Chapter Twenty Six.The Dim, Mysterious East.The way in which the two accepted the situation was characteristic of both. Mervyn took it apparently as all in the day’s work, though he had reason to believe that his days were surely numbered. He conversed equably with his captors—or escort, as though he were accompanying them of his own free will, to pay a visit to their village for instance, for any other pacific purpose. Yet he knew that in coming to this country again he had deliberately—as Hussein Khan had put it—placed his head between the tiger’s jaws.Even this, strange to say, did not perturb him, perhaps he had imbibed a large proportion of Oriental fatalism during his lifelong acquaintance with the strange peoples of the East. If his time had come—it had, and there was no more to be said. It had nearly come, he knew full well, when the cry through the winter midnight had led him to drag the perishing man forth from the icy death. Now, if it really had come, why—“it was written;” and in that case that he had returned to this land at all, and of his own free will—was part of the scheme. Thus he looked at it.But—what of Melian? Had he not drawn her into peril? No—for he did not believe they would harm her. For himself, if what he suspected should prove true—why then his hours were certainly numbered. Well, what then? Until she had come to Heath Hover he had not been in love with life. He was often, in fact, honestly and genuinely sick of it. The brightening which her coming had shed upon it could not be other than temporary. In the due and ordinary course of things she was bound to leave him again sooner or later—and then, how could he return to the old solitude, the old depression of day in, night out? There was nothing to look forward to, and precious little to look back upon. So it mattered little enough now whatever happened to himself. All of which of course, he did not impart to Melian.She for her part, seemed infected with his unconcern, and looked upon the whole affair as a decidedly interesting adventure. It had its inconvenient side—for instance the commissariat department was to her civilised tastes, abominable, and sleeping out among the rocks was chilly of a night. But she was allowed to come and go as she liked. No watch was set upon her, for in the first place she had volunteered to go with them rather than separate from her relative, and in the next where would she be in the midst of this craggy, and, to her, entirely unknown wilderness, even if she did change her mind, and take it into her head to try and escape. At night they would make her up a couch of mats in some cleft or hollow among the rocks and shelter off the entrance, and she would declare laughingly to her uncle that it was only an experience of camping out, after all.Yet there were times when her efforts at keeping up her spirits would sorely fail her. Mervyn himself could not consistently find comfort in cold fatalism, and she would read in the gloom of his knitted brows that he was by no means so easy in his mind as he would have had her believe. And as they journeyed on, through the awful wildness of this savage, rock built region; threading gloomy gorges where the very light of the sun would not penetrate, or traversing a drear waste of desert where the friable soil rose and gyrated in “dust devils” and the sun blazed down as from the reflection of an opened furnace; wending the while, whither they knew not—her spirits began to droop. In short the situation was getting upon her nerves—and that badly.The shaggy, turbaned horsemen, whom at first she had found fascinating in their picturesqueness, began to appear in her eyes more and more the predatory, merciless beings they really were. The wild savagery of the surroundings—which at first she had pronounced absolutely faultless in their fantastic chaos of rock and crag and chasm, now took on a Dantesque and hope-chilling aspect. Where would it all end?Either Hussein Khan’s estimate of the distance to be travelled to arrive at the Gularzai chieftain’s stronghold had been very much under-rated, or they were bound for some other destination, for two nights had passed, and they seemed no nearer to any fixed ending of their journeyings. And then when her spirits had reached their lowest ebb, came a thought to Melian’s mind like the breaking of sunlight through a thick mist.Helston Varne was at Coates’ camp, which had been their objective when their plans had been thus roughly and suddenly deflected. She would hardly own to herself how greatly she had been looking forward to meeting him again, and now it seemed to her that he, of all human agencies, would be the one to come to their aid and bring matters right. How on earth he was going to do it she had not the ghost of an idea, but that he would contrive to do it somehow, she felt assured—almost. For the very name of Helston Varne seemed to her now as before, a tower of refuge. And something of this she imparted to her uncle.But he shook a gloomy head. A network was around him—around them both—which even Helston Varne’s acumen and infinite resource would be powerless to rend asunder. This he knew, but she did not, and—he could not tell her.He had been very careful in his conversations with her, and had enjoined upon her like caution. It was highly probable, but still not absolutely safe to assume, that no one amid their captors understood English. She suggested French, but then Mervyn’s education, though excellent for purposes of passing through a crammer’s hands in his salad days, comprised no working knowledge of that courtly and useful tongue, so that fell through, and unless now and again, and then by dark hints, they were compelled to avoid any reference to the motive of their capture, and the ultimate chances of its satisfactory termination. And then it befell that the merest chance—a piece of overheard conversation—sufficed to throw him into the last stage of gloomy, hopeless despair.It was during one of their noontide halts. The routine of prayer and prostration—which Melian had at first found so picturesque, even admirable, but now had wearied of—was over, and the men were scattered about in twos or threes, looking after the horses and other things. Two of them were chatting together in a drowsy undertone, and Mervyn, unnoticed by them, was just within earshot, and the substance of what they were saying was this. He himself must die, his time had come. That night they would reach the place—the place. Well, this as a personal consideration troubled him not much, he had only expected it. But the woman with the sun-tinged hair, they went on to say, she, unless theSirkarat Mazaran paid the lakh of rupees which would be asked for her restoration—or made any move against them because of what had been done—why there were those over the Persian border who would give nearly if not quite as much for such an addition to theirharîm.In frozen horror he took in this, but it was essential to show no sign that he had heard. Would such a sum be paid, and if it were, would not official delay and official bungling be such as to render even compliance of none effect? Moreover, could the authorities responsible for the peace of the border allow so flagrant an act of dacoity to pass without retaliative measures? In either case—Good Heavens! He knew enough about the conditions of a vast tract of hardly penetrated country, and its inscrutable inhabitants, to realise that once Melian disappeared entirely she would be as completely swallowed up, as though the whole Indian army, and the official mechanism, from the Viceroy downwards, were not in existence. And this was the fate to which his own foolhardiness had consigned her. And she was as much to him as ever child of his own could have been!He knew the two speakers as near kinsmen of Allah-din Khan, and that as such that they were not talking at random. He himself was to die that night, that was settled. That was nothing. “It was written.” But how to save Melian from the unutterable ghastliness of the fate mapped out for her? That was everything. No amount of fatalism would come to his aid there. In the hot swelter of noontide—for with all the keen chill of the nights on these high lands, the sun at noonday threw off from the rocks and arid ground in waves of glowing heat—his brain seemed to bubble. One weltering thought seethed through it—that of taking her life and his own at the same time, but as against this he remembered that he was unarmed. They had insisted upon his giving up everything in the shape of a weapon at the time of his surrender. Then again, she had the one chance in her favour, what right had he to deprive her of it? Well, there remained still some hours—some hours only—which he had left to him, and yet his reason told him that they could bring nothing. Of his own death, or even the manner of it, he did not think—so wrapped up was he in the desperation of extremity as the situation affected her.“Why, Uncle Seward, buck up. You are looking dreadfully down,” she remarked, as they resumed their journey. “And you were the one who was always trying to hearten me.”“Yes darling, I was, but—perhaps I am not quite the thing. Got a touch of the sun, or something. But I’ll be all right when it gets cooler. A tough old campaigner like me is never affected that way for long.”He noticed that she herself was far from cheerful, and that her spirits were forced. But—great God! if she only knew what he had learned. In sheer desperation he ranged his horse alongside that of Allah-din Khan, and began to talk, haply in hope that the other might let fall some hint which should give him an idea. It even seemed to him that he himself was talking wildly and at random, for he surprised the chief looking at him more than once in a restrained and curious manner. Yet they had often talked together during their enforced march.“I should not have consented to the Miss Sahib accompanying me,” he ventured. “I fear it has been too much for her. Could you not return her to her people, brother? It would be of great advantage to all concerned?”He made the remark in sheer desperation, and emphasising the last words. But nothing came of it.“We have come far,” replied Allah-din Khan, tranquilly, “but in time she will return. The teachings of the Prophet enjoin patience, but women—Feringhi women especially—have none of it. Let this one learn to acquire it.”This was uncompromising, but Mervyn thought to see a loophole.“In time she will return,” he repeated. “That is the word of a Sirdar of the Gularzai?”To this the chief made no reply. He was looking straight in front of him as he rode, and his dark, clear-cut face was as impassive as a mask. He might, indeed, not have heard for all the sign he gave.In the light of what he had overheard it was significant to Mervyn that a glance at the sun showed that they were travelling due west. What curious dash of wild hope was it that caused him to recall that this had brought them a great deal nearer to Mazaran than they were when at the point of their start? And yet, even if chance offered, there were ranges of craggy, tooth-like crests between them and the garrison station, and he himself was totally unacquainted with this part of the country. But what chance could offer? None. Absolutely none.An hour before sundown they halted at a small, squalid looking village—and then the regulation performances of prayer were gone through. He did notice that several strangers had joined with Allah-din Khan’s band in this—presumably people from the squalid, mud-walled village. That one of them was a man of extra fine stature and presence, he also noticed, but barely so. For instance he overlooked the fact that this one was bowing down, and repeating the prescribed words with extra fervour, and a fanatical ecstasy in his dark eyes and swarthy countenance, and that the others were stealing at him glances of furtive veneration.As they resumed their march he ranged his horse alongside that of Melian. No restriction was put upon such movements as this. The band was riding anyhow and in open order now—straggling order would be the better term for it, for some were quite far behind. In the first place their captives were mounted on inferior steeds, in the next the Gularzai were perfectly well aware that in such country as they now were in, any attempt at escape would meet with not the ghost of a chance.“My child, I have brought you into a dreadful corner,” he said, and the dead note of hopelessness in his tone struck a chill into his hearer. “I ought never to have consented to your accompanying me, but now it’s too late. Listen. If anything should happen to me, you will still be set free on a ransom. The Government will pay it, I have very little in the world, but such as it is I have left it to you—and now but for me being such a fool as to bring you here we might have gone on in our old quiet, happy life; not necessarily at Heath Hover. Well, what I wanted to say, and I must say it quickly, is this, If anything should happen to me, ask to be taken to the Nawab Shere Dil Khan. He is the head chief of the Gularzai, and this one is under him. I’ll write the words down for you in Hindustani, and you can learn them by heart—and keep on asking—keep on asking.” He felt in his pocket, and even wrote in his pocket, on an envelope he found there. “And don’t show any fear, keep on steadfastly requiring the Nawab Shere Dil Khan—have you got the name, well, I’ve put it down here, only it’s not very distinct. Well now, take the bit of paper—That was well done. And—there’s another thing.”Melian looked at the speaker and her eyes filled. Her nerves had begun to go, and she was feeling utterly helpless and overwrought. Now this strong foreboding of danger aggravated this.“Darling Uncle Seward, what should be going to happen to you?” she urged. “There now, you have been trying to keep me up; now I must try and keep you up. Surely they won’t harm you—us—if they expect to be paid for letting us go?”“Yes. That’s right, little one. They won’t harm—us,” he answered. “Still, it’s best to be on the safe side. Once you get to the Nawab you’re safe. He’s a straight and square man, but unfortunately, these sub-tribal chiefs are virtually almost independent of the head, or it’s certain we should not be here.”“I’ll remember,” she answered. “But,”—as though a sudden and illuminating idea had struck her. “Why don’tyouappeal to him—now, before we go any further. Why leave it to what—isn’t going to happen—and me?”Here was a question which it was impossible for him to answer, though to all appearances, nothing could have been more pertinent. He could not tell her that in his case the head sirdar of the Gularzai would be every whit as merciless as would Allah-din Khan and his followers. But her case was different. And that ghastly plan which he had overheard had resolved him to an even more hazardous course on her behalf—hazardous because one of sheer sink or swim.“‘Why?’” he repeated. “‘Why?’ Always a woman’s query—Why?” And he looked at her with a very loving but very sad smile. “I can only tell you this, child, that you must leave that part of it to me, and do exactly as I tell you Iknow—and you don’t. That must be sufficient. This is the dim, mysterious East, remember, and I’ve spent the best years of my life in it.”The sun was drooping now to the craggy, serrated ridge beyond the valley, flaming in red gold upon the cliffs beneath which they were riding. The figures of the wild, turbaned horsemen were picked out in the clear glow—the strange, fierce East indeed. Melian thought it was a picture that would remain stamped in her memory until her dying day. There were signs too, that the said figures showed an inclination to abandon their straggling order and to close up. Mervyn saw this—and at the same time came the thought that this was the last sun whose setting he would ever see.“Quick, now, Melian,” he said. “Take this, but carefully. Watch your chance. No one must see. When you have it, hide it upon you. Don’t even look at it again. If you do, it must be at the very last extremity. You are more than ordinarily quick witted, and will be able to follow. If anything happens to me—no, don’t interrupt—and after a reasonable time has gone, say a month, and you are not restored, and especially if Allah-din Khan should attempt to pass you on to strangers—then produce it. Do you follow?”“Yes—but—what—where—isit?” said the girl, her wide open, serious eyes upon his face.“Take my pouch and pipe, and fill it, as they have often seen you do,” and he handed it to her. Wondering, she obeyed. Then as he reached forth his hand to take it, he slipped something into hers. One look at this, and she almost let it fall, but refrained, just in time.For what she held in her hand was a tiny facsimile of the strange, star-shaped disc, which she had picked up on the sluice path at Heath Hover that lovely cloudless June morning, and the sight of which, in her grasp, had struck her uncle with such a terror of trepidation.And he knew that she was possessed of that which upon production would entail upon her two alternatives—restoration, to liberty or death—the latter, swift, painless, unconscious. But the other ghastly fate, to which he had overheard allusion made, could now never be hers.“Only in the very last extremity,” he reminded her, in an earnest undertone, for the band was now closing up around them. And she bent her head in grave, silent comprehension, and assent.
The way in which the two accepted the situation was characteristic of both. Mervyn took it apparently as all in the day’s work, though he had reason to believe that his days were surely numbered. He conversed equably with his captors—or escort, as though he were accompanying them of his own free will, to pay a visit to their village for instance, for any other pacific purpose. Yet he knew that in coming to this country again he had deliberately—as Hussein Khan had put it—placed his head between the tiger’s jaws.
Even this, strange to say, did not perturb him, perhaps he had imbibed a large proportion of Oriental fatalism during his lifelong acquaintance with the strange peoples of the East. If his time had come—it had, and there was no more to be said. It had nearly come, he knew full well, when the cry through the winter midnight had led him to drag the perishing man forth from the icy death. Now, if it really had come, why—“it was written;” and in that case that he had returned to this land at all, and of his own free will—was part of the scheme. Thus he looked at it.
But—what of Melian? Had he not drawn her into peril? No—for he did not believe they would harm her. For himself, if what he suspected should prove true—why then his hours were certainly numbered. Well, what then? Until she had come to Heath Hover he had not been in love with life. He was often, in fact, honestly and genuinely sick of it. The brightening which her coming had shed upon it could not be other than temporary. In the due and ordinary course of things she was bound to leave him again sooner or later—and then, how could he return to the old solitude, the old depression of day in, night out? There was nothing to look forward to, and precious little to look back upon. So it mattered little enough now whatever happened to himself. All of which of course, he did not impart to Melian.
She for her part, seemed infected with his unconcern, and looked upon the whole affair as a decidedly interesting adventure. It had its inconvenient side—for instance the commissariat department was to her civilised tastes, abominable, and sleeping out among the rocks was chilly of a night. But she was allowed to come and go as she liked. No watch was set upon her, for in the first place she had volunteered to go with them rather than separate from her relative, and in the next where would she be in the midst of this craggy, and, to her, entirely unknown wilderness, even if she did change her mind, and take it into her head to try and escape. At night they would make her up a couch of mats in some cleft or hollow among the rocks and shelter off the entrance, and she would declare laughingly to her uncle that it was only an experience of camping out, after all.
Yet there were times when her efforts at keeping up her spirits would sorely fail her. Mervyn himself could not consistently find comfort in cold fatalism, and she would read in the gloom of his knitted brows that he was by no means so easy in his mind as he would have had her believe. And as they journeyed on, through the awful wildness of this savage, rock built region; threading gloomy gorges where the very light of the sun would not penetrate, or traversing a drear waste of desert where the friable soil rose and gyrated in “dust devils” and the sun blazed down as from the reflection of an opened furnace; wending the while, whither they knew not—her spirits began to droop. In short the situation was getting upon her nerves—and that badly.
The shaggy, turbaned horsemen, whom at first she had found fascinating in their picturesqueness, began to appear in her eyes more and more the predatory, merciless beings they really were. The wild savagery of the surroundings—which at first she had pronounced absolutely faultless in their fantastic chaos of rock and crag and chasm, now took on a Dantesque and hope-chilling aspect. Where would it all end?
Either Hussein Khan’s estimate of the distance to be travelled to arrive at the Gularzai chieftain’s stronghold had been very much under-rated, or they were bound for some other destination, for two nights had passed, and they seemed no nearer to any fixed ending of their journeyings. And then when her spirits had reached their lowest ebb, came a thought to Melian’s mind like the breaking of sunlight through a thick mist.
Helston Varne was at Coates’ camp, which had been their objective when their plans had been thus roughly and suddenly deflected. She would hardly own to herself how greatly she had been looking forward to meeting him again, and now it seemed to her that he, of all human agencies, would be the one to come to their aid and bring matters right. How on earth he was going to do it she had not the ghost of an idea, but that he would contrive to do it somehow, she felt assured—almost. For the very name of Helston Varne seemed to her now as before, a tower of refuge. And something of this she imparted to her uncle.
But he shook a gloomy head. A network was around him—around them both—which even Helston Varne’s acumen and infinite resource would be powerless to rend asunder. This he knew, but she did not, and—he could not tell her.
He had been very careful in his conversations with her, and had enjoined upon her like caution. It was highly probable, but still not absolutely safe to assume, that no one amid their captors understood English. She suggested French, but then Mervyn’s education, though excellent for purposes of passing through a crammer’s hands in his salad days, comprised no working knowledge of that courtly and useful tongue, so that fell through, and unless now and again, and then by dark hints, they were compelled to avoid any reference to the motive of their capture, and the ultimate chances of its satisfactory termination. And then it befell that the merest chance—a piece of overheard conversation—sufficed to throw him into the last stage of gloomy, hopeless despair.
It was during one of their noontide halts. The routine of prayer and prostration—which Melian had at first found so picturesque, even admirable, but now had wearied of—was over, and the men were scattered about in twos or threes, looking after the horses and other things. Two of them were chatting together in a drowsy undertone, and Mervyn, unnoticed by them, was just within earshot, and the substance of what they were saying was this. He himself must die, his time had come. That night they would reach the place—the place. Well, this as a personal consideration troubled him not much, he had only expected it. But the woman with the sun-tinged hair, they went on to say, she, unless theSirkarat Mazaran paid the lakh of rupees which would be asked for her restoration—or made any move against them because of what had been done—why there were those over the Persian border who would give nearly if not quite as much for such an addition to theirharîm.
In frozen horror he took in this, but it was essential to show no sign that he had heard. Would such a sum be paid, and if it were, would not official delay and official bungling be such as to render even compliance of none effect? Moreover, could the authorities responsible for the peace of the border allow so flagrant an act of dacoity to pass without retaliative measures? In either case—Good Heavens! He knew enough about the conditions of a vast tract of hardly penetrated country, and its inscrutable inhabitants, to realise that once Melian disappeared entirely she would be as completely swallowed up, as though the whole Indian army, and the official mechanism, from the Viceroy downwards, were not in existence. And this was the fate to which his own foolhardiness had consigned her. And she was as much to him as ever child of his own could have been!
He knew the two speakers as near kinsmen of Allah-din Khan, and that as such that they were not talking at random. He himself was to die that night, that was settled. That was nothing. “It was written.” But how to save Melian from the unutterable ghastliness of the fate mapped out for her? That was everything. No amount of fatalism would come to his aid there. In the hot swelter of noontide—for with all the keen chill of the nights on these high lands, the sun at noonday threw off from the rocks and arid ground in waves of glowing heat—his brain seemed to bubble. One weltering thought seethed through it—that of taking her life and his own at the same time, but as against this he remembered that he was unarmed. They had insisted upon his giving up everything in the shape of a weapon at the time of his surrender. Then again, she had the one chance in her favour, what right had he to deprive her of it? Well, there remained still some hours—some hours only—which he had left to him, and yet his reason told him that they could bring nothing. Of his own death, or even the manner of it, he did not think—so wrapped up was he in the desperation of extremity as the situation affected her.
“Why, Uncle Seward, buck up. You are looking dreadfully down,” she remarked, as they resumed their journey. “And you were the one who was always trying to hearten me.”
“Yes darling, I was, but—perhaps I am not quite the thing. Got a touch of the sun, or something. But I’ll be all right when it gets cooler. A tough old campaigner like me is never affected that way for long.”
He noticed that she herself was far from cheerful, and that her spirits were forced. But—great God! if she only knew what he had learned. In sheer desperation he ranged his horse alongside that of Allah-din Khan, and began to talk, haply in hope that the other might let fall some hint which should give him an idea. It even seemed to him that he himself was talking wildly and at random, for he surprised the chief looking at him more than once in a restrained and curious manner. Yet they had often talked together during their enforced march.
“I should not have consented to the Miss Sahib accompanying me,” he ventured. “I fear it has been too much for her. Could you not return her to her people, brother? It would be of great advantage to all concerned?”
He made the remark in sheer desperation, and emphasising the last words. But nothing came of it.
“We have come far,” replied Allah-din Khan, tranquilly, “but in time she will return. The teachings of the Prophet enjoin patience, but women—Feringhi women especially—have none of it. Let this one learn to acquire it.”
This was uncompromising, but Mervyn thought to see a loophole.
“In time she will return,” he repeated. “That is the word of a Sirdar of the Gularzai?”
To this the chief made no reply. He was looking straight in front of him as he rode, and his dark, clear-cut face was as impassive as a mask. He might, indeed, not have heard for all the sign he gave.
In the light of what he had overheard it was significant to Mervyn that a glance at the sun showed that they were travelling due west. What curious dash of wild hope was it that caused him to recall that this had brought them a great deal nearer to Mazaran than they were when at the point of their start? And yet, even if chance offered, there were ranges of craggy, tooth-like crests between them and the garrison station, and he himself was totally unacquainted with this part of the country. But what chance could offer? None. Absolutely none.
An hour before sundown they halted at a small, squalid looking village—and then the regulation performances of prayer were gone through. He did notice that several strangers had joined with Allah-din Khan’s band in this—presumably people from the squalid, mud-walled village. That one of them was a man of extra fine stature and presence, he also noticed, but barely so. For instance he overlooked the fact that this one was bowing down, and repeating the prescribed words with extra fervour, and a fanatical ecstasy in his dark eyes and swarthy countenance, and that the others were stealing at him glances of furtive veneration.
As they resumed their march he ranged his horse alongside that of Melian. No restriction was put upon such movements as this. The band was riding anyhow and in open order now—straggling order would be the better term for it, for some were quite far behind. In the first place their captives were mounted on inferior steeds, in the next the Gularzai were perfectly well aware that in such country as they now were in, any attempt at escape would meet with not the ghost of a chance.
“My child, I have brought you into a dreadful corner,” he said, and the dead note of hopelessness in his tone struck a chill into his hearer. “I ought never to have consented to your accompanying me, but now it’s too late. Listen. If anything should happen to me, you will still be set free on a ransom. The Government will pay it, I have very little in the world, but such as it is I have left it to you—and now but for me being such a fool as to bring you here we might have gone on in our old quiet, happy life; not necessarily at Heath Hover. Well, what I wanted to say, and I must say it quickly, is this, If anything should happen to me, ask to be taken to the Nawab Shere Dil Khan. He is the head chief of the Gularzai, and this one is under him. I’ll write the words down for you in Hindustani, and you can learn them by heart—and keep on asking—keep on asking.” He felt in his pocket, and even wrote in his pocket, on an envelope he found there. “And don’t show any fear, keep on steadfastly requiring the Nawab Shere Dil Khan—have you got the name, well, I’ve put it down here, only it’s not very distinct. Well now, take the bit of paper—That was well done. And—there’s another thing.”
Melian looked at the speaker and her eyes filled. Her nerves had begun to go, and she was feeling utterly helpless and overwrought. Now this strong foreboding of danger aggravated this.
“Darling Uncle Seward, what should be going to happen to you?” she urged. “There now, you have been trying to keep me up; now I must try and keep you up. Surely they won’t harm you—us—if they expect to be paid for letting us go?”
“Yes. That’s right, little one. They won’t harm—us,” he answered. “Still, it’s best to be on the safe side. Once you get to the Nawab you’re safe. He’s a straight and square man, but unfortunately, these sub-tribal chiefs are virtually almost independent of the head, or it’s certain we should not be here.”
“I’ll remember,” she answered. “But,”—as though a sudden and illuminating idea had struck her. “Why don’tyouappeal to him—now, before we go any further. Why leave it to what—isn’t going to happen—and me?”
Here was a question which it was impossible for him to answer, though to all appearances, nothing could have been more pertinent. He could not tell her that in his case the head sirdar of the Gularzai would be every whit as merciless as would Allah-din Khan and his followers. But her case was different. And that ghastly plan which he had overheard had resolved him to an even more hazardous course on her behalf—hazardous because one of sheer sink or swim.
“‘Why?’” he repeated. “‘Why?’ Always a woman’s query—Why?” And he looked at her with a very loving but very sad smile. “I can only tell you this, child, that you must leave that part of it to me, and do exactly as I tell you Iknow—and you don’t. That must be sufficient. This is the dim, mysterious East, remember, and I’ve spent the best years of my life in it.”
The sun was drooping now to the craggy, serrated ridge beyond the valley, flaming in red gold upon the cliffs beneath which they were riding. The figures of the wild, turbaned horsemen were picked out in the clear glow—the strange, fierce East indeed. Melian thought it was a picture that would remain stamped in her memory until her dying day. There were signs too, that the said figures showed an inclination to abandon their straggling order and to close up. Mervyn saw this—and at the same time came the thought that this was the last sun whose setting he would ever see.
“Quick, now, Melian,” he said. “Take this, but carefully. Watch your chance. No one must see. When you have it, hide it upon you. Don’t even look at it again. If you do, it must be at the very last extremity. You are more than ordinarily quick witted, and will be able to follow. If anything happens to me—no, don’t interrupt—and after a reasonable time has gone, say a month, and you are not restored, and especially if Allah-din Khan should attempt to pass you on to strangers—then produce it. Do you follow?”
“Yes—but—what—where—isit?” said the girl, her wide open, serious eyes upon his face.
“Take my pouch and pipe, and fill it, as they have often seen you do,” and he handed it to her. Wondering, she obeyed. Then as he reached forth his hand to take it, he slipped something into hers. One look at this, and she almost let it fall, but refrained, just in time.
For what she held in her hand was a tiny facsimile of the strange, star-shaped disc, which she had picked up on the sluice path at Heath Hover that lovely cloudless June morning, and the sight of which, in her grasp, had struck her uncle with such a terror of trepidation.
And he knew that she was possessed of that which upon production would entail upon her two alternatives—restoration, to liberty or death—the latter, swift, painless, unconscious. But the other ghastly fate, to which he had overheard allusion made, could now never be hers.
“Only in the very last extremity,” he reminded her, in an earnest undertone, for the band was now closing up around them. And she bent her head in grave, silent comprehension, and assent.
Chapter Twenty Seven.The Vault of Doom.The red fires shot up against shining rock reflection, throwing out exaggerations or silhouettes of the shaggy figures moving about. Wild, fantastic, as the surrounding crags were, thus thrown out into fitful light, yet the place was an ideal one for a snug and sheltered camp, where the keen mountain air struck chill at night, for it was sheltered on three sides by rock and cliff, while the fourth gave out on a steep drop into the valley beneath. To one, at any rate, the topographical situation did not fail in significance. Not by sheer accident, not for mere purposes of shelter had the situation been chosen.In hanging clusters the stars shone brightly in the clear sky, but there was no moon. The two Europeans, seated in their own camp a little apart, had finished their evening meal—Mervyn incidentally, had been allowed to go out, under escort, and shoot a fewchikor(the large red-legged hill partridge), early that morning, so they had fared better than heretofore. Now he had lighted a pipe, and was striving to conjure up all the stoicism of the dim mysterious East to his aid, the while keeping up the conversation with Melian, and doing so in such wise as to convey no apprehension to her mind. And the keeping up of ordinary conversation within an hour or so of one’s own death is not an easy undertaking; but then, John Seward Mervyn was not quite an ordinary man.A few months ago, he would not greatly have concerned himself over this situation. But within that time, life had changed and brightened for him. It was more valuable up to date than it had been then. He turned the talk on to Heath Hover and their time together there, and for a little, the girl forgot their precarious and now depressing situation and surroundings, and was responsive, brightening up with this and that homely touch.“Why, the heather must be flaming out in perfectly gorgeous crimson up above the Plane woods,” she said, “and we are not getting the benefit of it this time. And that bit, down below Chiltingford, where we took Violet the day before she left—that must be too ripping for anything. And the jolly old battered mill, standing out on the open—I wish we were there again, don’t you, dear? Say you do.”The eager, retrospective tone had lapsed into seriousness. There was no difficulty in replying as she wanted, and that with perfect truth and candour. Mervyn, looking back on those fair scenes, spent with this child; marking and treasuring all her golden joyousness and appreciation of every sound and sight around her; thought that for a repetition of just that time alone he would have faced the fate in front of him a hundred times over. It was little enough of such sweet wholesome happiness he had known in the course of a hard, rugged, bizarre life, and that time about comprised it all.Two wolves howled at responsive intervals away down in the valley beneath, and the red glow of the camp fires played upon the bronzed, hook-nosed faces, and fierce eyes, of the wild marauders of the desert, squatted around, smoking their hookahs, and conversing in a deep rumbling undertone. The owls would be softly hooting in the woods which dipped their edges into Plane Pond at this moment, and the bell-like plash of rising fish ring out on its starlit surface. Contrast indeed! Here in this savage wilderness death was to be his at any hour, at any moment. And now and thus, for the first time in his life, death seemed hard to face.“You have—what I gave you—safe, child?” he broke in, as though moved by a sudden impulse. “Recollect, it is only to be produced in the very last extremity, if the appeal to Shere Dil Khan should fail.”“Don’t,” she answered, startled by the solemnly spoken irrelevance of the remark, and thrusting a hand into his. “You must really shake off these dismal forebodings, dear—and yet, how can I undertake to lecture you—you—on things that this weird country may hold out?”And then, as if to give point to her words, a tall figure seemed to grow out of the earth beside them. A murmured sentence or two, and as in response to it he rose.“Sit still, darling, and wait for me,” he said. “I have to go and talk with some of them, and it will be wearisome—especially as it interrupts our talk about good old times.” He rested one hand lovingly upon the gold-crowned head, and then passed out with the man who had come to summon him. He would not even take a real, long farewell of her, if only that it might prove the reverse of advantageous to her, for he must still keep up the pretence of ignorance, and yet it was the last time he should behold her in this world, and he had but a shadowy belief in any other. For John Seward Mervyn knew as well as did the man he was accompanying that he was going to his doom.It was a strange place, that in which he found himself but two or three minutes later—a cavernous hall, yet walled around by solid rock, and of some vastness. And yet, it seemed somehow as though it were not entirely the work of Nature, even here, where Nature ran riot in the production of wild freaks of her own masonry. It bore a look as though ages and ages of gradual working had wrought it to such a pitch of symmetry. In the centre a fire burned, the smoke escaping upwards somehow and somewhere, for the atmosphere of the place was quite clear of it.Seated about this were some half dozen figures. Only one did Mervyn recognise as that of Allah-din Khan. The others all looked strangers to him. Stay. Only one? No, there was another; for in the one seated on the right of the chief Mervyn recognised the tall, somewhat remarkable looking man who had joined the rest at prayer. This one sat eyeing him, an embodiment of Eastern stateliness, in snowy flowing garments, the folds of his turban arranged round the conicalkullawhich just peeped above it, with an almost mathematical nicety. Mervyn took note of something else. Behind him, two tall, ferocious looking Gularzai had drawn up, standing so as to bar effectually the way by which he had been ushered in. So this was to be his death chamber, he thought? Well, the sooner it was over the better.“Salaam, brothers,” he began, but only by way of saying something.“It is not ‘salaam,’” (“salaam”—Peace) answered the distinguished looking stranger, speaking in a very deep chested tone. “You joined the Brethren of the Night whose sign is the Five Pointed Star—were made blood-brother with them, and—were false to them.”“Therein is not truth,” answered Mervyn, who had expected this as an opening of the proceedings.“Not truth?” went on the speaker. “In thine English home the Sign was delivered to thee; in thine English home—the long house with the cornering wings which shelter the centre, and which stands beneath the broad end of the water.”But that Mervyn had learned to be astonished at nothing, he might well have felt surprised. Here was an exact description of Heath Hover, and yet the only man who had seen it, and who bore the terrible and mysterious Sign, had died within its walls, and the method of his death he alone in all England knew. And now here in this far Eastern wilderness was another—were others—who knew.“The Sign was not delivered to me,” he answered.“Not delivered?” repeated the other slowly, and fixing upon his face a glance that seemed to burn, so glowing was it with fell, vengeful intent. “Not delivered? It was delivered not once only, but twice.”Now, indeed, the listener’s self possession all but betrayed the shock this announcement could not but cause him. How well he recalled that lovely summer morning when he had looked out to behold the two girls coming down the sluice path and Melian carrying the deadly shining thing in her white, unsuspecting fingers—and his own frost of horror at the sight. So all that time he had been shadowed, his every movement keenly watched from the recesses of those hanging woods—not as he had thought by honest English Nashby and his random, all-at-sea suspicions, but by this deadly Brotherhood, whose ranks, in an ill-starred moment, and moved chiefly by curiosity, he had joined. Yet how on earth could their emissary or emissaries have hung about the Plane woods all that time undetected by keepers, or unseen and uncommented on by the surrounding rustic population? Of a truth the problem was a record one for stiffness of solution. But he answered:“It was not delivered once, nor yet twice. It was not delivered at all.”The fierce, copper-hued, shaggy faces, the gleaming eyes reflected in the firelight, were bent still more threateningly upon the speaker. The latter, in sheer hopeless desperation, was probing behind his very brain to try and make out a case for himself, and at the same time realising its utter hopelessness; His remorseless indicter went on.“The first who delivered thee the sign thou didst kill.”“That did I not. On the very contrary, I saved him—saved him from the icy death. Listen brothers.” And then Mervyn went on to give the narrative of the events of that wild, sleet-tossed winter night, when we first saw him. He told it graphically and well, speaking in the Pushtu with, as had happened throughout all the dialogue, an odd word here and there of a coined language peculiar to the Brotherhood, thrown in.“Now? Did I not save him from certain death?” he concluded, looking with an anxiety which he hoped did not appear, into the fierce faces that ringed him round. But his heart sank within him, as he realised that any hopes he might have entertained on that score were doomed; for no sign of softening could he trace. On the contrary, the set grimness on every countenance seemed to deepen.“Not knowing him—then,” supplied the stranger, who seemed to have constituted himself—or been constituted—judge in chief, or president of the proceedings. “Afterwards—that was made good.” And his eyes again seemed fixed with a deeper, more compelling glow, upon those of the Englishman.Mervyn stood as though petrified. The words, the mesmeric glance seemed to take him out of himself—to take him back; back to—something. Mechanically he raised a nerveless hand, and passed it over his eyes. He saw—yes, assuredly he saw himself in dreamland, as it were. The next words aroused him—brought him to himself—thoroughly, completely. And they were spoken by Allah-din Khan.“Thou double traitor,” said the chief, in deep, growling tones. “For the act of disobedience thine end should have been sure—sure but swift—the Point of the Star. For this it shall be long, and lingering. Look.”Following the out-darted finger, Mervyn did look, and—For the first time he became aware of a curious object which stood within the grisly vault, and that not far behind him. It was a long, coffin-shaped thing, and now, as two of those who had been seated there arose, and, kindling torches from the fire, approached it, he saw that it took on another shape, that of a long, lounge bath in fact. It was raised from the floor on metal feet, and the thing itself was made of metal, but of such ancient and strange manufacture that the British Museum, say, would probably have given a very large sum to possess. As the flare of the torches gleamed upon this he could see something else. The fronting side of the structure was engraved with subjects of a hideous and revolting nature—that of human beings in process of being done to death under every circumstance of prolonged torment, and one of them, and the most prominent, by means of just such an implement as this. For there reproduced, was an exact facsimile of it. A fire was represented as burning underneath, and out of it the head and shoulders of a man appeared—the open mouthed, staring expression on the face conveying the indescribable and ghastly agony which the sufferer was undergoing.Mervyn stared at the thing, and his blood froze. Here was his own fate represented. To lie for hours in that dreadful bath undergoing a process of slow boiling, this was what it meant. He had heard of this being done, knew that it actually was done. The cold sweat poured from his forehead, and he looked wildly in front for a means of putting a quick end to his existence. He had expected the quick, painless death, which his guest had died under his own roof at Heath Hover—but this! Allah-din Khan’s deep voice broke through the terror of the spell that was on him.“Use no art to avoid this, double traitor, for it is thee or another. If not thee, then the sun-crowned woman who is with thee shall lie yonder. By the tomb of the Prophet it shall be so.”A mist rose before his eyes and he swayed. The very fiend from Hell was speaking, of a surety. He wondered whether he could overcome his momentary faintness, lest they should think he had eluded them, and proceed to put their hellish threat into immediate execution. Great Heaven! was this some awful, shocking nightmare from which he should presently wake? Was ever any one confronted with such an alternative? Death he had expected, but these hours perhaps of fiendish torture? But it was himself or Melian. These devils were not to be balked.Now he saw that there were piles of kindling wood standing beside the horrid implement. The ring of diabolical faces confronting him looked terrific in the fell, ruthless purpose, which he read therein. But for the alternative he would have made a frenzied dash at the nearest weapon and died fighting. Now, the alternative utterly disarmed him. He would make one appeal.“Give me the Star, that I may die by it,” he said. “I have a right to.”“Thou art no longer of its Brotherhood, double traitor,” answered Allah-din Khan. “For thee, the boiling fat.”At a sign from him one of the two who had been mounting guard over the entrance advanced, and tearing out handfuls from the stacks of kindling wood, began to arrange them beneath the grim receptacle. The victim watched the process with a sort of dazed, numbed attention.And then, as he looked again at the ring of his tormentors, something he saw made him wonder whether his head was going round with him, or whether his reeling brain had actually and indeed given way beneath the shock.
The red fires shot up against shining rock reflection, throwing out exaggerations or silhouettes of the shaggy figures moving about. Wild, fantastic, as the surrounding crags were, thus thrown out into fitful light, yet the place was an ideal one for a snug and sheltered camp, where the keen mountain air struck chill at night, for it was sheltered on three sides by rock and cliff, while the fourth gave out on a steep drop into the valley beneath. To one, at any rate, the topographical situation did not fail in significance. Not by sheer accident, not for mere purposes of shelter had the situation been chosen.
In hanging clusters the stars shone brightly in the clear sky, but there was no moon. The two Europeans, seated in their own camp a little apart, had finished their evening meal—Mervyn incidentally, had been allowed to go out, under escort, and shoot a fewchikor(the large red-legged hill partridge), early that morning, so they had fared better than heretofore. Now he had lighted a pipe, and was striving to conjure up all the stoicism of the dim mysterious East to his aid, the while keeping up the conversation with Melian, and doing so in such wise as to convey no apprehension to her mind. And the keeping up of ordinary conversation within an hour or so of one’s own death is not an easy undertaking; but then, John Seward Mervyn was not quite an ordinary man.
A few months ago, he would not greatly have concerned himself over this situation. But within that time, life had changed and brightened for him. It was more valuable up to date than it had been then. He turned the talk on to Heath Hover and their time together there, and for a little, the girl forgot their precarious and now depressing situation and surroundings, and was responsive, brightening up with this and that homely touch.
“Why, the heather must be flaming out in perfectly gorgeous crimson up above the Plane woods,” she said, “and we are not getting the benefit of it this time. And that bit, down below Chiltingford, where we took Violet the day before she left—that must be too ripping for anything. And the jolly old battered mill, standing out on the open—I wish we were there again, don’t you, dear? Say you do.”
The eager, retrospective tone had lapsed into seriousness. There was no difficulty in replying as she wanted, and that with perfect truth and candour. Mervyn, looking back on those fair scenes, spent with this child; marking and treasuring all her golden joyousness and appreciation of every sound and sight around her; thought that for a repetition of just that time alone he would have faced the fate in front of him a hundred times over. It was little enough of such sweet wholesome happiness he had known in the course of a hard, rugged, bizarre life, and that time about comprised it all.
Two wolves howled at responsive intervals away down in the valley beneath, and the red glow of the camp fires played upon the bronzed, hook-nosed faces, and fierce eyes, of the wild marauders of the desert, squatted around, smoking their hookahs, and conversing in a deep rumbling undertone. The owls would be softly hooting in the woods which dipped their edges into Plane Pond at this moment, and the bell-like plash of rising fish ring out on its starlit surface. Contrast indeed! Here in this savage wilderness death was to be his at any hour, at any moment. And now and thus, for the first time in his life, death seemed hard to face.
“You have—what I gave you—safe, child?” he broke in, as though moved by a sudden impulse. “Recollect, it is only to be produced in the very last extremity, if the appeal to Shere Dil Khan should fail.”
“Don’t,” she answered, startled by the solemnly spoken irrelevance of the remark, and thrusting a hand into his. “You must really shake off these dismal forebodings, dear—and yet, how can I undertake to lecture you—you—on things that this weird country may hold out?”
And then, as if to give point to her words, a tall figure seemed to grow out of the earth beside them. A murmured sentence or two, and as in response to it he rose.
“Sit still, darling, and wait for me,” he said. “I have to go and talk with some of them, and it will be wearisome—especially as it interrupts our talk about good old times.” He rested one hand lovingly upon the gold-crowned head, and then passed out with the man who had come to summon him. He would not even take a real, long farewell of her, if only that it might prove the reverse of advantageous to her, for he must still keep up the pretence of ignorance, and yet it was the last time he should behold her in this world, and he had but a shadowy belief in any other. For John Seward Mervyn knew as well as did the man he was accompanying that he was going to his doom.
It was a strange place, that in which he found himself but two or three minutes later—a cavernous hall, yet walled around by solid rock, and of some vastness. And yet, it seemed somehow as though it were not entirely the work of Nature, even here, where Nature ran riot in the production of wild freaks of her own masonry. It bore a look as though ages and ages of gradual working had wrought it to such a pitch of symmetry. In the centre a fire burned, the smoke escaping upwards somehow and somewhere, for the atmosphere of the place was quite clear of it.
Seated about this were some half dozen figures. Only one did Mervyn recognise as that of Allah-din Khan. The others all looked strangers to him. Stay. Only one? No, there was another; for in the one seated on the right of the chief Mervyn recognised the tall, somewhat remarkable looking man who had joined the rest at prayer. This one sat eyeing him, an embodiment of Eastern stateliness, in snowy flowing garments, the folds of his turban arranged round the conicalkullawhich just peeped above it, with an almost mathematical nicety. Mervyn took note of something else. Behind him, two tall, ferocious looking Gularzai had drawn up, standing so as to bar effectually the way by which he had been ushered in. So this was to be his death chamber, he thought? Well, the sooner it was over the better.
“Salaam, brothers,” he began, but only by way of saying something.
“It is not ‘salaam,’” (“salaam”—Peace) answered the distinguished looking stranger, speaking in a very deep chested tone. “You joined the Brethren of the Night whose sign is the Five Pointed Star—were made blood-brother with them, and—were false to them.”
“Therein is not truth,” answered Mervyn, who had expected this as an opening of the proceedings.
“Not truth?” went on the speaker. “In thine English home the Sign was delivered to thee; in thine English home—the long house with the cornering wings which shelter the centre, and which stands beneath the broad end of the water.”
But that Mervyn had learned to be astonished at nothing, he might well have felt surprised. Here was an exact description of Heath Hover, and yet the only man who had seen it, and who bore the terrible and mysterious Sign, had died within its walls, and the method of his death he alone in all England knew. And now here in this far Eastern wilderness was another—were others—who knew.
“The Sign was not delivered to me,” he answered.
“Not delivered?” repeated the other slowly, and fixing upon his face a glance that seemed to burn, so glowing was it with fell, vengeful intent. “Not delivered? It was delivered not once only, but twice.”
Now, indeed, the listener’s self possession all but betrayed the shock this announcement could not but cause him. How well he recalled that lovely summer morning when he had looked out to behold the two girls coming down the sluice path and Melian carrying the deadly shining thing in her white, unsuspecting fingers—and his own frost of horror at the sight. So all that time he had been shadowed, his every movement keenly watched from the recesses of those hanging woods—not as he had thought by honest English Nashby and his random, all-at-sea suspicions, but by this deadly Brotherhood, whose ranks, in an ill-starred moment, and moved chiefly by curiosity, he had joined. Yet how on earth could their emissary or emissaries have hung about the Plane woods all that time undetected by keepers, or unseen and uncommented on by the surrounding rustic population? Of a truth the problem was a record one for stiffness of solution. But he answered:
“It was not delivered once, nor yet twice. It was not delivered at all.”
The fierce, copper-hued, shaggy faces, the gleaming eyes reflected in the firelight, were bent still more threateningly upon the speaker. The latter, in sheer hopeless desperation, was probing behind his very brain to try and make out a case for himself, and at the same time realising its utter hopelessness; His remorseless indicter went on.
“The first who delivered thee the sign thou didst kill.”
“That did I not. On the very contrary, I saved him—saved him from the icy death. Listen brothers.” And then Mervyn went on to give the narrative of the events of that wild, sleet-tossed winter night, when we first saw him. He told it graphically and well, speaking in the Pushtu with, as had happened throughout all the dialogue, an odd word here and there of a coined language peculiar to the Brotherhood, thrown in.
“Now? Did I not save him from certain death?” he concluded, looking with an anxiety which he hoped did not appear, into the fierce faces that ringed him round. But his heart sank within him, as he realised that any hopes he might have entertained on that score were doomed; for no sign of softening could he trace. On the contrary, the set grimness on every countenance seemed to deepen.
“Not knowing him—then,” supplied the stranger, who seemed to have constituted himself—or been constituted—judge in chief, or president of the proceedings. “Afterwards—that was made good.” And his eyes again seemed fixed with a deeper, more compelling glow, upon those of the Englishman.
Mervyn stood as though petrified. The words, the mesmeric glance seemed to take him out of himself—to take him back; back to—something. Mechanically he raised a nerveless hand, and passed it over his eyes. He saw—yes, assuredly he saw himself in dreamland, as it were. The next words aroused him—brought him to himself—thoroughly, completely. And they were spoken by Allah-din Khan.
“Thou double traitor,” said the chief, in deep, growling tones. “For the act of disobedience thine end should have been sure—sure but swift—the Point of the Star. For this it shall be long, and lingering. Look.”
Following the out-darted finger, Mervyn did look, and—
For the first time he became aware of a curious object which stood within the grisly vault, and that not far behind him. It was a long, coffin-shaped thing, and now, as two of those who had been seated there arose, and, kindling torches from the fire, approached it, he saw that it took on another shape, that of a long, lounge bath in fact. It was raised from the floor on metal feet, and the thing itself was made of metal, but of such ancient and strange manufacture that the British Museum, say, would probably have given a very large sum to possess. As the flare of the torches gleamed upon this he could see something else. The fronting side of the structure was engraved with subjects of a hideous and revolting nature—that of human beings in process of being done to death under every circumstance of prolonged torment, and one of them, and the most prominent, by means of just such an implement as this. For there reproduced, was an exact facsimile of it. A fire was represented as burning underneath, and out of it the head and shoulders of a man appeared—the open mouthed, staring expression on the face conveying the indescribable and ghastly agony which the sufferer was undergoing.
Mervyn stared at the thing, and his blood froze. Here was his own fate represented. To lie for hours in that dreadful bath undergoing a process of slow boiling, this was what it meant. He had heard of this being done, knew that it actually was done. The cold sweat poured from his forehead, and he looked wildly in front for a means of putting a quick end to his existence. He had expected the quick, painless death, which his guest had died under his own roof at Heath Hover—but this! Allah-din Khan’s deep voice broke through the terror of the spell that was on him.
“Use no art to avoid this, double traitor, for it is thee or another. If not thee, then the sun-crowned woman who is with thee shall lie yonder. By the tomb of the Prophet it shall be so.”
A mist rose before his eyes and he swayed. The very fiend from Hell was speaking, of a surety. He wondered whether he could overcome his momentary faintness, lest they should think he had eluded them, and proceed to put their hellish threat into immediate execution. Great Heaven! was this some awful, shocking nightmare from which he should presently wake? Was ever any one confronted with such an alternative? Death he had expected, but these hours perhaps of fiendish torture? But it was himself or Melian. These devils were not to be balked.
Now he saw that there were piles of kindling wood standing beside the horrid implement. The ring of diabolical faces confronting him looked terrific in the fell, ruthless purpose, which he read therein. But for the alternative he would have made a frenzied dash at the nearest weapon and died fighting. Now, the alternative utterly disarmed him. He would make one appeal.
“Give me the Star, that I may die by it,” he said. “I have a right to.”
“Thou art no longer of its Brotherhood, double traitor,” answered Allah-din Khan. “For thee, the boiling fat.”
At a sign from him one of the two who had been mounting guard over the entrance advanced, and tearing out handfuls from the stacks of kindling wood, began to arrange them beneath the grim receptacle. The victim watched the process with a sort of dazed, numbed attention.
And then, as he looked again at the ring of his tormentors, something he saw made him wonder whether his head was going round with him, or whether his reeling brain had actually and indeed given way beneath the shock.
Chapter Twenty Eight.At Fault.The hitherto glowering, menacing countenances, had all of a sudden taken on a heavy, vacuous expression. The stare of the fierce eyes had become dull and lack-lustre. Even the forms were swaying. And then—what marvel was this? The whole group seemed to collapse as one man, subsiding to the ground. There they lay, breathing with a heavy, stertorous kind of snore. All save one.This was the stranger who had taken so vindictive and ruthless a part in the questioning. He still kept his upright seat, and over his face had come no change. Now he arose, and strode over to the man who kept the entrance, deftly manoeuvring between him and the latter.The Gularzai stared at the towering, authoritative form, but said nothing.“Take this, brother, and swallow it,” said the stranger. “Have no fear. It is not death, only short sleep. But to hesitate will be death.” And the speaker produced a Browning pistol in one hand, and something quite small in the other.This particular believer was in no hurry to taste the joys of Paradise just yet, possibly through some misgiving as to whether he had sufficiently earned them. He glanced at the weapon, then at his unconscious tribesmen. Without a word he reached forth his hand, took what was placed therein and—did as directed. But the effect upon him was well nigh instantaneous. He swayed, staggered, then collapsed upon the ground. There remained now only the man who was engaged in the preparation of the bath of torment. To him, too, were the same instructions given. And he, too, with Oriental stoicism, succumbed to the inevitable. There remained now, in full possession of their faculties, only two—Mervyn and the tall sirdar.“I think, on the whole, I’ve managed that rather well—so far,” said the latter, in excellent and refined English.More than ever did Mervyn think his brain was clean gone.“Good God!” he ejaculated, giving a violent start and staring at the other in the wildest, blankest amazement.“I don’t wonder you’ve got—er—something of a shock,” said Helston Varne, looking at him with a touch of concern. “It was a beastly ordeal, but it had to be gone through with.”“But—why didn’t you contrive to let me know—to tip me the wink somehow?” asked Mervyn helplessly.“It’d never have done. It’d have bungled the whole show. These worthies’ faculties are much too keen to take any risks with. But now there’s no time to talk. We must get along, and every blessed yard of start we steal is worth a lot. The effect of what I’ve given them may last three hours, but not many minutes longer. But it was the only chance. Come now. We shall find your niece all ready—Hussein Khan will have taken care of that—also of the residue of the Gularzai.”“Well, Varne! Of all the geniuses this world ever produced,”—began Mervyn, as they got outside—“you’re that one. But, I had no idea you could patter the lingo, let alone so faultlessly.”“I was caught young, you see. Born in this country. Now let’s lose no time.”When Melian, seated in her sleeping quarters, eagerly and with a deepening anxiety, listening for the return of her uncle, heard herself softly hailed by an English voice which was not his—and stepped forth to find herself confronted by a tall Gularzai, her astonishment was not much less than that of Mervyn had been. Him, too, she promptly descried, standing behind the other.“What on earth does it all mean?” she began. “Why—Mr Varne!”“Quite right, Miss Seward. And now, are you ready to start?”“Perfectly.”“Come along then, and we’ll go and get the horses. It’ll save time, and Hussein Khan has his hands pretty full as it is.”The girl drew back in instinctive alarm as they literally stepped over the slumbering forms of their fierce enemies. Arrived at the picket ropes, their horses were promptly bitted and saddled. To Mervyn’s suggestion that the Gularzai steeds should be cut loose and turned adrift, Helston objected that it would do more harm than good to set them stampeding in all directions, would raise the countryside on them perhaps even sooner than it would take their captors to recover from the effects of the drug. But already, in obedience to his direction, Hussein Khan had secured as much ammunition as he could find, and was hurling it over thekhud. The Pathan was thoroughly enjoying himself now; would have enjoyed himself more, had he been allowed to send a few of these his fellow believers to Paradise—or Jehanum—but this he was not.And as they fared forth beneath the stars, which fortunately shone with sufficient brilliancy to enable them to distinguish the narrow, treacherous, ledgelike paths which they mostly had to thread—conversing only in whispers, and that sparingly—the three Europeans at any rate, had food for thought. Mervyn was marvelling at the superhuman, and consummate cleverness of this friend in need. Why, the make-up alone was a work of genius, and he said as much.“It was the easier,” answered Helston, “because of the beard. That’s genuine. I let it grow when I started to come out here—not altogether by accident either, but because I foresaw circumstances under which I might want to ‘make up’—not your case, incidentally. A sham one you know, would never have humbugged these people for a moment.”“Well, you’re a miracle all the same,” said the other.Helston Varne felt justified in being rather pleased with himself. His unexpected and startling discovery that these two were being carried away prisoners into the fastnesses of this wild and lawless band, had entailed upon him such a shock as he had seldom, if ever quite, experienced. And with it had come the chilling, stunning thought as to how he, with all his infinite and practised resource, was going to rescue them, and at first it certainly seemed almost hopeless. But born and bred in the East, he had made an especial study of all its dark and undercurrent systems. And he held an important clue.That find he had made in the old lumber room at Heath Hover he had by no means dismissed from his thoughts. He had pondered over it long and deeply, and had not failed to connect it with some episode of Mervyn’s earlier life. And the missing link in the chain had been, half unconsciously, placed within his grasp by his shikari, Hussein Khan, for the latter himself belonged to the Brotherhood of the Star.But if Hussein Khan was bound to the Brotherhood of the Star, he was bound to his European master by an even stronger tie still. The former might take his life, and indeed sooner or later, under the existing circumstances would. For that he cared nothing. But should he fail the latter, in any point, at any crisis, why then his eternal weal, was not merely at stake—but doomed. For who shall explain the mysterious ravellings of the dim unfathomable East? Given these conditions, and Helston Varne’s unlimited powers of resource and unfailing intrepidity availed to do the rest.Now, under the starlight, he looked at the figure of the girl riding next in front of him along the single-file, narrow path. This was the prize for which he had thrown the stake—and he had won. His nerves thrilled exultantly within him at the thought. It was a trifle unsteadying even to him. There had been no hesitation in his reply when his kinsman had put the matter to him point blank. The time for that had gone by. Now he had saved her—from a fate of which she was in blissful ignorance, fortunately, but whose purport he had gleaned during his brief sojourn with Allah-din Khan—and his own mind was telling him that he had saved her for himself.From their first meeting on the day when he had been imprisoned in the chill mysterious vault at Heath Hover, her image had remained fixed upon his mind. He had not striven to resist the growing fascination; he preferred to watch its development—or the reverse—as a matter of psychological study; for as we have seen, he did not err on the side of coming to Heath Hover too often. And now, would he win? He thought he would.Was it by a subtle telepathy that as they fared thus forward through the night, and in silence, that she should be thinking exclusively of him? Yet she was. She recalled how she had been looking forward to meeting him again—out here, in this wild, strange, and to her, new land. How, too, during the startling, then alarming occurrence of their captivity, her thoughts had flown at once to his propinquity as to a tower of refuge—she liked that simile and it would often recur. How, too, she had tried to impart that element of hope to her uncle, only to be told that their entanglement was even beyond Helston Varne’s powers of unravelment. Yet the reverse had befallen. She had proved right, and Helston Varne had come to the rescue, and brought them forth triumphantly. Indeed, that everything was bound to come right if he had the settling of it had now become an article of faith with her.A short halt was made to rest the horses, then on again. It will be remembered that the course of the freebooters had been set so as to bring them much nearer to Mazaran, and now with luck, they hoped to reach that station in about twenty-four hours’ journeying. Why, Coates himself, who had started thither simultaneously with his kinsman’s venture, would hardly have arrived by then, even if he did not decide to wait at Fort Shabâl, a small post which lay between his camp and Mazaran—for safety’s sake.But with the small hours of the morning came a change, and with it anxiety. For a mist was arising, blotting out the stars; whose light indeed they required in that labyrinthine winding through chaotic rocks, or along this or that steep mountain side with a precipitous drop not far down the slope. Hussein Khan, the hard, lifelong mountaineer, who was guiding, shook a gloomy head as he looked upward and around. None knew better than he what it might portend. None knew better than he that the most practised mountaineer might become helpless as a child when plunged in thick mist. And this mist, though not yet thick, showed every tendency to become so. Added to which a slight drizzle began to fall, and none knew better than Hussein Khan the perilous effect, on their none too safe paths, of slimy moisture. And they direly needed all the start they could obtain.But the occurrence would equally check the pursuit of their enemies, for there was no doubt but that they would be pursued, and hotly, at the earliest available moment? No, it would not—that is, not necessarily—for these knew their way, and would take a line which would have the effect of cutting the fugitives off from Mazaran, did the latter lose much of the start they had obtained. For to Hussein Khan, practised mountaineer that he was, this was after all more or less strange country, and he was shaping his course only by reckoning.The small hours passed into daybreak, but with the lightening of the atmosphere there came no light from without. The fugitives were swathed within dank, heavy, bewildering mist. They could hardly see each other at further than a horse’s length apart. Helston Varne and the shikari conferred hurriedly together, and in the result decided that there was nothing for it but to call a halt and wait until chance should enable them to obtain their bearings.But chance seemed not inclined to befriend them. An hour had gone—a whole precious hour—and, if anything, the cloud seemed to settle down thicker than ever. There was no wind either, not enough stirring in the air to enable those experienced men to form the slightest idea of the lay of their course, by that not always reliable method of feeling on which side of their face the wind stirred. Mervyn had more than begun to feel gloomy—and looked it. Helston Varne was feeling nearly as gloomy, and did not show it. But Melian, looking from one to the other, felt—well, confident. Where Helston Varne was taking a hand there was no room for failure, had become part of her creed, as we have said.Another hour went by—two precious hours—eating into the none too wide margin of the start they had attained—and that alarmingly. And then—relief showed in their quickly exchanged glances. The mist had begun to roll away.
The hitherto glowering, menacing countenances, had all of a sudden taken on a heavy, vacuous expression. The stare of the fierce eyes had become dull and lack-lustre. Even the forms were swaying. And then—what marvel was this? The whole group seemed to collapse as one man, subsiding to the ground. There they lay, breathing with a heavy, stertorous kind of snore. All save one.
This was the stranger who had taken so vindictive and ruthless a part in the questioning. He still kept his upright seat, and over his face had come no change. Now he arose, and strode over to the man who kept the entrance, deftly manoeuvring between him and the latter.
The Gularzai stared at the towering, authoritative form, but said nothing.
“Take this, brother, and swallow it,” said the stranger. “Have no fear. It is not death, only short sleep. But to hesitate will be death.” And the speaker produced a Browning pistol in one hand, and something quite small in the other.
This particular believer was in no hurry to taste the joys of Paradise just yet, possibly through some misgiving as to whether he had sufficiently earned them. He glanced at the weapon, then at his unconscious tribesmen. Without a word he reached forth his hand, took what was placed therein and—did as directed. But the effect upon him was well nigh instantaneous. He swayed, staggered, then collapsed upon the ground. There remained now only the man who was engaged in the preparation of the bath of torment. To him, too, were the same instructions given. And he, too, with Oriental stoicism, succumbed to the inevitable. There remained now, in full possession of their faculties, only two—Mervyn and the tall sirdar.
“I think, on the whole, I’ve managed that rather well—so far,” said the latter, in excellent and refined English.
More than ever did Mervyn think his brain was clean gone.
“Good God!” he ejaculated, giving a violent start and staring at the other in the wildest, blankest amazement.
“I don’t wonder you’ve got—er—something of a shock,” said Helston Varne, looking at him with a touch of concern. “It was a beastly ordeal, but it had to be gone through with.”
“But—why didn’t you contrive to let me know—to tip me the wink somehow?” asked Mervyn helplessly.
“It’d never have done. It’d have bungled the whole show. These worthies’ faculties are much too keen to take any risks with. But now there’s no time to talk. We must get along, and every blessed yard of start we steal is worth a lot. The effect of what I’ve given them may last three hours, but not many minutes longer. But it was the only chance. Come now. We shall find your niece all ready—Hussein Khan will have taken care of that—also of the residue of the Gularzai.”
“Well, Varne! Of all the geniuses this world ever produced,”—began Mervyn, as they got outside—“you’re that one. But, I had no idea you could patter the lingo, let alone so faultlessly.”
“I was caught young, you see. Born in this country. Now let’s lose no time.”
When Melian, seated in her sleeping quarters, eagerly and with a deepening anxiety, listening for the return of her uncle, heard herself softly hailed by an English voice which was not his—and stepped forth to find herself confronted by a tall Gularzai, her astonishment was not much less than that of Mervyn had been. Him, too, she promptly descried, standing behind the other.
“What on earth does it all mean?” she began. “Why—Mr Varne!”
“Quite right, Miss Seward. And now, are you ready to start?”
“Perfectly.”
“Come along then, and we’ll go and get the horses. It’ll save time, and Hussein Khan has his hands pretty full as it is.”
The girl drew back in instinctive alarm as they literally stepped over the slumbering forms of their fierce enemies. Arrived at the picket ropes, their horses were promptly bitted and saddled. To Mervyn’s suggestion that the Gularzai steeds should be cut loose and turned adrift, Helston objected that it would do more harm than good to set them stampeding in all directions, would raise the countryside on them perhaps even sooner than it would take their captors to recover from the effects of the drug. But already, in obedience to his direction, Hussein Khan had secured as much ammunition as he could find, and was hurling it over thekhud. The Pathan was thoroughly enjoying himself now; would have enjoyed himself more, had he been allowed to send a few of these his fellow believers to Paradise—or Jehanum—but this he was not.
And as they fared forth beneath the stars, which fortunately shone with sufficient brilliancy to enable them to distinguish the narrow, treacherous, ledgelike paths which they mostly had to thread—conversing only in whispers, and that sparingly—the three Europeans at any rate, had food for thought. Mervyn was marvelling at the superhuman, and consummate cleverness of this friend in need. Why, the make-up alone was a work of genius, and he said as much.
“It was the easier,” answered Helston, “because of the beard. That’s genuine. I let it grow when I started to come out here—not altogether by accident either, but because I foresaw circumstances under which I might want to ‘make up’—not your case, incidentally. A sham one you know, would never have humbugged these people for a moment.”
“Well, you’re a miracle all the same,” said the other.
Helston Varne felt justified in being rather pleased with himself. His unexpected and startling discovery that these two were being carried away prisoners into the fastnesses of this wild and lawless band, had entailed upon him such a shock as he had seldom, if ever quite, experienced. And with it had come the chilling, stunning thought as to how he, with all his infinite and practised resource, was going to rescue them, and at first it certainly seemed almost hopeless. But born and bred in the East, he had made an especial study of all its dark and undercurrent systems. And he held an important clue.
That find he had made in the old lumber room at Heath Hover he had by no means dismissed from his thoughts. He had pondered over it long and deeply, and had not failed to connect it with some episode of Mervyn’s earlier life. And the missing link in the chain had been, half unconsciously, placed within his grasp by his shikari, Hussein Khan, for the latter himself belonged to the Brotherhood of the Star.
But if Hussein Khan was bound to the Brotherhood of the Star, he was bound to his European master by an even stronger tie still. The former might take his life, and indeed sooner or later, under the existing circumstances would. For that he cared nothing. But should he fail the latter, in any point, at any crisis, why then his eternal weal, was not merely at stake—but doomed. For who shall explain the mysterious ravellings of the dim unfathomable East? Given these conditions, and Helston Varne’s unlimited powers of resource and unfailing intrepidity availed to do the rest.
Now, under the starlight, he looked at the figure of the girl riding next in front of him along the single-file, narrow path. This was the prize for which he had thrown the stake—and he had won. His nerves thrilled exultantly within him at the thought. It was a trifle unsteadying even to him. There had been no hesitation in his reply when his kinsman had put the matter to him point blank. The time for that had gone by. Now he had saved her—from a fate of which she was in blissful ignorance, fortunately, but whose purport he had gleaned during his brief sojourn with Allah-din Khan—and his own mind was telling him that he had saved her for himself.
From their first meeting on the day when he had been imprisoned in the chill mysterious vault at Heath Hover, her image had remained fixed upon his mind. He had not striven to resist the growing fascination; he preferred to watch its development—or the reverse—as a matter of psychological study; for as we have seen, he did not err on the side of coming to Heath Hover too often. And now, would he win? He thought he would.
Was it by a subtle telepathy that as they fared thus forward through the night, and in silence, that she should be thinking exclusively of him? Yet she was. She recalled how she had been looking forward to meeting him again—out here, in this wild, strange, and to her, new land. How, too, during the startling, then alarming occurrence of their captivity, her thoughts had flown at once to his propinquity as to a tower of refuge—she liked that simile and it would often recur. How, too, she had tried to impart that element of hope to her uncle, only to be told that their entanglement was even beyond Helston Varne’s powers of unravelment. Yet the reverse had befallen. She had proved right, and Helston Varne had come to the rescue, and brought them forth triumphantly. Indeed, that everything was bound to come right if he had the settling of it had now become an article of faith with her.
A short halt was made to rest the horses, then on again. It will be remembered that the course of the freebooters had been set so as to bring them much nearer to Mazaran, and now with luck, they hoped to reach that station in about twenty-four hours’ journeying. Why, Coates himself, who had started thither simultaneously with his kinsman’s venture, would hardly have arrived by then, even if he did not decide to wait at Fort Shabâl, a small post which lay between his camp and Mazaran—for safety’s sake.
But with the small hours of the morning came a change, and with it anxiety. For a mist was arising, blotting out the stars; whose light indeed they required in that labyrinthine winding through chaotic rocks, or along this or that steep mountain side with a precipitous drop not far down the slope. Hussein Khan, the hard, lifelong mountaineer, who was guiding, shook a gloomy head as he looked upward and around. None knew better than he what it might portend. None knew better than he that the most practised mountaineer might become helpless as a child when plunged in thick mist. And this mist, though not yet thick, showed every tendency to become so. Added to which a slight drizzle began to fall, and none knew better than Hussein Khan the perilous effect, on their none too safe paths, of slimy moisture. And they direly needed all the start they could obtain.
But the occurrence would equally check the pursuit of their enemies, for there was no doubt but that they would be pursued, and hotly, at the earliest available moment? No, it would not—that is, not necessarily—for these knew their way, and would take a line which would have the effect of cutting the fugitives off from Mazaran, did the latter lose much of the start they had obtained. For to Hussein Khan, practised mountaineer that he was, this was after all more or less strange country, and he was shaping his course only by reckoning.
The small hours passed into daybreak, but with the lightening of the atmosphere there came no light from without. The fugitives were swathed within dank, heavy, bewildering mist. They could hardly see each other at further than a horse’s length apart. Helston Varne and the shikari conferred hurriedly together, and in the result decided that there was nothing for it but to call a halt and wait until chance should enable them to obtain their bearings.
But chance seemed not inclined to befriend them. An hour had gone—a whole precious hour—and, if anything, the cloud seemed to settle down thicker than ever. There was no wind either, not enough stirring in the air to enable those experienced men to form the slightest idea of the lay of their course, by that not always reliable method of feeling on which side of their face the wind stirred. Mervyn had more than begun to feel gloomy—and looked it. Helston Varne was feeling nearly as gloomy, and did not show it. But Melian, looking from one to the other, felt—well, confident. Where Helston Varne was taking a hand there was no room for failure, had become part of her creed, as we have said.
Another hour went by—two precious hours—eating into the none too wide margin of the start they had attained—and that alarmingly. And then—relief showed in their quickly exchanged glances. The mist had begun to roll away.
Chapter Twenty Nine.The Valley of the Mud-Slide.A puff of damp air came down the slope, driving the vapour before it, and bringing a hard, unpleasant downpour. But this mattered little now. The great thing was to be able to distinguish their way. Girths were tightened, and in a moment they were prepared to resume the march.Even yet they had to move slowly. The paths, for one thing, were extremely slippery, for another, the further side of the valley had not begun to show at all. Then, when it did, and that suddenly, there lay a couple of low, mud-walled villages, below, but not very far from their way.Could they pass unseen? It was in the highest degree important that they should. But as if to put this hope to flight, several dogs, great fierce brutes, such as were used by the native herdsmen to protect their flocks, came rushing forth, yelling and baying with frantic clamour.Their owners were not long in following. But they stopped suddenly. The sight of Hussein Khan, and Helston, whose disguise made him look every inch a sirdar of the Gularzai—in which capacity, by the way, Melian had greatly admired him—allayed their natural suspiciousness. Under such escort these Feringhi could not be interfered with, and they came no nearer. But the discovery was untoward, if only on account of information these could supply to eventual pursuers.The villages were left behind, but travelling became perforce slow—deadly slow. The path along the well nigh precipitous slope had become so slippery and dangerous, that more than once it was deemed expedient to dismount and proceed on foot. And then, as they rounded the spur in front, an exclamation escaped Hussein Khan and his tone took on a note of blank dismay.“Now I see where we have come,” he said. “Hazûr, it was written that we should stray from our course in yonder accursed cloud, which assuredly was the breath of Shaitan himself. Here before us lies the Valley of the Mud-slide. And we must cross that, for there is no turning back.”“It is written,” was the answer. “Therefore we will cross it, since there is no other way.”In front lay the same steep gigantic slope, sheering upward to a great height, and along this they were threading, like flies upon a wall. The other side of this long and narrow gorge was precipitous, being composed of tier upon tier of terraced cliff. And the rain, beating pitilessly down, lent huge vastness to the serrated crags rearing black against an unbroken murk of sky. In front, right across their way, sweeping down the slope from the highkotalto its base, spreading like a gigantic peacock’s tail, was the result of a former mud-slide. It was as though the whole mountain side had at one time—and that not so very long since, fallen away, bringing millions of tons of blue grey soil with it. The base of it filled the bottom of the gorge, though a watercourse had drilled its way through, and the sombre thunder of this they could now hear, far down between its perpendicular walls of solidified mud.There was misgiving in the hearts of all three men as they reached the edge of this. Would they be able to cross it. They were familiar with similar freaks in the wild mountain country, but this one was of gigantic proportions. In the regular wet season they might as well try to cross a quaking morass, but there had been little rain of late, still even that little was enough to turn such a place into a slough. But there was nothing for it. It was the only way through. The alternative was to retrace their steps right into the teeth of their enemies. And one consolation was theirs. Once on the other side they knew where they were now, and could make up for lost time.There was no path. Selecting what to his practised eye seemed the firmer ground, Hussein Khan led the way. Soon the horses were laboriously dragging their weighted fetlocks out of the stiff, clinging stuff—only to plunge them in deeper with the next step. Then it became manifest that the right course was to dismount, and proceed on foot. Helston Varne looked at Melian, so too, did Mervyn.“I should think Miss Seward could keep the saddle,” said the former. “She’s lighter than we are, and it’s infernally laborious going for a lady on foot and hampered with skirts.”“Of course she can,” came the answer, gustily. “Lord, I’d like to get Mr Allah-din Khan over the sights of this rifle. I’d drill his parchment hide for him. Ya Mahomed! I would.”And then, as if in answer to the invocation, something happened. The gloomy, Dantesque valley bellowed to the echoes of a resounding roar, the reverberations of twojezailshots behind. The missiles hummed by, rather wide, and sploshed into the ooze of the mud-slide. Every head turned.Coming along the way they had fled, strung out like hounds, were a number of mounted figures. The dirty white flowing garments, the reckless rush of their advance proclaimed their unmistakable identity. The time lost in the mist, the deflection from the right track, possibly that Helston Varne had miscalculated the duration of the effects of the drug which his shikari had deftly inserted into so many hookahs and other things—had handicapped the fugitives—and now here was Allah-din Khan, and all his cut-throats hot foot behind them, fired, too, with baffled hate and the disgrace which had been put upon them. Themalikof the villages they had passed had not only supplied the chief with information, but had turned out his own men—and they very willing—to aid in the pursuit. Two of these indeed, had slipped on in advance, and had discharged their jezails, with the result foregiven.The bulk of the pursuers were still some way behind. Quickly Helston Varne’s mind had framed a plan, but it, he saw was but a shadow of a one. Once they were through this slough of despond he would send the others on, and himself remaining behind would take cover on its edge, and deliberately pick off every one of them as they struggled through the semi-morass. But even he knew that in view of the state of fiery exaltation to which they were worked up, his chances of success were not great. They would rush it somehow, just as his own party had themselves done, and—there were too many of them. He sent one look back.“Hurry on,” he urged. “Mount now, and push the horses for all they’re worth. It’s our only chance.”And it was done. How—they knew not. Perhaps the animals themselves caught some of the fever heat excitement of being chased, but floundering, plunging, snorting, they found safe, firm foothold at last on the other side, and stood panting, and streaming, and utterly blown. Here was no safety. It would take half an hour at least before they had sufficient go in them to resume a race for life, and the pursuers had time to cross the mud-slide at their leisure.Mervyn’s heart was filled with black, gloomy despair. It was fated they were not to escape. Well, at the last it would be soon over. With the recollection of that hellish cavern of torture, and the words spoken therein, he had made up his mind that Melian should not fall into their hands. They had shown him what they were capable of, and that was enough. One quick merciful shot for her, and the next for himself, and that the moment he realised that all hope and chances were gone.“Now,” said Helston Varne. “You press on to thekotal, Mervyn. I’m going to take cover here and keep them back—and directly they get into the mud-slide I’m going to massacre them like holy Shaitan.JaoHussein Khan. Go on Mervyn,” he added, more peremptorily, seeing him hesitate. “You’ve got to take Miss Seward out of this, and I’ve got plenty of ammunition. I’ll catch you up, by and by.”“Well, don’t be long,” said the other queerly, as he obeyed.Now two or three more shots straggled across from beyond. The main body of the pursuers came racing up, urging their steeds mercilessly over the cruel, stony ground. Now they were on the edge of the mud-slide. Wild, yelling, threatening shouts went up from them, as they drew their tulwars and flashed them furiously in the direction of the fugitives. Helston looked back. The result was not unsatisfactory. If only he could hold up these. He would try parley. It would gain a modicum of time.“Brothers,” he shouted. “Go back. I would not shed your blood, for we have eaten together. But no man reaches this side of the mud-slide alive.”For answer, a fierce, blood-thrilling yell of vengeance, as they discovered his presence, for they had missed his manoeuvre. And shouting out the torments of hell to which he, and all with him, were destined when once more in their hands, they pushed their steeds furiously into the slough.In the chaotic splashing and floundering that ensued, Helston’s rifle spoke. The man who rode beside the chief toppled from his saddle. Again came the roaring detonation, tossing to and fro from crag to crag. Another saddle was emptied, but so far, for reasons of his own, the marksman had spared Allah-din Khan. In the sudden confusion, he poured another shot into “the brown,” but nothing seemed available to stop that rush. They were mad with revenge and fanaticism. As a sheer matter of time he would not be able to destroy anything like all of them before they should cross. Well, this time the chief must go. He had been given every chance, and the stake being contested was too great.“Once more go back!” he shouted. But only a renewed and fiend-like scream came in reply, and horses, floundering fetlock deep, were making surprising headway, and the wild savage faces were alarmingly nearer. He put up the rifle again, and—it swayed in his hands. He could not get the sighting. The earth under his feet was swaying. What did it mean, in Heaven’s name?There came a deep, growling, rumbling roar. He looked upward. Heavens! Was the whole world falling over upon him? In the flash of a moment, abandoning all thought of human enemies—of human forces, Helston had wrenched his horse from behind the great hump of earth where he had sheltered it, and mounting, spurred with hot haste onward and upward in the track of those who had gone before. At the end of a couple of hundred yards or so he alighted from his saddle just in time to avoid being hurled therefrom in the rocking swaying horror of a moving world, and looked back. A cracking roar, painful to the drums of his ears, split the air. He took in the enormous mass curling over, the volume of mud and earth and stones, at least two score of feet high, pouring like a gigantic flood down the face of the slide. He took in the frantic struggling crowd of horsemen right in the centre of its road, and then, the whole slope took on a new formation as half a mountain side poured down it, roaring up stones and mud masses high in the air. And—of the three score and odd Gularzai—pressing on in hate and vengeance to destruction—there remained no more trace than there had been before their arrival there at all. That gigantic mud-slide had in a moment found a common sepulchre for the lot.“Well, Miss Seward,” Helston remarked, as somewhat shaken by the stupendous awesomeness of the phenomenon, he rejoined the fugitive group, higher up. “Allah is on our side this time anyhow.”“Yes,” she said in an awed tone. “What a sight! But what was it? An earthquake?”“Another mud-slide, like the one which formed the first—or a little of both. Maybe a touch of earthquake that started it off. But we were through just in time, and—good-bye to Allah-din Khan and Co.”“Whom I hope are grilling in their Jehanum,” growled Mervyn, with the recollection of his own ordeal fresh upon him.“Well, there’s nothing between us and Mazaran now,” pronounced Helston Varne, “and the sooner we get there the better. No, Miss Seward. You’d better not look back. Get it out of your mind.”For Melian’s gaze seemed riveted on the gloomy Dantesque gorge, now half barred up by the tremendous convulsion of Nature which had taken effect right under her very eyes, and the thought of the buried men lying there—even though they were fierce barbarians and fanatical enemies, still they had been engulfed in the horrible cataclysm right under her eyes. But she recognised the other’s advice was sound, and laid herself out to follow it. And the reaction of feeling that they were all in comparative safety largely helped.
A puff of damp air came down the slope, driving the vapour before it, and bringing a hard, unpleasant downpour. But this mattered little now. The great thing was to be able to distinguish their way. Girths were tightened, and in a moment they were prepared to resume the march.
Even yet they had to move slowly. The paths, for one thing, were extremely slippery, for another, the further side of the valley had not begun to show at all. Then, when it did, and that suddenly, there lay a couple of low, mud-walled villages, below, but not very far from their way.
Could they pass unseen? It was in the highest degree important that they should. But as if to put this hope to flight, several dogs, great fierce brutes, such as were used by the native herdsmen to protect their flocks, came rushing forth, yelling and baying with frantic clamour.
Their owners were not long in following. But they stopped suddenly. The sight of Hussein Khan, and Helston, whose disguise made him look every inch a sirdar of the Gularzai—in which capacity, by the way, Melian had greatly admired him—allayed their natural suspiciousness. Under such escort these Feringhi could not be interfered with, and they came no nearer. But the discovery was untoward, if only on account of information these could supply to eventual pursuers.
The villages were left behind, but travelling became perforce slow—deadly slow. The path along the well nigh precipitous slope had become so slippery and dangerous, that more than once it was deemed expedient to dismount and proceed on foot. And then, as they rounded the spur in front, an exclamation escaped Hussein Khan and his tone took on a note of blank dismay.
“Now I see where we have come,” he said. “Hazûr, it was written that we should stray from our course in yonder accursed cloud, which assuredly was the breath of Shaitan himself. Here before us lies the Valley of the Mud-slide. And we must cross that, for there is no turning back.”
“It is written,” was the answer. “Therefore we will cross it, since there is no other way.”
In front lay the same steep gigantic slope, sheering upward to a great height, and along this they were threading, like flies upon a wall. The other side of this long and narrow gorge was precipitous, being composed of tier upon tier of terraced cliff. And the rain, beating pitilessly down, lent huge vastness to the serrated crags rearing black against an unbroken murk of sky. In front, right across their way, sweeping down the slope from the highkotalto its base, spreading like a gigantic peacock’s tail, was the result of a former mud-slide. It was as though the whole mountain side had at one time—and that not so very long since, fallen away, bringing millions of tons of blue grey soil with it. The base of it filled the bottom of the gorge, though a watercourse had drilled its way through, and the sombre thunder of this they could now hear, far down between its perpendicular walls of solidified mud.
There was misgiving in the hearts of all three men as they reached the edge of this. Would they be able to cross it. They were familiar with similar freaks in the wild mountain country, but this one was of gigantic proportions. In the regular wet season they might as well try to cross a quaking morass, but there had been little rain of late, still even that little was enough to turn such a place into a slough. But there was nothing for it. It was the only way through. The alternative was to retrace their steps right into the teeth of their enemies. And one consolation was theirs. Once on the other side they knew where they were now, and could make up for lost time.
There was no path. Selecting what to his practised eye seemed the firmer ground, Hussein Khan led the way. Soon the horses were laboriously dragging their weighted fetlocks out of the stiff, clinging stuff—only to plunge them in deeper with the next step. Then it became manifest that the right course was to dismount, and proceed on foot. Helston Varne looked at Melian, so too, did Mervyn.
“I should think Miss Seward could keep the saddle,” said the former. “She’s lighter than we are, and it’s infernally laborious going for a lady on foot and hampered with skirts.”
“Of course she can,” came the answer, gustily. “Lord, I’d like to get Mr Allah-din Khan over the sights of this rifle. I’d drill his parchment hide for him. Ya Mahomed! I would.”
And then, as if in answer to the invocation, something happened. The gloomy, Dantesque valley bellowed to the echoes of a resounding roar, the reverberations of twojezailshots behind. The missiles hummed by, rather wide, and sploshed into the ooze of the mud-slide. Every head turned.
Coming along the way they had fled, strung out like hounds, were a number of mounted figures. The dirty white flowing garments, the reckless rush of their advance proclaimed their unmistakable identity. The time lost in the mist, the deflection from the right track, possibly that Helston Varne had miscalculated the duration of the effects of the drug which his shikari had deftly inserted into so many hookahs and other things—had handicapped the fugitives—and now here was Allah-din Khan, and all his cut-throats hot foot behind them, fired, too, with baffled hate and the disgrace which had been put upon them. Themalikof the villages they had passed had not only supplied the chief with information, but had turned out his own men—and they very willing—to aid in the pursuit. Two of these indeed, had slipped on in advance, and had discharged their jezails, with the result foregiven.
The bulk of the pursuers were still some way behind. Quickly Helston Varne’s mind had framed a plan, but it, he saw was but a shadow of a one. Once they were through this slough of despond he would send the others on, and himself remaining behind would take cover on its edge, and deliberately pick off every one of them as they struggled through the semi-morass. But even he knew that in view of the state of fiery exaltation to which they were worked up, his chances of success were not great. They would rush it somehow, just as his own party had themselves done, and—there were too many of them. He sent one look back.
“Hurry on,” he urged. “Mount now, and push the horses for all they’re worth. It’s our only chance.”
And it was done. How—they knew not. Perhaps the animals themselves caught some of the fever heat excitement of being chased, but floundering, plunging, snorting, they found safe, firm foothold at last on the other side, and stood panting, and streaming, and utterly blown. Here was no safety. It would take half an hour at least before they had sufficient go in them to resume a race for life, and the pursuers had time to cross the mud-slide at their leisure.
Mervyn’s heart was filled with black, gloomy despair. It was fated they were not to escape. Well, at the last it would be soon over. With the recollection of that hellish cavern of torture, and the words spoken therein, he had made up his mind that Melian should not fall into their hands. They had shown him what they were capable of, and that was enough. One quick merciful shot for her, and the next for himself, and that the moment he realised that all hope and chances were gone.
“Now,” said Helston Varne. “You press on to thekotal, Mervyn. I’m going to take cover here and keep them back—and directly they get into the mud-slide I’m going to massacre them like holy Shaitan.JaoHussein Khan. Go on Mervyn,” he added, more peremptorily, seeing him hesitate. “You’ve got to take Miss Seward out of this, and I’ve got plenty of ammunition. I’ll catch you up, by and by.”
“Well, don’t be long,” said the other queerly, as he obeyed.
Now two or three more shots straggled across from beyond. The main body of the pursuers came racing up, urging their steeds mercilessly over the cruel, stony ground. Now they were on the edge of the mud-slide. Wild, yelling, threatening shouts went up from them, as they drew their tulwars and flashed them furiously in the direction of the fugitives. Helston looked back. The result was not unsatisfactory. If only he could hold up these. He would try parley. It would gain a modicum of time.
“Brothers,” he shouted. “Go back. I would not shed your blood, for we have eaten together. But no man reaches this side of the mud-slide alive.”
For answer, a fierce, blood-thrilling yell of vengeance, as they discovered his presence, for they had missed his manoeuvre. And shouting out the torments of hell to which he, and all with him, were destined when once more in their hands, they pushed their steeds furiously into the slough.
In the chaotic splashing and floundering that ensued, Helston’s rifle spoke. The man who rode beside the chief toppled from his saddle. Again came the roaring detonation, tossing to and fro from crag to crag. Another saddle was emptied, but so far, for reasons of his own, the marksman had spared Allah-din Khan. In the sudden confusion, he poured another shot into “the brown,” but nothing seemed available to stop that rush. They were mad with revenge and fanaticism. As a sheer matter of time he would not be able to destroy anything like all of them before they should cross. Well, this time the chief must go. He had been given every chance, and the stake being contested was too great.
“Once more go back!” he shouted. But only a renewed and fiend-like scream came in reply, and horses, floundering fetlock deep, were making surprising headway, and the wild savage faces were alarmingly nearer. He put up the rifle again, and—it swayed in his hands. He could not get the sighting. The earth under his feet was swaying. What did it mean, in Heaven’s name?
There came a deep, growling, rumbling roar. He looked upward. Heavens! Was the whole world falling over upon him? In the flash of a moment, abandoning all thought of human enemies—of human forces, Helston had wrenched his horse from behind the great hump of earth where he had sheltered it, and mounting, spurred with hot haste onward and upward in the track of those who had gone before. At the end of a couple of hundred yards or so he alighted from his saddle just in time to avoid being hurled therefrom in the rocking swaying horror of a moving world, and looked back. A cracking roar, painful to the drums of his ears, split the air. He took in the enormous mass curling over, the volume of mud and earth and stones, at least two score of feet high, pouring like a gigantic flood down the face of the slide. He took in the frantic struggling crowd of horsemen right in the centre of its road, and then, the whole slope took on a new formation as half a mountain side poured down it, roaring up stones and mud masses high in the air. And—of the three score and odd Gularzai—pressing on in hate and vengeance to destruction—there remained no more trace than there had been before their arrival there at all. That gigantic mud-slide had in a moment found a common sepulchre for the lot.
“Well, Miss Seward,” Helston remarked, as somewhat shaken by the stupendous awesomeness of the phenomenon, he rejoined the fugitive group, higher up. “Allah is on our side this time anyhow.”
“Yes,” she said in an awed tone. “What a sight! But what was it? An earthquake?”
“Another mud-slide, like the one which formed the first—or a little of both. Maybe a touch of earthquake that started it off. But we were through just in time, and—good-bye to Allah-din Khan and Co.”
“Whom I hope are grilling in their Jehanum,” growled Mervyn, with the recollection of his own ordeal fresh upon him.
“Well, there’s nothing between us and Mazaran now,” pronounced Helston Varne, “and the sooner we get there the better. No, Miss Seward. You’d better not look back. Get it out of your mind.”
For Melian’s gaze seemed riveted on the gloomy Dantesque gorge, now half barred up by the tremendous convulsion of Nature which had taken effect right under her very eyes, and the thought of the buried men lying there—even though they were fierce barbarians and fanatical enemies, still they had been engulfed in the horrible cataclysm right under her eyes. But she recognised the other’s advice was sound, and laid herself out to follow it. And the reaction of feeling that they were all in comparative safety largely helped.