fish as it darted by, stirring up mud with our toes until the water was so cloudy that we could see the fish no longer. Then King thought of clothes. He stood on tiptoe and shouted.
"Ismail! O—Ismail!"
Ismail came, like a yellow-fanged wolf, bowed to the Mahatma as if nakedness and royalty were one, and stood eyeing the water curiously.
"Get us garments!" King ordered testily.
"I was not staring at thee, little Kingsahib," he answered. "I was marveling!"
But he went off without explaining what he had been marveling at, and we went on with our ablutions, the job of getting ashes out of your hair not being quite so easy as it might appear. I daresay it was fifteen minutes before Ismail came back carrying two complete native costumes for King and me, and a long saffron robe for the Mahatma. Then we came out of the water and the Gray Mahatma smiled.
"I said there were no more traps, and it seems I spoke the truth," he said wonderingly. "Moreover, I did not set this trap, but it was you yourselves who led me into it."
"Which trap?" we demanded with one voice.
"You have stirred the mud, my friends, to a condition in which themuggerwho lives in that pool is not visible. But themuggeris there, and I don't know why he did not seize one of you!"
In the center of the pool there was a rockery, for the benefit of plant-roots and breeding fish. I walked around it to look, and there, sure enough, lay a brute about twenty feet long, snoozing with his chin on a corner of the rock. I picked up a pole to prod him and he snapped and broke it, coming close to the edge to clatter his jaws at me. Prodding him a last time, I turned round to look for the Mahatma. He had vanished—gone as utterly and silently as a myth. King had not seen him go. We inquired of Ismail. He laughed.
"There is only one place to go—here," he answered.
"To the Princess?"
"There is nowhere else! Who shall disobey her? I have orders to unloose the panther if thesahibstake any other way than straight into her presence!"
Dressed now in the Punjabi costume with gorgeous silk turbans, we walked side by side up the marble steps and knocked on the brass-bound, teak front door at the top. Exactly as when we arrived on the previous day, the door was immediately opened by two women.
The Mahatma was in there ahead of us, and had evidently told Yasmini sufficient of our adventures to make her laugh. She squealed with delight at sight of us.
"Come! Sit beside me in the window, both of you! My women will bring food. Afterward you shall sleep—poor things, you look as if you need it! O, what is that, Ganesha-ji? Blood on your linen? Were you hurt?"
Her swift, restless fingers drew the cloth aside and showed a few inches of where my bare skin should have been.
"It is nothing. My women shall dress it. They have oils that will cause the skin to grow again within a week. A week is nothing; you and Athelstan will be here longer than a week! And you crossed the Pool of Terrors? I have crossed that too! we three are initiates now!"
"Ye are three who will die unless discretion is the very law ye live by!" said the Gray Mahatma. He seemed annoyed about something.
"Old Dust-and-ashes!" laughed Yasmini, snapping her fingers at him. "Hah!" She laughed delightedly. "They have seen enough to make them believe what I shall tell them!"
"Woman, you woo your own destruction. None has ever set out to betray that secret and survived the first offense!" he answered.
"It wasyouwho betrayed it tome," she said, with another golden laugh. Then, turning to King again:
"I have sought for that secret day and night! India has always known of its existence; and in every generation some have fought their way in through the outer mysteries to the knowledge within. But those who enter always become initiates, and keep the secret. I was puzzled how to begin, until I heard how, in England, a woman once overheard the secrets of Freemasonry, and was made a Freemason in consequence.
"Now behold this man they call the Gray Mahatma! He does as I tell him! You must know that these Knowers of Royal Knowledge, as they call themselves, are not the little birds in one nest that they would like to be; they quarrel among themselves, and there is a rival faction that knows only street-corner magic, but is more deadly bent on knowing Royal Knowledge than a wolf is determined to get lamb."
The Gray Mahatma saw fit to challenge some of that statement.
"It is true, that there are wolves who seek to break in," he said quietly, "but it is false that there are quarrels among ourselves."
"Hah!" That little laugh of hers was like the exclamation of a fellow who has got home with his rapier point.
"Quarrels or not," she answered, "there is a faction that was more than willing to use the ancient passage under my palace grounds, and to hold secret meetings in a room that I made ready for them."
"Faction!" The Gray Mahatma sneered. "Faithful seniors determined to expel unfaithful upstarts are not a faction!"
"At any rate," she chuckled, "they wished to hold a meeting unbeknown to the others, and they wished to make wonderful preparations for not being overheard. And I helped them—is that not so, Mahatma-ji? You see, they were scornful of women—then."
"Peace, woman!" the Mahatma growled. "Does a bee sting while it gathers honey? You spied on our secrets, but did we harm you for it?"
"You did not dare!" she retorted. "If I had been alone, you would have destroyed me along with those unfortunates on whose account you held the meeting. It would have been easy to throw me to themugger. But you did not know how many women had overheard your secrets! You only knew, that more than one had, and that at least ten women witnessed the fate of your victims. Is that not so?"
"Victims is the wrong word. Call them culprits!" said the Gray Mahatma.
"What would the Government call them?" she retorted.
The Gray Mahatma curled his lip, but made no answer to that. Yasmini turned to King.
"So I knew enough of their secrets to oblige them either to kill me or else teach me all. And they did not dare kill me, because they could not kill all my women too, for fear of Government. So first they took me through that ordeal that you went through last night. And ever since then I have been trying to learn; but this science of theirs is difficult, and I suspect them of increasing the difficulty for my benefit. Nevertheless, I have mastered some of it."
"You have mastered none of it!" the Gray Mahatma retorted discourteously. "The golden light is the first step. Show me some."
"They thought they were being too clever for me," she went on. "They listened to my suggestion that it might be wise to show Athelstan King the mysteries, and send him to America to prepare the way for what is coming. So we set a trap for Athelstan. And Athelstan brought Ganesha with him. So now I have two men who know the secret, in addition to myself and all my women. And I have one man who has skill enough tolearnthe secret, now that he knowsofit. Perhaps both men can learn it, and I know full well that one can."
"And then?" King suggested.
"You shall conquer the world!" she answered.
King smiled and said nothing.
"I am uncertain yet whether or not I shall choose to be queen of the earth!" she said. "Sometimes I think it would be fun for you and me to be absolute king and queen of everywhere. Sometimes I think it will be better to make some stupid person—say Ganesha here, for instance—king, and for ourselves to be the power behind the throne. What doyouthink, Athelstan?"
"I think," he answered.
"And you observe that the Gray Mahatma likewise thinks!" said she. "He thinks what he can do to thwart us! But I am not afraid! Oh dear no, Mahatma-ji, I am not at all fearful! Your secret is not worth ten seconds' purchase unless it is of use to me!"
"Woman, is your word worth nothing?" asked the Gray Mahatma. "You can not use what you know and keep the secret too. Let those two men escape, and the secret will be blown to the winds within the hour."
She laughed outright at him.
"They shall not escape, old raven-in-a-robe!"
Just then some of her women brought a table in, and spread it with fruit-laden dishes at the far end of the room. Yasmini rose to see whether all was as she wished it, and I got a chance, not only to look through the curtains, but also to whisper to King. He shook his head in reply to my question.
"Could you manage for two, do you think?" he asked; and by that I knew him for a vastly more than usually brave man. Consenting to what you know is sure to destroy you, if the other fellow fails, calls for courage.
"Makes a two to one chance of it," I answered.
"Very well, it's a bet. Give your orders!" said King.
The Mahatma sat rigid in mid-room with closed eyes, as if praying. His hands were crossed on his breast, and his legs twisted into a nearly unimaginable knot. He looked almost comatose.
The shutters and the glass windows were open wide to admit the morning breeze. Nothing was between us and freedom but the fluttering silk curtains and a drop of about seventy feet into an unknown river.
"Hold my hand," I said, "and jump your limit outward!"
The Gray Mahatma opened one eye and divined our intention.
"Mad!" he exclaimed. "So then that is the end of them!"
He believed what he said, for he sat still. But Yasmini came running, screaming to her women to prevent us.
King and I took off together, hand-in-hand, and I take my Bible oath that I looked up, and saw Yasmini and the Gray Mahatma leaning out of the window to watch us drown!
Of course, seventy feet is nothing much—provided you are used to the take-off, and know the water, and have a boat waiting handy to pick you up. But we had none of these advantages, and in addition to that we had the grievous handicap that King could not swim a stroke.
We took the water feet-first, close together, and that very instant I knew what we were up against. As we plunged under, we were whirled against a sunken pole that whipped and swayed in the current. King was wrenched away from me. When I fought my way to the surface I was already a hundred yards beyond the palace wall, and there was no sign of King, although I could see his turban pursuing mine down-stream. We were caught in the strongest current I had ever striven with.
I don't know what persuaded me to turn and try to swim against it for a moment. Instinct, I suppose. It was utterly impossible; I was swept along backward almost as fast as I had been traveling before. But what the effort did do was to bring me face-up-stream, and so I caught sight of King clinging to a pole and being bobbed under every time the weight of water caused the pole to duck. I managed to cling to a pole myself, although like King it ducked me repeatedly, and it was perfectly evident that neither of us would be alive in the next ten minutes unless a boat should come or I should produce enough brawn and brain for two of us. And there was no boat in sight.
So between ducks I yelled to King to let go and drift down toward me. He did it; and that, I believe, is the utmost test of cold courage to which I have ever seen any man subjected; for even a strong swimmer becomes panic-stricken when he learns he is no longer master of his element. King had the self-control and pluck to lie still and drift down on me like a corpse, and I let go the pole in the nick of time to seize him as his head went under.
Followed a battle royal. Fight how I might, I could not keep both of our heads out of the water more than half the time, and King very soon lost the little breath that was left in him. Thereafter, he struggled a bit, but that did not last long, and presently he became unconscious. I believed he was dead.
The choice then seemed to lie between drowning too or letting go of him. I did not dare try the shallows, for ninety per cent. of them are quicksands in that river, and more than one army has perished in the effort to force its way across. The only possible safety lay in keeping to mid-stream and sweeping along with the current until something should turn up—a boat—a log—possibly a backwater, or even the breakwater of a bridge.
So I decided to drown, and to annoy the angels of the underworld by taking as long as possible in the process. And I set to work to fight as I had never in my whole life fought before. It was like swimming in a millrace. The current swirled us this and that way, but everlastingly forward.
Sometimes the current rolled us over and over on each other, but for fifty per cent. of the time I managed to keep King on top of me, I swimming on my back and holding him by both arms, head nearly out of the water. I can't explain exactly why I went to all that trouble, for I was convinced he was dead.
I remember wondering what the next world was going to be like, and whether King and I would meet there, or whether we would each be sent to a sphere suited to our individual requirements—and if so, what my sphere would be like, and whether either of us would ever meet Yasmini, and what she would be doing there. But it never occurred to me once that Athelstan King might be alive yet, or that he and I would be presently treading mother earth again.
I remember several terrific minutes when a big tree came whirling toward us in an eddy, and my legs got tangled up in some part of it that was under water. Then, when I managed to struggle free, King's cotton loin-cloth became wrapped in a tangle of twigs and I could neither wrench nor break him free; whenever I tried it I merely sent myself under and pulled his head after me.
However, that tree suggested the possibility of prolonging the agony a while.
I seized a branch and tried to take advantage of it, using all my strength and skill to keep the tree from rolling over on King and submerging him completely. I can remember when we whirled under the steel bridge and the tree struck the breakwater of the middle pier; that checked us for a moment, and instead of sending us under, dragged King half out of the water, so that he lay after that on top of a branch.
Then the stream got us going again, and swung the butt end of the tree around so that I was forced by it backward through the arch of the bridge; and after that for more than a mile we were waltzed round and round past sand-banks where the alligators lay on the look-out for half-burned corpses from the burning ghats higher up.
At last we swung round a curve in the river and came on a quiet bay where they were washing elephants. The current swung the tree inshore to a point where it struck a submerged sand-bank and stuck there; and there we lay with the current racing by, and King bobbing up and down with his head out of water, and I too weak by that time to break off the twig around which his loin-cloth was wrapped.
Well, there we were; but after a few minutes I raised enough steam for the whistle at all events. I yelled until my own ear-drums seemed to be bursting and my lungs ached from the pressure on the water in them, and after what seemed an eternity one of the mahouts on shore heard me.
Hope surged triumphant! I could see him wave his arm, and already I saw visions of dry land again, and a disappointed Yama! But I was overlooking one important point: we were in India, where rescues are not undertaken in a hurry.
He called a conference. I saw all the mahouts gather together in one place and stare at us and talk. They swung their arms as they argued. I don't know what argument it was that finally appealed to the mahouts, but after an interminable session one of them fetched a long rope and nine or ten of them climbed on the backs of three big elephants. They worked their way a little bit upstream, and then came as close as the elephants dared. One of the big brutes felt his way cautiously to within twenty yards, and then threw up his trunk and refused to budge another inch.
At that a lean, naked, black man stood up on his rump and paid out the rope down-stream. He had to make nine or ten attempts before it finally floated within reach of my hand. Then I made it fast to the tree and, taking King in my right arm, started to work my way along it. It was just as well I did that, and got clear of the branch; for the mahouts passed the rope around the elephant's neck and set him to hauling; he rolled the tree over and over, and that would surely have been the end of King and me if we had been within reach of the overturning branches. As it was I clung to the rope and the elephant hauled the lot of us high and dry.
At the end of a minute's examination I began to suspect that King was not quite dead, so I recalled the old life-saver's drill and got to work on him. It took time. As King came more and more to his senses, and vomited a bit, and began to behave in all ways like a living man again, I had a chance to talk to the mahouts; and they were just like the members of any other union, preferring conversation to alleged hard labor any day of the week. They told me why the elephants were being washed so early and we enjoyed a regularconversazioneon the beach.
It appeared the elephants were wanted to take part in a procession, and for a while they let me guess what sort of a procession. But at last they took compassion on my ignorance.
"Shehas issued invitations to a party for princesses inher panch mahal!"
Who wasshe? Everybody knew whoshewas!
"The Princess Yasmini?" I suggested.
Whereat they all chuckled and made grimaces, and did everything except acknowledge her name in public.
And then suddenly Athelstan King decided to sit up and spat some more water out and tried to laugh. And they thought that was so exquisitely funny that they all laughed too.
Then, when he had coughed a little more—
"We're going to attend that party!"
"Why?" I asked him.
"Two reasons." But he had to cough up more water before he could tell them. "One: The Gray Mahatma will never rest until he knows we're dead, or done for, and the safest place is close to the enemy; and, two: I never will rest until I know the secret of that science of theirs!"
"How in thunder are we going to get back?" I objected.
"Ride!" he suggested.
"How—when—where?"
"Elephant—now—to her palace," he answered.
"They're not her elephants."
"So much the better! She'll think the Maharajah knows all about us. She'llhaveto accord us protection after that."
He asked a dozen more questions, and finally struggled to his feet.
"My friend," he said then to the chief mahout, "if you propose to take us twosahibstoherpalace, and be back at your master's stables in time to get ready for theBibi-kana, you'll have to hurry!"
"But I did not propose it!" the mahout answered.
"Nay, the gods proposed it. Which is your fastest elephant?"
"That great one yonder—Akbar. But who is giving orders? We are a maharajah's servants."
"The gods are ordering all this business!" King assured him. "I wish to ride toherpalace."
"Byherleave?"
"By the gods' leave."
"Will the gods pay me?"
"Doubtless. But she will pay first—setting the gods a good example."
The native of India finds it perfectly convenient to ride on a six-inch plank, slung more or less like a house-painter's platform against an elephant's bulging ribs, and it does not seem to make much difference to him when more weight is on one side than on the other. But King and I had to stand and hold each other's hands across the pad; and even so we were by no means too secure, for Akbar resented being taken away from the herd and behaved like a mutinous earthquake.
It was not so far to the city by road, because the river wound a good deal and the road cut straight from point to point. But it was several miles, and we covered it at pretty nearly the speed of a railroad train.
In spite of his rage, Akbar had perfect control of himself. Having missed about half his morning swim, and the herd's society, he proposed to miss nothing else, and there was not one cart, oneekka, one piled-up load in all those miles that he did not hit and do his utmost to destroy. There was not one yellow dog that he did not give chase to and try to trample on.
He stopped to pull the thatch from the roof of a little house beside the road, but as the plyingankusmade his head ache he couldn't stay long enough to finish that job but scooted uproad again in full pursuit of a Ford car, while an angry man shoved his head through the hole in the roof of the house and cursed all the rumps of all the elephants, together with the forebears and descendants of their owners and their wives.
It seemed that Akbar was fairly well-known thereabouts. The men in the Ford car shouted the news in advance of his coming, and the road into the city began to look like the track of a routed army. Every man and animal took to his heels, and Akbar trumpeted wild hurrahs as he strained all tendons in pursuit. He needed no second wind, because he never lost his first, but he took the whole course as far as the city gate at a speed that would have satisfied Jehu, son of Nimshi, who, the Bible says, made Israel to sin.
That particular city gate consisted of an arch, covered with carvings of outrageous-looking gods, and as a picture display it was perfect, but as an entrance to a crowded city it possessed no virtue. It was so narrow that only one vehicle could pass at a time, and the whole swarm jammed between it and us like sticks in front of a drain.
And not even Akbar's strength was so great that he could shove them through, so the ancient problem of an irresistible force in contact with an immovable object was presented, and solved by Akbar after a fashion of his own.
He picked the softest spot, which was a wain-load of cotton bales, and upset it, cannoning off that cushion so swiftly as to come within an ace of scattering his four passengers across the landscape; and discerning, with a swift strategic eye that would have done credit to the dashingest cavalry general, that that rout was complete and nothing could be gained by adding to it, he headed for the river and the women's bathing place, took the broad stone steps at a dead run, and plunged straight in.
No ship was ever launched with more perfect aplomb, nor floated more superbly on an even keel than did Akbar at the women's bathing ghat. For a moment I thought he proposed to lie down there and finish his interrupted toilet, but he contented himself with squirting water on the sore spot caused by the thumpingankusof the driver's and set out to swim upstream.
It was not until he had reached the second ghat and climbed the steps there that Akbar put himself in Napoleon's class. When he reached the top of the steps no amount of whacking with theankuscould make him turn to the right and follow the city street. He turned to the left, tooted a couple of wild hurrahs through his newly wetted whistle, and raced to meet the traffic as it struggled through the gate in single file!
There was ruin ripe for harvest and it looked like the proper time to jump. But suddenly—with that delightful wheeled panic at his mercy, the big brute stopped, stood still and looked at them, muttering and gurgling to himself. Instantly the mahout began petting him, calling him endearing names and praising his wisdom and discretion. I can't swear that the beast understood what was said to him, but he acted exactly as if he did. He picked up dust from the street with his trunk, blew a little of it in the general direction of the defeated enemy, blew a little more on himself, and turned his rump toward the gate, as if to signify that hostilities were over!
As he did that, a man who was something of an athlete swung himself up on the off-side footboard, and a second later the proud face of the Gray Mahatma confronted me across the saddle-pad alongside King's!
"You are heavy enough to balance the two of us," he said, as if no other comment were necessary. "Why did you run away from me? You can never escape!"
Well, of course anybody could say that after he had found us again.
"Was it you who checked this elephant?" I asked him, remembering what he had done to the black panther and the snakes, but he did not answer.
"Where do you think you are going?" I asked.
"That is what the dry leaves asked of the wind," he answered. "An observant eye is better than a yearning ear, and patience outwears curiosity!"
Suddenly I recalled a remark that King had made on the beach and it dawned on me that by frightening the mahout into silence the Mahatma might undo the one gain we had made by that plunge and swim. As long as the Maharajah who owned the elephant was to hear about our adventure, all was well. News of us would reach the Government. Most of the maharajahs are pro-British, because their very existence as reigning princes depends on that attitude, and they can be relied on to report to the British authorities any irregularity whatever that comes under their notice and at the same time does not incriminate themselves.
The same thought probably occurred to King, but he was rather too recently recovered from drowning to be quick yet off the mark and besides, the Mahatma was between him and the mahout, whereas I had a free field. So I tugged at the arm of the second mahout, who was sitting behind his chief, and he scrambled down beside me.
The Mahatma tried to take immediate advantage of that, and the very thing he did made it all the easier for me to deal with the second mahout, who had made the trip with us and who stared into my face with a kind of puzzled mistrust. The Mahatma, as active as a cat, climbed up behind the chief mahout and sat astride the elephant's neck in the place where the second mahout had been, and began whispering.
"What is your Maharajah's name?" I asked my neighbor on the plank.
"Jihanbihar," he answered, giving a string of titles too that had no particular bearing on the situation. They sounded like a page of the Old Testament.
"You observe that his favorite elephant is about to be stolen with the aid of the Gray Mahatma!"
The fellow nodded, and the expression of his face was not exactly pleased; he may have been one of a crowd that got cursed by the Mahatma for asking too many impertinent questions.
"He has a reputation, that Mahatma, hasn't he?" I suggested. "You have heard of the miracles that he performs?"
He nodded again.
"You see that he is talking to the chief mahout now? Take my word for it, he is casting a spell on him! Would you like to have him cast a spell on you too?"
He shook his head.
"Run swiftly then, and tell the Maharajahsahibto get a Brahman to cancel the spell, and you will be rewarded. Go quickly."
He dropped from the plank and went off at a run just as the Mahatma turned and saw him. The Mahatma had been whispering in the mahout's ear, and as his eye met mine I laughed. For a moment he watched the man running, and then, as if to demonstrate what a strange mixture of a man he was, he laughed back at me. He acknowledged defeat instantly, and did not appear in the least annoyed by it, but on the contrary appeared to accord me credit for outwitting him, as undoubtedly I had.
India is not a democratic country. Nobody is troubled about keeping the underworld in its place, so mahout or sweeper has the ear of majesty as readily as any other man, if not even more so. And it would not make the slightest difference now what kind of cock and bull story the mahout might tell to the Maharajah. However wild it might be it would certainly include the fact that two white men had ridden to Yasmini's palace on the Maharajah's favorite elephant after having been fished out of the river by mahouts at the elephant's bathing ghat.
It was the likeliest thing in the world that representations would be made that very afternoon by telegraph to the nearest important British official, who would feel compelled to make inquiries. The British Government can not afford to have even unknown white men mysteriously made away with.
The Gray Mahatma took all that for granted and nodded comprehendingly. His smile, as we neared Yasmini's palace gate, appeared to me to include a perfect appreciation of the situation. He seemed to accept it as candidly as he had acknowledged my frequent escapes the night before.
Ismail opened the gate without demur and Akbar sauntered in, being used to palaces. He passed under the first arch into the second courtyard, coming to a halt at a gate on the far side that was too small for his enormous bulk where he proceeded to kneel without waiting for instructions.
"Do you feel proud?" the Mahatma asked me unexpectedly as he climbed off Akbar's neck.
Suspecting some sort of verbal trap I did not answer him.
"You are like this elephant. You are able to do irreparable damage if you see fit.Shewas as apt as usual when she dubbed you Ganesha!"
He was working toward some point he intended to make, like one of those pleasant-tongued attorneys flattering a witness before tying him up in a knot, so I was careful to say nothing whatever. King came around the kneeling elephant and joined us, leaning back against the beast and appraising the Mahatma with his eyes half-closed.
"You're dealing with white men," King suggested. "Why don't you talk in terms that we understand?"
It seemed difficult for the Mahatma to descend to that. He half-closed his eyes in turn and frowned, as if hard put to it to simplify his thoughts sufficiently—something like a mathematician trying to explain himself to the kindergarten class.
"I could kill you," he said, looking straight at King.
King nodded.
"You are not the kind of man whoshouldbe killed," he went on.
"Did you ever hear the fable of the fox and the sour grapes?" King asked him, and the Mahatma looked annoyed.
"Would you rather be killed?" he retorted.
"'Pon my soul, I'm inclined to leave that to the outcome," King answered. "Death would mean investigation, and investigation discovery of that science you gave us a glimpse of."
"If I was to let you go," the Mahatma began to argue.
"I would not go! Forward is the only way," King interrupted. "You've a reason for not having us two men killed. What is it?"
"I have no reason whatever for preserving this one's life," the Mahatma answered, glancing at me casually. "For reasons beyond my power of guessing he seems to bear a charmed existence, but he has my leave to visit the next world, and his departure would by no means inconvenience me. But you are another matter."
"How so?" King asked. "Mr. Ramsden is the man who would be inquired for. The Indian Government, whose servant I no longer am, might ignore me, but the multi-millionaire who is Mr. Ramsden's partner would spend millions and make an international scandal."
"I am thinking of you, not of him. I am thinking you are honest," said the Gray Mahatma, looking into King's eyes.
"So is he," King answered.
"I am wondering whether or not you are honest enough to trust me," said the Gray Mahatma.
"Why certainly!" King answered. "If you would commit yourself I would trust you. Why not?"
"But this man would not," said the Mahatma, nudging me as if I were the elephant.
"I trust my friend King," I retorted. "If he decides to trust you, I stand back of him."
"Very well then, let us exchange promises."
"Suppose we go a little more cautiously and discuss them first," suggested King.
"I will promise both of you your life, your eventual freedom, and my friendship. Will you promise me not to go in league withher——"
"I'll agree to that unconditionally!" King assured him with a dry smile.
"—not to try to learn the secret of the science——"
"Why not?"
"Because if youshouldtry I could never save your lives."
"Well, what else?"
"Will you take oath never to disclose the whereabouts of the entrance to the caverns in which you were allowed to see the sciences?"
"I shall have to think that over."
"Furthermore, will you promise to take whatever means is pointed out to you of helping India to independence?"
"What do you mean by independence?"
"Self-government."
"I've been working for that ever since I cut my eye-teeth," answered King. "So has every other British officer and civil servant who has any sense of public duty."
"Will you continue to work for it, and employ the means that shall be pointed out to you?"
"Yes is the answer to the first part. Can't answer the second part until I've studied the means."
"Will you join me in preventing that princess from throwing the world into fresh confusion?"
"Dunno about joining you. It's part of my business to prevent her little game," King answered.
"She has proven herself almost too clever, even for us," said the Mahatma. "She spied on us, and she hid so many witnesses behind a wall pierced with holes that it would be impossible for us to make sure of destroying all of them. And somewhere or other she has hidden an account of what she knows, so that if anything should happen to her it would fall into the hands of the Government and compel investigation."
"Wise woman!" King said smiling.
"Yes! But not so altogether wise. Hitherto we fooled her for all her cleverness. Her price of silence was education in our mysteries, and we have made the education incomprehensible."
"Then why do you want my help?"
"Because she has a plan now that is so magnificent in its audacity as to baffle even our secret council!"
King whistled, and the Mahatma looked annoyed—whether with himself or King I was not sure.
"That is what I have been hunting for three years—your secret council. I knew it existed; never could prove it," said King.
"Can you prove it now?" asked the Mahatma with even more visible annoyance.
"I think so. You'll have to help me."
"I?"
"You or the Princess!" King answered. "Shall I join you or her?"
"Thou fool! There was a sheep who asked, 'Which shall I run with, tiger or wolf?' Consider that a moment!"
King showed him the courtesy of considering it, and was silent for perhaps two minutes, during which the mahout judged it opportune to whine forth his own demands. But nobody took any notice of him.
"You seem check-mate to me," King said at last. "You daren't kill my friend or me. You daren't make away with us. You daren't make away with the Princess. The Princess and several of her women know enough of your secret to be able to force your hand; so do my friend Mr. Ramsden and I. Mr. Ramsden and I have seen sufficient in that madhouse underneath the temple to compel a Government inquiry. Is it peace or war, Mahatma? Will you introduce me to your secret council, or will you fight to a finish?"
"I would rather not fight with you, my young friend."
"Introduce me, then," King answered, smiling.
"You don't know what you ask—what that involves."
"But I propose to know," said King.
The Mahatma never seemed to mind acknowledging defeat.
"I see you are determined," he said quietly. "Determination, my young friend, combined with ignorance, is a murderer nine times out of ten. However, you do not understand that, and you are determined, I have no authority to make such terms as you propose, but I will submit the matter to those whom you desire to meet. Does that satisfy you?"
King looked immensely dissatisfied.
"I would rather be your friend than your enemy," he answered.
"So said light and darkness each to the other when they first met! You shall have your answer presently. In the mean time will you try not to make my task even more difficult than it already is?"
King laughed uncomfortably.
"Mahatma, I like you well enough, but no terms until I have your answer! Sorry! I'd like to be friends with you."
"The pity of it is that though you are honestly determined you are bound to fail," the Mahatma answered; and at that he dismissed the whole subject with a motion of one hand, and turned toward Ismail, who was lurking about in the shadows like a wolf.
The Mahatma sent the man to the door of thepanch mahalwith a message that money was needed; and the mahout spent the next ten minutes in loud praises of his kneeling elephant, presumably on the theory that "it pays to advertise," for it is not only the West that worships at that shrine.
When Ismail came back with a tray on which were several little heaps of money the mahout went into abject ecstasies of mingled jubilee and reverence. His mouth betrayed unbelief and his eyes glinted avarice. His fingers twitched with agonied anticipation, and he began to praise his elephant again, as some people recite proverbs to keep themselves from getting too excited.
The various heaps of money on the tray must have amounted to about fifty dollars. The mahout spread out the end of his turban by way of begging bowl, and the Mahatma shook all the money into it, so that Ismail gasped and the mahout himself turned up his eyes in exquisite delirium.
"Go or you will be too late!" was all the Mahatma said to him, and the mahout did not wait for a second command, but mounted his elephant's neck, kicked the big brute up and rode away, in a hurry to be off before he should wake up and discover that the whole adventure was a dream.
But he could not get away with it as easily as all that. Ismail was keeper of the gate, and the gate was locked. Akbar doubtless could have broken down the gate if so instructed, but even the East, which is never long on gratitude, would hardly do that much damage after receiving such a royal largesse. Ismail went to unlock the gate, and demanded his percentage, giving it, though, the Eastern name, which means "the usual thing."
And the usual argument took place—I approached to listen to it—the usual recriminations, threats, counterclaims, abuse, appeals to various deaf deities, and finally concession—after Ismail had made the all-compelling threat to tell the other mahouts how much the gift had amounted to. I suppose it was instinct that suggested that idea. At any rate, it worked and the mahout threw a handful of coins to him.
Thereat, of course, there was immediate, immense politeness on both sides. Ismail prayed that Allah might make the mahout as potbellied and idle as his elephant; and the mahout suggested to a dozen corruptible deities that Ismail might be happier with a thousand children and wives who were true to him. Whereat Ismail opened the gate, and Akbar helped himself liberally to sugar-cane from a passing wagon; so that every one was satisfied except the rightful owner of the sugar-cane, who cursed and wept and called Akbar an honest rajah, by way I suppose of expressing his opinion of all the tax-levying powers that be.
There happened to be a thing they call a "constabeel" going by, and the owner of the sugar-cane appealed to him for justice and relief. So the "constabeel" prodded Akbar's rump with his truncheon, and helped himself, too, to sugar-cane by way of balancing accounts. And while the owner of the sugar-cane was bellowing red doctrine about that, Ismail went out and helped himself likewise, only more liberally, carrying in an armful of the stuff, and slamming the gate in the faces of all concerned. In cynical enjoyment of the blasphemy outside he sat down then in the shadow of the wall to chew the cane and count the change extorted from the mahout.
"Behold India self-governed!" I said, turning to beckon through the arch between the two courtyards.
But the Mahatma was gone! And unlike the Cheshire cat, he had not even left a smile behind him—had not even left Athelstan King behind him. The two had disappeared as silently and as utterly as if they had never been there!