[image]As the old man was led forward, the Nagas pointed to him with wild excitement, continually exclaiming, "The Eye! The Eye!"Forrester asked Sher Jang to get from the people an explanation of the connection of this old man with the Nagas' refusal to march. The story, as told by the villager through the Naga head-man, was that the one-armed greybeard had been a brave warrior in his youth, and was one of a war party who, many years before, had ventured beyond the great waterfall. Of them all, only he had returned, without his right arm. When his people asked him what had happened to his companions, and how he had lost his arm, his only answer was "The Eye!" Ever since, his mind had been a blank. He could tell them nothing, had no recollection of what had happened; and the people had kept him with them, showing him the veneration which simple races often pay to the half-witted.The white men were mystified. The story seemed incredible, yet there was the man in proof of it."None of the people have ever been beyond the fall since?" asked Forrester."None of us," was the reply, "but we have seen men go sometimes, and we have never known them to return. Yes: there was one who returned. He was fair of skin like these lords, and wore clothes like them. There were two who went, but only one returned. Some of our people saw him hasting by the lake near the fall, and the little men were running after him, but he escaped them, and went into the forest.""Who are the little men?" Forrester asked."They are men like monkeys," replied the man, holding his hand about four feet from the ground to indicate their height. "They are the men who take the wood from us."On further questioning, the men explained that the country beyond the falls was destitute of large trees, and the little men paid the villagers for timber cut in the forest. This timber was conveyed to a certain spot some distance short of the waterfall, and removed thence by the little men to their home in the mountains, which the villagers had never beheld."How long ago was the white man seen?" Forrester asked.The man held up his hands with fingers outspread."Redfern, to a certainty!" Jackson exclaimed. "We must go on, and get to the bottom of this mystery. It's horrible to think of what may possibly happen to Beresford.""Ay, there's something uncanny beyond," Mackenzie said, thoughtfully."Whatever they mean by the Eye, it is clear that something gruesome goes on among the little men," said Forrester. "There's nothing for it but to forge ahead, and tackle them if there's the ghost of a chance for us. What do you say? Are you game to stick to it, even if we can't persuade the Nagas to come?""Ay, I'm for going on," said Mackenzie."I too," said Jackson. "We can but try, and I don't suppose the little men, whoever they are, have rifles. Let us start at once."CHAPTER VITHE IRON SHUTTER"You come with us, Sher Jang?" asked Forrester."Sahib, I am your servant," the man replied, simply."And you, Hamid?"The cook pulled nervously at his beard, turned up the whites of his eyes, shot a savage glance at the shikari, then said in a voice which all his resolution could not prevent from trembling:--"Sir, I step out like a man. One volunteer is worth tons of pressed beef.""Which means that without these idiotic carriers we shall have to travel light," said Forrester. "Just put up enough food for two days; we'll carry it somehow among us. We must leave the tent with the Nagas. They had better remain here until we return.""Can't we take more grub?" Jackson asked."If we don't do it in two days we shan't do it at all, so it's useless overloading ourselves. We risk losing the tent, of course, but that can't be helped."Their preparations were quickly made, and they set off while the morning was still young. Hamid Gul carried his cooking utensils, plates, knives and forks, and other articles; Sher Jang shouldered some blankets, in which he had wrapped a quantity of ammunition, and the three white men divided the food among them. Each of the party had his rifle slung behind his back.Their guides, a dozen of the villagers, harnessed themselves to tree trunks, which they dragged through the wood and down the rocky slope beyond. It had been arranged before they started that the white men should follow at some little distance, so that the natives, in case of need, might repudiate knowledge of them, and escape all responsibility for bringing the strangers to the neighbourhood of the falls.At the foot of the slope they came to a rivulet. Without the Naga head-man Sher Jang could not hold any oral communication with the villagers; but they managed to convey to him the information that the smaller falls of which they had spoken were a little way down-stream; the larger falls lay a much greater distance in the other direction. Some minutes were occupied in forming the balks of timber into a raft. When this was done half the party of natives swam to the farther bank, carrying ropes attached to the raft, and then the two sections hauled their wares against the sluggish current, tramping along towpaths which must have been trodden by several generations of their forebears.The view ahead was shut out by the trees that grew almost to the edge of the winding stream; but it was not long before the white men, walking about half a mile behind their guides, were aware of a dull rumble that grew louder moment by moment as they proceeded."That's the fall!" cried Jackson. "We can't be far away.""A pretty big one, by the sound of it," Forrester remarked. "Small falls make a sort of crash--this is more of a roar. Perhaps we shall find a second Niagara.""I'm fair flummoxed!" said Mackenzie, inconsequently."What about?""About yon Eye. You see, these folks were terrified by the storm: 'He speaks,' they said. Well, that was the thunder. By what the philosophers call parity of reasoning, the Eye is lightning. Well, lightning can take off a man's arm, and strike him daft or dead; but what about the little men up yonder? Are they scunnered at the Eye, too? What has the Eye to do with Beresford?""Trust a Scot to ask questions!" said Jackson. "But you won't reason it out, Mac; you'll just have to wait, like an Englishman.""Och, man! I want facts. Give me facts, and I'll draw my own conclusions.""Well, this row is a fact, and a stunning one," said Forrester. "It's time we caught sight of the fall that's making such an uproar."But they marched on for a couple of hours without seeing any sight of a waterfall, or even any quickening of the current. The noise had gradually increased to a stupendous din, and thoughts of their ultimate errand were overborne by excitement as they looked eagerly ahead for the mass of falling water. At last the belt of forest land came to an abrupt end, and they gazed forth over a wide rocky plain, in the midst of which was an immense lake that appeared to be considerably below the level of the surrounding country. From it ran the stream whose course they were following, and a larger stream far to the right.Beyond the plain rose the mountains, towering up peak behind peak to the summits of the snowy range in the remote distance. The three men halted involuntarily, struck both by the majesty of the scene and by the deafening roar which almost drowned their voices."Man, it's grand!" Mackenzie shouted."But where is it?" Forrester bawled in his ear.They looked all around, but saw nothing to account for the thunderous noise. The sky was overcast, and a layer of mist obscured the lower foothills, though the heights beyond heaved their grey masses in clear undulations miles above. As they stood, a sunbeam stole through the clouds, and a rainbow flung its gay arch across the plain directly ahead of them."There's rain over there," said Jackson, at the top of his voice."Only mist!" Forrester cried in reply.For a few moments they gazed mutely upon a sight that never loses its interest and wonder. Then Mackenzie smote his thigh, and cried like one in ecstasy:--"Man--it's the Fall!"The mist was rolling away as the sun gathered strength, yet the rainbow did not fade, but shone more brightly than ever over a space of perhaps one-eighth of a mile. And then the onlookers saw that what had hitherto seemed to them a part of the bank of mist was in reality a gigantic torrent of water, mingled with spray thrown up hundreds of feet from the unseen bottom. They watched it in silent awe. The villagers had described it as falling from the clouds into the depths of the earth. Their words appeared to be literally true. An eighth of a mile in width, the torrent poured over the edge of a tableland--a single huge step in the ascent to the plateaux of Tibet. Mist still hung above it, the enormous screen of spray concealed its lower part, and at the distance they still were from it the spectators could only just distinguish the movement of the mighty volume of water.It had been arranged with their guides that they should remain on the spot where they first caught sight of the fall until the men had delivered their timber and returned. The delay gave them an opportunity of taking a meal. As they ate they amused themselves by guessing at the height of the fall. Forrester suggested that it was as high as St. Paul's; Jackson thought this estimate too low; and Mackenzie astonished the others by declaring that he wouldna wonder but it was fully as high as Ben Lomond.It was three hours before the natives returned, and the white men, setting forth impatiently at length to skirt the lake and reach the foot of the hills on the western side of the fall, found to their amazement that they had nearly two miles to go before they came level with it. Then they were struck dumb by the full magnificence of the scene. The spray itself, rising like steam from a gigantic cauldron, attained to the height of St. Paul's. The two Englishmen were prepared to admit that the top of the fall was even higher than the summit of Ben-Lomond; but Mackenzie's calculating eye gauged more nearly to the truth."I would say it's two thousand feet, or a wee bit more," he said, and his friends laughed at the incongruous use of the word "wee" in such a connection.They found that the scarp over which the torrent poured extended for miles on each side. It appeared to be almost perpendicular, though away to the left it became more broken. On the right, except for one or two steep and rugged spurs, it was one continuous wall of rock.The path they had followed round the western shore of the lake brought them to a small wooden bridge spanning an inflowing stream. It somewhat resembled the bridge delineated in the well-known willow pattern. To this the raft of timber was moored. Evidently it was part of the plan for maintaining the secrecy of the hill community that purchasers and vendors should come into contact as seldom as possible; or perhaps the woodcutters' own fear of the Eye kept them from approaching nearer to the dwelling of the "little men." No doubt the timber would presently be fetched, and drawn along the stream into the lake, and thence to its destination.The three men looked around for some signs of human habitation, but discovered none. A rough roadway, however, led from the bridge along the base of the precipice towards the fall, which appeared to be about half a mile distant. After a brief consultation they decided to make their way along this road. To be prepared for possible danger they first laid down their impedimenta and unslung their rifles. Then they set off, Forrester leading with the shikari.After a while the path rose somewhat steeply on the face of the cliff, and they soon saw that it passed underneath the fall itself, the torrent of water forming a gigantic arch. When they arrived beneath this they found themselves in a dim twilight, the glassy sea-green surface of the watery arch reflecting a pallid hue upon their faces. They were perfectly dry, except for some flecks of spray dashed upon them from the base of the fall. At this spot they were three or four hundred feet above the surface of the lake, which boiled and foamed like an angry sea immensely magnified. The din was terrific; even the loudest shout would scarcely have been audible.At their first entrance into this segmental tunnel Hamid Gul shrank back, appalled by the noise, the falling water, and the immense, tattered sheet of spray that rose from the seething cauldron hundreds of feet below. But seeing that his employers were pressing forward he pulled himself together, and hurried on close at Mackenzie's heels. The width of the path had diminished to a bare three feet, and as the party crept along it they instinctively clung to the wall of rock on their left hand. A strange attraction was exercised by the smooth arch of falling water; on their right, inducing the same kind of vertigo which most people experience when looking down from giddy heights.So they passed through the furlong of tunnel. A hundred yards or so beyond the eastern end the path began to slope downwards as steeply as it had ascended on the other side, and within a short space the party found themselves once more almost on a level with the lake. Then the path came to an abrupt end, disappearing into the water that washed the base of the perpendicular cliff. Here they halted; it seemed that they could go no farther, that they must retrace their steps and explore in the other direction.They could not make themselves heard one by another, but Mackenzie signed to the rest to stand fast; he remembered that beyond the bridge behind them there was no road except that which skirted the lake, and drew the reasonable inference that the path by which they had come must, after all, lead somewhere. It occurred to him to test the depth of the water. Finding that it was no more than two feet, he took off his boots, rolled up his putties, and started to wade. In a few seconds he turned and beckoned to his companions. They followed his example, and on joining him found that he had come to a sharp corner of the precipice, which was cut at this point by an extraordinary rift. At the entrance it was perhaps forty feet wide. The sides were straighter and even nearer to the perpendicular than the face of the cliff bordering the lake. They gazed upwards in astonishment at the immense height. The top was so far above them that the sides seemed almost to touch, leaving only a narrow slit. Peering into the cleft, they saw nothing beyond the first hundred yards or so. Little light filtered through the opening at the top, and the floor of the rift was illuminated more and more faintly as the sides converged.Our party stood there in mute amazement. Mackenzie was the only one of them who knew anything of geology: a Scot always knows something of everything; and he surmised that the rift was the result of some Titanic disruption of the earth in an age long past. It was as though the mass of solid rock had been rent asunder by a gigantic wedge, impelled by a Cyclopean hammer--such a hammer as Thor wields in the Norse myths.It seemed of little use to enter the rift. No mortal men could make that their abode. But on passing beyond the entrance they soon found that further passage along the edge of the lake was impossible. The water still came right up to the face of the cliff, and the pathway--if it was a pathway--which they were treading sank ever deeper beneath the surface. There was nothing for it but to hark back, unless they were prepared to swim. Jackson suggested that possibly some side path branched from the rift, leading by a steep zigzag ascent to the summit of this strange precipice.Retracing their steps accordingly, they turned into the rift, donned their boots, and marched forward. The floor sloped gently upwards, the walls converged until the space between them was barely half what it had been at the entrance. Pressing on, they became aware that the rift was not straight, as they had believed. A sharp bend brought them upon a sight that caused them to halt, peer nervously upward and in front, and tighten their grasp upon their rifles. Three canoes lay tandem against the right-hand side of the rift--harmless objects in themselves, but rather perturbing as indications that men were somewhere in the neighbourhood. They were obviously intended for transporting persons across the lake without the necessity of making the passage under the fall. In the dim light they would scarcely have been visible from the entrance, even had the rift been straight; the bend effectually concealed them.Once more the party halted. Shut in as they were by the high, close walls, the sound of the waterfall came to them now only as a dull rumble; but when they spoke it was in whispers. Apart from the risk of being heard by an unseen enemy, there was an atmosphere of mystery and awesomeness that weighed oppressively on their minds."What are we to do?" asked Jackson."Go on!" Forrester replied, firmly. "We can hardly be seen. The sides are so smooth and straight that no one could perch anywhere to molest us, except at the corners. We must be on our guard there.""But surely no one can live here! Nothing could grow; there doesn't even appear to be moss on the rock, and the air's as stuffy as in a cave.""Man, don't argufy!" said Mackenzie. "Straight ahead!"They continued their course. Every now and again the rift turned sharply to one side or the other, and the smooth floor, unimpeded by loose rocks or boulders, always ascended, more and more steeply as they advanced. Strangely enough, the higher they went the stuffier the air became, and the deeper their sense of oppression, or rather, perhaps, of nervous strain. Mackenzie, who had once been down a coal-mine in Lanarkshire, suspected the presence of poisonous gases."There can't be fire-damp," he murmured, "but it may be carbonic acid. Bide a wee while I strike a match."But this fear was dispelled when the flame burned brightly for a second or two. He extinguished it abruptly."Hoots! I'm an ass!" he said. "Someone may have seen the light; and if there are men about, I'd rather see them first than they us.""My skin is tingling just as if I'd got a grip of the terminals of a battery," Jackson remarked."It's uncanny, and that's a fact," said Mackenzie. "But look, man! What's that?" he added, in a startled whisper, clutching Forrester by the arm with one hand, and pointing ahead with the other.His comrades closed upon him, and peered into the semi-obscurity, their heads almost touching. A little to one side of them stood Sher Jang, impassive as ever, though he held his rifle with both hands, and his muscles were as taut as a bent spring. Behind, Hamid Gul's one eye bulged from its socket as he tiptoed to look over his master's shoulder.A few yards to their front the rift made one of the sudden bends that formed such strange features of its course. It struck to the right at a sharp angle, so that the wall which had been on their left hand became almost perpendicular to their line of march. On its smooth rocky face, some eighteen or twenty feet above the ground, an extraordinary procession was moving across their line of vision from right to left, like shadows cast faintly upon a screen. The leading figure was that of a skeleton, clothed about with a misty body shaped like a man in tourist costume: a tall frame, the bones standing out in black relief from the midst of a faint penumbra. Behind this trotted the skeleton forms of a number of almost naked dwarfs, no more than four feet in height, each bearing a spear upon his shoulder. At the rear came a second full-sized figure, taking long strides, like a schoolmaster at the tail of a line of boys. The shadowy surround of his skeleton widened towards the bottom like an academic gown. The watchers held their breath, amazed at the weirdness of the dim shapes, and still more at the manner of their progress. There were no steps to be seen in the face of the cliff, yet the gait of the procession was unmistakably that of men descending a steep stairway. Foot by foot they moved downwards on their diagonal path; one by one they reached the floor of the rift; then, instead of walking along it towards the spectators, they seemed to descend into the earth, and in a few moments disappeared from view. Not a sound had accompanied them; no tramp of footsteps, no clash of weapons.Drawing a long breath, the white men, tense and watchful, waited a little for some sign of their reappearance, but nothing more was seen. If the strange people had observed the group of onlookers, they had paid no heed to them. At last, Mackenzie hurried forward to search for the steps and the subterranean passage to which they gave access. The rest of the party followed him, save Hamid Gul, who remained as one transfixed, shivering with awe.When they came to the wall they were thrown into a state of utter consternation. The surface of the rock was wholly unbroken; there was neither stairway nor passage into the ground--the cliff was as smooth as polished granite. They looked upwards, to the right along the rift; they passed their hands over the face of the rock, struck it here and there, probed with their rifles the floor--all was apparently solid. An uncomfortable feeling of creepiness stole over them. What mysterious secret lurked in this gloomy cleft in the mountain?None of them had yet uttered a word. When Forrester spoke, it was in a whisper."Were they shadows?" he asked.They turned about and looked back along the rift. There was no light between the walls. Far above, the sunlight illumined their summits, a bright streak in the gloom. But no shadow could have been cast so low."Och!" exclaimed Mackenzie, shaking himself. "We cannot get to the bottom of yon. Come away!"Every man of them, without confessing it to the others, was thinking of the singular things they had heard in the forest village. Their minds were oppressed by the villagers' superstitious dread; it required an effort to proceed with the march, leaving this uncanny incident unexplained. But they braced themselves at Mackenzie's words. Whatever the explanation of the procession might be, it argued the presence of beings other than themselves in the cleft or its neighbourhood; and the remembrance of their errand nerved them to go on. If Captain Redfern's unfortunate companion were indeed held captive in this mysterious region, it appeared that they must look forward to something more than a straight fight; but they could not allow themselves to be daunted by apparitions, which, after all, might have a simple explanation.When they resumed their march it was with more caution than before. Despite themselves, they had a sense of being watched, of something impending, almost of helplessness, strange though this sensation was to their robust Western minds. Almost unconsciously they kept closer together, holding their rifles ready in one hand, and unbuttoning their revolvers with the other. Only Hamid Gul walked alone. He followed with trembling knees some yards in the rear, wishing that he had courage enough to run back to the entrance, where there were at least space and air.They turned to the right with the rift. Soon the walls began to converge, and the twilight grew dimmer and dimmer. At one spot the passage was scarcely eight feet wide. Beyond this it broadened again, and the light improved. Then, with startling suddenness, the silence behind them was broken by a harsh sound that caused them to jump round in a tingle of apprehension. It was like the rattling of heavy chains, followed by a loud grating squeak, and a second or two later by a metallic clang that echoed ominously in the narrow rift. The echoes died away; all was again silent.Mackenzie had already started back, a vague inkling of what had happened freezing him to the marrow. In the semi-darkness he collided with Hamid Gul, who let out a yell and dropped his rifle, which fell with resounding crash on the ground. The others hurried close on Mackenzie's heels. He reached the narrow passage recently left, and here, in the greater obscurity, he came full tilt against an obstacle that barred the way. His rifle clashed against it, and when his friends joined him they found that their escape was cut off by a huge iron shutter that filled the whole width of the passage.Mackenzie struck a match, and held it aloft. To their dismay they saw that the shutter was at least twenty feet high. It fitted into grooves on either side and in the floor beneath, which the darkness had not allowed them to see when they passed a few minutes before. Its surface was decorated with an elaborate and fantastic design, the prevailing note of which was a monstrous eye, which glared with a singularly sinister effect in several parts of the pattern. The upper part of the shutter was attached to two heavy chain cables, one on each side of the rift. These cables seemed to disappear into the walls another twenty feet or so above; but from the position of the trapped party, with the poor aid of match-light, it was impossible to see beyond the points at which the chains appeared to enter the rock. Lighting several matches together, however, Mackenzie held them high above his head, and the flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering down upon them over the top of the shutter. It was visible only for an instant, then it was gone; but in that instant the three men felt the culminating shock of amazement. In those features--the high cheekbones, the slanting eyes, the long, thin, grey moustache--they thought they recognised the countenance of the elder of the two Chinamen who had been the companions of their march--the man whom the bemused lad had called Wen Shih.[image]The flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering down at them from over the shutter. It was visible only for an instant, but the three recognized with amazement the face of the man called Wen Shih.CHAPTER VIIEUTHANASIA"Did you see yon?" cried Mackenzie, turning to the others."The Chinky!" gasped Jackson, under his breath."Och, man! there's no need to moderate your voice. We've no hobgoblins or supernatural beings of any kind whatever to deal with, but just that ruffian of a fellow I've had my suspicions about all along. That's an established fact."Mackenzie spoke loudly and emphatically; he was indeed a little sore at the recollection of his own uneasiness. To his practical mind the secret stairway and the mysterious procession counted for nothing against the solid fact that here was the Chinaman whom he had mistrusted."He has shut us in," he added. "Well, he may be sorry for it yet. We'll just gang on, my laddies.""But how about getting back?" asked Jackson."Eh, now! That's not a practical question. The shutter is a sort of portcullis, you may say, defending a sort of castle. Well, we will assume that this Beresford man is a prisoner in the castle. To get him out, the first thing was to get in ourselves. That we have done. What's more, we can't get out just at present, and, speaking for myself, I'll not go out without Beresford, if he's alive.""I'm with you, Mac," said Forrester. "But, after all, we don't know that Beresford is here.""We don'tknow, but there's good warrant for the suspicion. D'ye ken what I've been thinking? Beresford and the other man happened upon some secret here about, and the inhabitants--Chinese, by the look of it--collared them to prevent the secret getting abroad. That ruffian guessed from our line of march that we were coming here, just out of curiosity, maybe, for he couldn't have known anything about Beresford----""Unless he was here at the time, and left after Redfern's escape," Forrester suggested."Ah! That didn't occur to me. Anyway, he gave us the slip in the scrub back yonder just to prepare for our reception if we came along, and I acknowledge that the nature of our reception is a disagreeable surprise.""Whatever the motive for detaining Beresford may be, it applies to us, too," said Forrester."True, and therefore we'll have to watch out. It's a difficult situation.""They might starve us, or murder us, or anything," said Jackson, somewhat nervously."There's just one thing against that," returned Mackenzie, "and that's the fact that our carriers are not with us. The Chinky knows that; he'll guess, or discover, that they're waiting for us in the village away yonder, and fear that if we don't return they'll hie back to Dibrugarh, and give the alarm.""What do you think he'll do, then?" Forrester asked."Keep us here until we're starved or cowed into submission, and then let us go under a vow to say nothing at all. But it's no good speculating. We're in the castle; the first thing is to explore it. Come away!"There seemed nothing better to be done. The party turned their backs on the shutter, and once more marched along the rift. The events of the last half-hour had made Mackenzie more uneasy than he cared to admit; but as the most level-headed of the party he felt the necessity of keeping up the spirits of his companions, and resolutely tried to conquer his misgivings.They pushed on through the rift, searching the wall on either side for signs of an outlet; but the rock was still as smooth as heretofore. At last a couple of unusually sharp bends brought them to another constricted passage, which, like the one behind them, was closed by an iron shutter. Checked by this, they stood for a few moments in absolute silence, looking at one another without any attempt to disguise their alarm. The distance between the two shutters was, perhaps, 120 yards. On each side rose an unscalable wall. They were prisoners, as it were, at the bottom of a well.The silence was broken by a wail from Hamid Gul. It served to brace up the white men."Whisht!" exclaimed Mackenzie. "Wait while I strike a light."He kindled a match, and raised it above his head."This shutter is not so high as the other," he said. "We've just got to climb over it.""How?" asked Forrester. "It's twelve or fourteen feet high, and as smooth as a board. There's nothing to stand on.""Except our shoulders," Mackenzie retorted. "Here, Sher Jang, you're the broadest of us. Come and stand just here. I'll mount you; then, Bob, you're the slimmest, you swarm up. On my shoulders you'll be able to see over. Take the matches. Keep a look-out, Dick, and if you see anyone above threaten mischief, just fire off your revolver--not to hit him, you understand. Diplomacy comes before war."Sher Jang stooped while Mackenzie mounted his back, then slowly rose to his full height. Mackenzie rested his hands on the shutter, and Jackson clambered up the human pedestal, and grasped the top of the iron gate.Next moment he fell back with a stifled cry. Mackenzie caught him in his arms; but his weight was too much for the stability of the column. It tottered, and all three men fell sprawling on the ground."The top was red hot!" cried Jackson, lifting himself and rubbing his elbow."Hold up your hands, man!" cried Mackenzie, picking up the fallen box of matches. He struck a light and examined Jackson's palms. "Your nerves are all to pieces," he added. "Yon's no red hot, or your hands would be blistered and branded red. There's something in it, though. Look here, Dick!"They saw a faint purple streak about an inch wide across the middle of the fingers of each hand."Any pain now?" asked Forrester."No; only a sort of tingle," Jackson replied, feeling a little ashamed of himself. "I was taken by surprise, but it really is hot.""I'll have a try," said Forrester. "Get up again, Mac."Once more Mackenzie stood on the shikari's shoulders, and Forrester clambered up as Jackson had done. Forewarned, he did not start back and upset the balance when he touched the top of the shutter; but he removed his fingers from it quickly, and called out that it was certainly very hot--too hot to grasp while he hauled himself over. He slid down, Mackenzie leapt to the ground, and they looked at one another in a sort of despair."Can't we blow down the shutter with our cartridges?" Forrester at length suggested."We might not succeed, and, anyway, it would be a loss of ammunition we may badly need before long," replied Mackenzie."What in the world are we to do?" muttered Jackson, peering about him anxiously."The fact is----" Forrester was beginning; but at this moment they were all startled, and yet relieved, at hearing a human cry from above them."Who's that?" Mackenzie called, lifting a lighted match above his head. For a moment they searched the face of the rock in vain; but then the light struck dimly upon a head, projecting, as it were, out of the solid wall thirty feet above them. They could distinguish neither shape nor feature, but before the match went out they saw a second head projecting, like a gargoyle from a Gothic wall, close beside the first."Who's that?" Mackenzie called again."Gentlemen!"The word floated down eerily; it was as though a gargoyle were speaking; and the voice was that of the younger Chinaman whom they knew--high pitched, yet low in tone, hardly more than a whisper."Gentlemen," he said, "the August and Venerable welcomes you to his sanctuary. Uninvited you come, but none the less are you welcome. The August and Venerable will extend to you such hospitality as lies within his means. But it is not meet that armed parties should enter the holy precincts. Be content, therefore; withdraw to the lower gate, and leave your weapons there. When you return, this upper gate will be opened to you, and I shall have the honour and privilege of introducing you to the Presence."This speech was delivered in the dull, dreamy, expressionless tone which had characterised all the young man's utterances, except in those few tense minutes succeeding his rescue from the elephant--the monotonous sing-song of a child nervously reciting a lesson."The 'Presence' is that one-armed rascal beside him, I suppose," whispered Forrester. "The poor weed says what he is told to say. What's our answer?""We're in an awkward fix," Jackson began, but Mackenzie cut him short."Things aren't so hopeless as that," he said, quickly. "We'll not part with our arms--our only protection. We don't know when we may need them. I'll answer the fellow." Raising his voice, he said: "We refuse to lay down our arms. We have no hostile intentions--we're as meek as lambs--but the shutting of the gates is a dashed unfriendly act, and makes us mighty doubtful about our welcome. Lift this gate, and lead us to the presence of the August and Venerable. We demand an audience with him."His comrades thought that a more conciliatory manner and more formal phrases might have served them better, but they said nothing. There was no reply from above; they supposed that the young Chinaman was translating to his master, though they heard no sound. It was too dark to see the heads without artificial light; and after a minute or two had passed in silence Mackenzie struck a match, and held it so that its light would fall on the spot where the shapes had been seen. But the wall was blank; the gargoyles had disappeared."What's going on now?" Forrester murmured."Maybe they're sending someone to work the machinery," answered Mackenzie.They waited silently, expecting every moment to hear the harsh grating of the rising shutter, and the rattle of the chains. But minutes passed, and there was no sound except the hard panting breaths of Hamid Gul. Gradually, however, they became conscious of a strange feeling of oppression. The mustiness of the air, which they had felt ever since they entered the rift, became impregnated with a subtle new odour. At first they paid little attention to it, merely remarking on it one to another. But presently Jackson began to sway on his feet."I feel funny," he said, slowly. "Getting--awfully--sleepy.""Hold up, man!" said Mackenzie, sharply, as Jackson staggered against him. "Dick, take him by the arm; we'll walk him about.""If I can," returned Forrester. "I feel uncommonly drowsy, too."They took Jackson by the arms, and led him down the rift in the direction of the first shutter. A few yards away they passed Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground. With growing alarm Mackenzie tried to hurry the pace, but his companions became moment by moment heavier on his hands. After a minute or two he let Jackson's arm go without knowing it. In a few seconds more his grip of Forrester loosened, and he walked on two or three paces alone. Then he, too, fell a prey to the overmastering influence of the atmosphere.[image]Taking Jackson by the arms, they led him down the rift, and a few yards away, they came upon Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground."Hold up, I'm telling you!" he muttered, staggering and reaching out with his hands.Next moment, without volition of his own, he sat down on the ground, striving, like a man half drunk, to keep himself erect, and declaring to himself that he was "quite all right." But his hands fell limply to his sides, his body swayed gently, his head nodded, and in a few seconds he, like the rest, was prone in unconsciousness.CHAPTER VIIITHE LAW OF THE EYESome two hours later, Mackenzie awoke, heaving a great sigh."Hech! But I've a sore head the morn," he murmured, rubbing his eyes drowsily as he looked around him. The sight of bare blank walls instead of the walls of his bungalow, decorated with colour plates from the illustrated papers, caused him to sit up suddenly and rub his eyes again. It was a minute or two before full consciousness and the recollection of recent incidents returned to him. Then he remembered that his last waking moments had been spent in the rift; but he had awaked in a stone-walled, stone-floored cell, cubical in shape, and ten feet in each dimension.His comrades, still asleep, lay at full stretch on the floor, on either side of him."Eh, Dick! Bob! waken yourselves," he called.There was no response.He got up, moved, somewhat totteringly, to Forrester, and prodded him in the ribs."Waken!" he called again. "Man, what's wrong with you?"He gazed anxiously into his friend's face as Forrester slowly opened his eyes. Turning away, he hastened to Jackson, poked him, bawled in his ear, felt his pulse; then, assured that he was not dead, as he had begun to fear, raised him in his arms and shook him vigorously."Haven't got the ball, you ass!" Jackson spluttered."This isn't rugger, old man," said Forrester with a light laugh, coming to his side. "Wake up and see where the beggars have carried us."Jackson recovered his wits more tardily than the others."His face is green," Forrester whispered uneasily."So is yours," said Mackenzie."And yours too, by Jove!" cried Forrester, after a good look at him. "What the mischief have they been doing to us?""I cannot say. I know that my head is sore.""I've a headache, if that's what you mean," said Forrester."So have I, splitting," added Jackson, sitting up, but still resting his hands on the floor. "By Jinks, the stone is warm!""It is that," said Mackenzie, feeling it. "They're wishful we shan't take a chill, by the look of it."They gazed around their narrow chamber. Walls and floor appeared to be of solid rock. In the centre of one wall was a door of stout timber, without lock or handle. High in another was an opening, like the arrow slits in medieval castles, through which a white light filtered."Get on my back, Dick, and keek out," said Mackenzie.In a moment Forrester was mounted."I see nothing but a blank wall twenty feet away," he called down. "And not much of that. It looks like the wall of the rift. I tell you what: this room must be cut out of the wall this side. When you called it a castle, you spoke better than you knew, Mac.""Ay, so it seems," Mackenzie replied, as Forrester sprang down. "But I'm fair flummoxed. The room's perfectly light, though yon slit isn't more than twelve by two. Where does the light come from? It's greenish, too, which accounts for our delicate complexions. And look! you see that?"He pointed to the faint shadow of a fourth human figure that passed across the wall opposite to the window. It flitted through their own shadows, and disappeared.A moment's glance assured them that it had not been cast from without; yet the wall appeared solid, in no degree transparent.There was no furniture in the room. Silently they sat upon the floor, watching the wall nervously for a return of the mysterious inexplicable shadow. But it did not reappear. The strange light, the stranger apparition, brought back upon them redoubled the uneasiness they had felt ever since they entered the rift, and especially after seeing the ghostly procession on the wall. At that moment they could have believed that they lay in the haunt of some necromancer, whose magic art might manifest itself in terrors unconceived."They must have hocussed us," murmured Forrester at length, his thoughts reverting to his last conscious moments in the rift."Ay, put us to sleep with some narcotic gas," said Mackenzie. "What'll they do next?""What have they done with our men?" said Jackson."Separated the goats from the sheep," replied Mackenzie sardonically. "They are evidently respecters of persons!""But----"Forrester's voice ceased. The door had swung open, and there entered two small black men, almost wholly naked, with the uncouth bodies, hideous features, and coarse woolly hair of the wild pigmy races. Each carried a large bowl, one containing water, the other a sticky mess resembling porridge, and three spoons. Through the open doorway, in a brighter greenish light, the prisoners descried a group of similar negroes, armed with short spears and knives, like the dwarfs of the procession. The two food-bearers laid down the bowls and went out silently, the door swung to, a bolt grated in its sockets, and the prisoners were again alone.Forrester bent over the larger bowl, smelling its contents."D'you think it's poisoned?" he asked."No, no," replied Mackenzie. "They wouldn't keep us alive to poison us out of hand. I'm for having a go. We've had nothing to eat since noon."He spooned up a quantity of the stuff and tasted it."Sticky but not bad: would be the better of a pinch of salt. Hunger is the best condiment; dip your spoons."By the time they had finished their meal and emptied both the bowls the daylight had faded, and the window slit was black. Yet the greenish rays that pervaded the room were as strong as ever. They sat discussing the strange phenomenon. Mackenzie advanced the theory that the rock was phosphorescent, and Jackson claimed that he had disproved it when, after rubbing his hand on the warm floor, there was no emanation of light from his fingers. Presently, tired out, and lulled by the warm close air, they fell asleep.They were awakened by finding themselves gently shaken. The door had been silently opened, and two visitors were in the room. The prisoners recognised them at once. They were the two Chinamen with whom they had unforgettable links."Arise!" said the lad in his hushed faltering tone. "Arise! The August and Venerable commands you to his presence.""The August and Venerable isn't this one-armed villain after all," whispered Forrester. "We must go with them: there's no help for it."They noticed that the one-armed man had changed his dress. He wore now a long, white, full-sleeved garment with a green girdle about his waist. He signed to them to precede him through the open doorway. On passing out into a vaulted corridor, which, like their room, seemed to have been hewn out of the solid rock, they found awaiting them an escort of a dozen little black men like those they had already seen, and similarly armed. They followed them through corridor after corridor, the floors of which sloped gradually upward, then into a kind of ante-chamber, and finally into a huge rectangular hall. The greenish light had grown stronger and stronger as they proceeded, and the hall was brilliantly illuminated, though the illumination had no visible source. Like diffused daylight, when the sun has gone down, it came apparently from no definite direction: it was everywhere.At first the three white men took in no details of the scene before them. They were dazzled by the brightness, oppressed with a sense of mystery, an apprehension of they knew not what, the dead silence that prevailed. But when their first sensations had passed, they gazed about them with a tingling curiosity. The walls, glowing with the all-pervading greenish light, were decorated with Chinese designs. The predominant feature of the scheme was a figure which at first sight might have been mistaken for the conventional Chinese dragon; but, on closer examination, it seemed to the spectators to resemble more nearly the reconstruction of some prehistoric sea-monster, such as European zoologists have attempted on the basis of fossil discoveries. The figures were arranged in a regular order. Some were large, some small, but all were of the same type, and they were rendered more life-like, and at the same time more hideous, by the fact that their eyes glowed with a green light much more intense than the light that filled the hall itself.Silent though it was, the hall was not unpeopled. Drawn up in two crescent ranks stood, motionless as statues, perhaps two hundred Chinamen, young and old. The cheeks of all alike were clean shaven, but there were differences between the first two ranks. The heads of those in the first were absolutely hairless: their scalps shone like balls of old polished ivory. They were clad in long sleeveless robes resembling ecclesiastical copes, white with an edging of gold, and a large blue monster, like those on the walls, ramping across the middle of the back. The men in the second row were moustachioed, and had a topknot of hair. Their principal garment was a full-sleeved tunic, white also, but without embroidery of any kind. It was among these that Wen Shih, the one-armed Chinaman, placed himself after leaving his young compatriot and the three Englishmen with their escort just inside the doorway.The silent assembly faced a huge dais or throne at the farther end of the hall, rising six or eight feet from the floor. It was of Chinese design; the material of which it was made shone like gold; and its surface was marked with images of the symbolic monster, sculptured in high relief.The Englishmen noticed that, immediately opposite the throne, there was a gap in the ranks of the company, eight or ten paces wide. Beyond this gap--that is, nearer to the end of the hall at which they had entered--stood a low pedestal, like the pedestal of a statue. But there was no statue upon it. Nor was the throne occupied. The eyes of the silent throng, indeed, appeared to be fixed on a doorway in the wall behind and above the throne. It was covered with a cream-coloured hanging of some rich material, ornamented with monsters embroidered in gold. From it to the rear of the throne a broad stairway led.The hush of expectancy which brooded over the whole assembly seized upon the three strangers. Their fascinated eyes were drawn as by some magnetic attraction to the curtained doorway. Not one of them was tempted to speak: they were possessed by awe the same in kind as that which holds the worshippers in some vast cathedral.Presently they became aware of a trembling in the air immediately above the throne, like that which is sometimes seen above the funnel of a locomotive engine at rest. By degrees a screen of mist, delicate as muslin, formed itself in front of the throne, the outlines of which became blurred and were finally blotted out altogether. There was a momentary rustle, like the breaking of surf upon a long shore; then the same deathly stillness; the Chinamen had bent forward simultaneously with the precision of trained soldiers, until their brows touched the floor. Of all the men in the hall, only the three Englishmen at the end stood upright upon their feet.They gazed in mute amazement, tensely awaiting the explanation of this extraordinary scene. Presently they caught the gleam of gold through the shimmering screen; the mist slowly dispersed; the outlines of the throne were once more clear and distinct; and they thrilled as with an electric shock when they beheld, seated motionless upon the throne, a remarkable figure.It was the figure of an old, old man, low in stature, bent and frail, but indued with a certain impressiveness and majesty. A long ivory-hued cope, stiff with gold, and emblazoned with purple monsters, descended to his feet, concealing a frame which the three spectators divined to be spare and emaciated. His head was covered with a towering head-dress like a bishop's mitre, but loftier, fantastically shaped, and gleaming with gold and jewels.But the eyes of the beholders were drawn away from his gorgeous trappings to his countenance. Ivory pale, lined and wizened with great age, it was rendered strangely impressive by the eyes, which beamed with the lustre and brilliance of youth. His glance passed over the prostrate forms of the assembly, and fastened for one brief moment on the three straight figures at the end of the hall. Then in a clear bell-like voice, surprising in so old a man, he uttered one word. The men prostrate below him rose to their feet; there was a brief pause; then for the space of several minutes a sort of litany was chanted, the old man reciting a sentence, the others making responses in monotone. There was no gesture, no movement save the motions of their lips.When the litany came to an end, at a word from the old man Wen Shih left his place in the second rank, and approached the Englishmen. He made them understand by signs that they were to accompany him to the foot of the throne. Moving as under a spell, they passed through the gap, scarcely conscious of the eyes of the men around, and halted a few paces from the seated patriarch. Wen Shih returned to his place. All was silent as the grave.The old man gazed fixedly at them for a moment, and his searching look, bright as an eagle's, yet cold and paralysing, filled them with a chill foreboding. His lips moved, and in spite of themselves they started in amazement as they heard the first words that fell."What brings you striplings here?"
[image]As the old man was led forward, the Nagas pointed to him with wild excitement, continually exclaiming, "The Eye! The Eye!"
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As the old man was led forward, the Nagas pointed to him with wild excitement, continually exclaiming, "The Eye! The Eye!"
Forrester asked Sher Jang to get from the people an explanation of the connection of this old man with the Nagas' refusal to march. The story, as told by the villager through the Naga head-man, was that the one-armed greybeard had been a brave warrior in his youth, and was one of a war party who, many years before, had ventured beyond the great waterfall. Of them all, only he had returned, without his right arm. When his people asked him what had happened to his companions, and how he had lost his arm, his only answer was "The Eye!" Ever since, his mind had been a blank. He could tell them nothing, had no recollection of what had happened; and the people had kept him with them, showing him the veneration which simple races often pay to the half-witted.
The white men were mystified. The story seemed incredible, yet there was the man in proof of it.
"None of the people have ever been beyond the fall since?" asked Forrester.
"None of us," was the reply, "but we have seen men go sometimes, and we have never known them to return. Yes: there was one who returned. He was fair of skin like these lords, and wore clothes like them. There were two who went, but only one returned. Some of our people saw him hasting by the lake near the fall, and the little men were running after him, but he escaped them, and went into the forest."
"Who are the little men?" Forrester asked.
"They are men like monkeys," replied the man, holding his hand about four feet from the ground to indicate their height. "They are the men who take the wood from us."
On further questioning, the men explained that the country beyond the falls was destitute of large trees, and the little men paid the villagers for timber cut in the forest. This timber was conveyed to a certain spot some distance short of the waterfall, and removed thence by the little men to their home in the mountains, which the villagers had never beheld.
"How long ago was the white man seen?" Forrester asked.
The man held up his hands with fingers outspread.
"Redfern, to a certainty!" Jackson exclaimed. "We must go on, and get to the bottom of this mystery. It's horrible to think of what may possibly happen to Beresford."
"Ay, there's something uncanny beyond," Mackenzie said, thoughtfully.
"Whatever they mean by the Eye, it is clear that something gruesome goes on among the little men," said Forrester. "There's nothing for it but to forge ahead, and tackle them if there's the ghost of a chance for us. What do you say? Are you game to stick to it, even if we can't persuade the Nagas to come?"
"Ay, I'm for going on," said Mackenzie.
"I too," said Jackson. "We can but try, and I don't suppose the little men, whoever they are, have rifles. Let us start at once."
CHAPTER VI
THE IRON SHUTTER
"You come with us, Sher Jang?" asked Forrester.
"Sahib, I am your servant," the man replied, simply.
"And you, Hamid?"
The cook pulled nervously at his beard, turned up the whites of his eyes, shot a savage glance at the shikari, then said in a voice which all his resolution could not prevent from trembling:--
"Sir, I step out like a man. One volunteer is worth tons of pressed beef."
"Which means that without these idiotic carriers we shall have to travel light," said Forrester. "Just put up enough food for two days; we'll carry it somehow among us. We must leave the tent with the Nagas. They had better remain here until we return."
"Can't we take more grub?" Jackson asked.
"If we don't do it in two days we shan't do it at all, so it's useless overloading ourselves. We risk losing the tent, of course, but that can't be helped."
Their preparations were quickly made, and they set off while the morning was still young. Hamid Gul carried his cooking utensils, plates, knives and forks, and other articles; Sher Jang shouldered some blankets, in which he had wrapped a quantity of ammunition, and the three white men divided the food among them. Each of the party had his rifle slung behind his back.
Their guides, a dozen of the villagers, harnessed themselves to tree trunks, which they dragged through the wood and down the rocky slope beyond. It had been arranged before they started that the white men should follow at some little distance, so that the natives, in case of need, might repudiate knowledge of them, and escape all responsibility for bringing the strangers to the neighbourhood of the falls.
At the foot of the slope they came to a rivulet. Without the Naga head-man Sher Jang could not hold any oral communication with the villagers; but they managed to convey to him the information that the smaller falls of which they had spoken were a little way down-stream; the larger falls lay a much greater distance in the other direction. Some minutes were occupied in forming the balks of timber into a raft. When this was done half the party of natives swam to the farther bank, carrying ropes attached to the raft, and then the two sections hauled their wares against the sluggish current, tramping along towpaths which must have been trodden by several generations of their forebears.
The view ahead was shut out by the trees that grew almost to the edge of the winding stream; but it was not long before the white men, walking about half a mile behind their guides, were aware of a dull rumble that grew louder moment by moment as they proceeded.
"That's the fall!" cried Jackson. "We can't be far away."
"A pretty big one, by the sound of it," Forrester remarked. "Small falls make a sort of crash--this is more of a roar. Perhaps we shall find a second Niagara."
"I'm fair flummoxed!" said Mackenzie, inconsequently.
"What about?"
"About yon Eye. You see, these folks were terrified by the storm: 'He speaks,' they said. Well, that was the thunder. By what the philosophers call parity of reasoning, the Eye is lightning. Well, lightning can take off a man's arm, and strike him daft or dead; but what about the little men up yonder? Are they scunnered at the Eye, too? What has the Eye to do with Beresford?"
"Trust a Scot to ask questions!" said Jackson. "But you won't reason it out, Mac; you'll just have to wait, like an Englishman."
"Och, man! I want facts. Give me facts, and I'll draw my own conclusions."
"Well, this row is a fact, and a stunning one," said Forrester. "It's time we caught sight of the fall that's making such an uproar."
But they marched on for a couple of hours without seeing any sight of a waterfall, or even any quickening of the current. The noise had gradually increased to a stupendous din, and thoughts of their ultimate errand were overborne by excitement as they looked eagerly ahead for the mass of falling water. At last the belt of forest land came to an abrupt end, and they gazed forth over a wide rocky plain, in the midst of which was an immense lake that appeared to be considerably below the level of the surrounding country. From it ran the stream whose course they were following, and a larger stream far to the right.
Beyond the plain rose the mountains, towering up peak behind peak to the summits of the snowy range in the remote distance. The three men halted involuntarily, struck both by the majesty of the scene and by the deafening roar which almost drowned their voices.
"Man, it's grand!" Mackenzie shouted.
"But where is it?" Forrester bawled in his ear.
They looked all around, but saw nothing to account for the thunderous noise. The sky was overcast, and a layer of mist obscured the lower foothills, though the heights beyond heaved their grey masses in clear undulations miles above. As they stood, a sunbeam stole through the clouds, and a rainbow flung its gay arch across the plain directly ahead of them.
"There's rain over there," said Jackson, at the top of his voice.
"Only mist!" Forrester cried in reply.
For a few moments they gazed mutely upon a sight that never loses its interest and wonder. Then Mackenzie smote his thigh, and cried like one in ecstasy:--
"Man--it's the Fall!"
The mist was rolling away as the sun gathered strength, yet the rainbow did not fade, but shone more brightly than ever over a space of perhaps one-eighth of a mile. And then the onlookers saw that what had hitherto seemed to them a part of the bank of mist was in reality a gigantic torrent of water, mingled with spray thrown up hundreds of feet from the unseen bottom. They watched it in silent awe. The villagers had described it as falling from the clouds into the depths of the earth. Their words appeared to be literally true. An eighth of a mile in width, the torrent poured over the edge of a tableland--a single huge step in the ascent to the plateaux of Tibet. Mist still hung above it, the enormous screen of spray concealed its lower part, and at the distance they still were from it the spectators could only just distinguish the movement of the mighty volume of water.
It had been arranged with their guides that they should remain on the spot where they first caught sight of the fall until the men had delivered their timber and returned. The delay gave them an opportunity of taking a meal. As they ate they amused themselves by guessing at the height of the fall. Forrester suggested that it was as high as St. Paul's; Jackson thought this estimate too low; and Mackenzie astonished the others by declaring that he wouldna wonder but it was fully as high as Ben Lomond.
It was three hours before the natives returned, and the white men, setting forth impatiently at length to skirt the lake and reach the foot of the hills on the western side of the fall, found to their amazement that they had nearly two miles to go before they came level with it. Then they were struck dumb by the full magnificence of the scene. The spray itself, rising like steam from a gigantic cauldron, attained to the height of St. Paul's. The two Englishmen were prepared to admit that the top of the fall was even higher than the summit of Ben-Lomond; but Mackenzie's calculating eye gauged more nearly to the truth.
"I would say it's two thousand feet, or a wee bit more," he said, and his friends laughed at the incongruous use of the word "wee" in such a connection.
They found that the scarp over which the torrent poured extended for miles on each side. It appeared to be almost perpendicular, though away to the left it became more broken. On the right, except for one or two steep and rugged spurs, it was one continuous wall of rock.
The path they had followed round the western shore of the lake brought them to a small wooden bridge spanning an inflowing stream. It somewhat resembled the bridge delineated in the well-known willow pattern. To this the raft of timber was moored. Evidently it was part of the plan for maintaining the secrecy of the hill community that purchasers and vendors should come into contact as seldom as possible; or perhaps the woodcutters' own fear of the Eye kept them from approaching nearer to the dwelling of the "little men." No doubt the timber would presently be fetched, and drawn along the stream into the lake, and thence to its destination.
The three men looked around for some signs of human habitation, but discovered none. A rough roadway, however, led from the bridge along the base of the precipice towards the fall, which appeared to be about half a mile distant. After a brief consultation they decided to make their way along this road. To be prepared for possible danger they first laid down their impedimenta and unslung their rifles. Then they set off, Forrester leading with the shikari.
After a while the path rose somewhat steeply on the face of the cliff, and they soon saw that it passed underneath the fall itself, the torrent of water forming a gigantic arch. When they arrived beneath this they found themselves in a dim twilight, the glassy sea-green surface of the watery arch reflecting a pallid hue upon their faces. They were perfectly dry, except for some flecks of spray dashed upon them from the base of the fall. At this spot they were three or four hundred feet above the surface of the lake, which boiled and foamed like an angry sea immensely magnified. The din was terrific; even the loudest shout would scarcely have been audible.
At their first entrance into this segmental tunnel Hamid Gul shrank back, appalled by the noise, the falling water, and the immense, tattered sheet of spray that rose from the seething cauldron hundreds of feet below. But seeing that his employers were pressing forward he pulled himself together, and hurried on close at Mackenzie's heels. The width of the path had diminished to a bare three feet, and as the party crept along it they instinctively clung to the wall of rock on their left hand. A strange attraction was exercised by the smooth arch of falling water; on their right, inducing the same kind of vertigo which most people experience when looking down from giddy heights.
So they passed through the furlong of tunnel. A hundred yards or so beyond the eastern end the path began to slope downwards as steeply as it had ascended on the other side, and within a short space the party found themselves once more almost on a level with the lake. Then the path came to an abrupt end, disappearing into the water that washed the base of the perpendicular cliff. Here they halted; it seemed that they could go no farther, that they must retrace their steps and explore in the other direction.
They could not make themselves heard one by another, but Mackenzie signed to the rest to stand fast; he remembered that beyond the bridge behind them there was no road except that which skirted the lake, and drew the reasonable inference that the path by which they had come must, after all, lead somewhere. It occurred to him to test the depth of the water. Finding that it was no more than two feet, he took off his boots, rolled up his putties, and started to wade. In a few seconds he turned and beckoned to his companions. They followed his example, and on joining him found that he had come to a sharp corner of the precipice, which was cut at this point by an extraordinary rift. At the entrance it was perhaps forty feet wide. The sides were straighter and even nearer to the perpendicular than the face of the cliff bordering the lake. They gazed upwards in astonishment at the immense height. The top was so far above them that the sides seemed almost to touch, leaving only a narrow slit. Peering into the cleft, they saw nothing beyond the first hundred yards or so. Little light filtered through the opening at the top, and the floor of the rift was illuminated more and more faintly as the sides converged.
Our party stood there in mute amazement. Mackenzie was the only one of them who knew anything of geology: a Scot always knows something of everything; and he surmised that the rift was the result of some Titanic disruption of the earth in an age long past. It was as though the mass of solid rock had been rent asunder by a gigantic wedge, impelled by a Cyclopean hammer--such a hammer as Thor wields in the Norse myths.
It seemed of little use to enter the rift. No mortal men could make that their abode. But on passing beyond the entrance they soon found that further passage along the edge of the lake was impossible. The water still came right up to the face of the cliff, and the pathway--if it was a pathway--which they were treading sank ever deeper beneath the surface. There was nothing for it but to hark back, unless they were prepared to swim. Jackson suggested that possibly some side path branched from the rift, leading by a steep zigzag ascent to the summit of this strange precipice.
Retracing their steps accordingly, they turned into the rift, donned their boots, and marched forward. The floor sloped gently upwards, the walls converged until the space between them was barely half what it had been at the entrance. Pressing on, they became aware that the rift was not straight, as they had believed. A sharp bend brought them upon a sight that caused them to halt, peer nervously upward and in front, and tighten their grasp upon their rifles. Three canoes lay tandem against the right-hand side of the rift--harmless objects in themselves, but rather perturbing as indications that men were somewhere in the neighbourhood. They were obviously intended for transporting persons across the lake without the necessity of making the passage under the fall. In the dim light they would scarcely have been visible from the entrance, even had the rift been straight; the bend effectually concealed them.
Once more the party halted. Shut in as they were by the high, close walls, the sound of the waterfall came to them now only as a dull rumble; but when they spoke it was in whispers. Apart from the risk of being heard by an unseen enemy, there was an atmosphere of mystery and awesomeness that weighed oppressively on their minds.
"What are we to do?" asked Jackson.
"Go on!" Forrester replied, firmly. "We can hardly be seen. The sides are so smooth and straight that no one could perch anywhere to molest us, except at the corners. We must be on our guard there."
"But surely no one can live here! Nothing could grow; there doesn't even appear to be moss on the rock, and the air's as stuffy as in a cave."
"Man, don't argufy!" said Mackenzie. "Straight ahead!"
They continued their course. Every now and again the rift turned sharply to one side or the other, and the smooth floor, unimpeded by loose rocks or boulders, always ascended, more and more steeply as they advanced. Strangely enough, the higher they went the stuffier the air became, and the deeper their sense of oppression, or rather, perhaps, of nervous strain. Mackenzie, who had once been down a coal-mine in Lanarkshire, suspected the presence of poisonous gases.
"There can't be fire-damp," he murmured, "but it may be carbonic acid. Bide a wee while I strike a match."
But this fear was dispelled when the flame burned brightly for a second or two. He extinguished it abruptly.
"Hoots! I'm an ass!" he said. "Someone may have seen the light; and if there are men about, I'd rather see them first than they us."
"My skin is tingling just as if I'd got a grip of the terminals of a battery," Jackson remarked.
"It's uncanny, and that's a fact," said Mackenzie. "But look, man! What's that?" he added, in a startled whisper, clutching Forrester by the arm with one hand, and pointing ahead with the other.
His comrades closed upon him, and peered into the semi-obscurity, their heads almost touching. A little to one side of them stood Sher Jang, impassive as ever, though he held his rifle with both hands, and his muscles were as taut as a bent spring. Behind, Hamid Gul's one eye bulged from its socket as he tiptoed to look over his master's shoulder.
A few yards to their front the rift made one of the sudden bends that formed such strange features of its course. It struck to the right at a sharp angle, so that the wall which had been on their left hand became almost perpendicular to their line of march. On its smooth rocky face, some eighteen or twenty feet above the ground, an extraordinary procession was moving across their line of vision from right to left, like shadows cast faintly upon a screen. The leading figure was that of a skeleton, clothed about with a misty body shaped like a man in tourist costume: a tall frame, the bones standing out in black relief from the midst of a faint penumbra. Behind this trotted the skeleton forms of a number of almost naked dwarfs, no more than four feet in height, each bearing a spear upon his shoulder. At the rear came a second full-sized figure, taking long strides, like a schoolmaster at the tail of a line of boys. The shadowy surround of his skeleton widened towards the bottom like an academic gown. The watchers held their breath, amazed at the weirdness of the dim shapes, and still more at the manner of their progress. There were no steps to be seen in the face of the cliff, yet the gait of the procession was unmistakably that of men descending a steep stairway. Foot by foot they moved downwards on their diagonal path; one by one they reached the floor of the rift; then, instead of walking along it towards the spectators, they seemed to descend into the earth, and in a few moments disappeared from view. Not a sound had accompanied them; no tramp of footsteps, no clash of weapons.
Drawing a long breath, the white men, tense and watchful, waited a little for some sign of their reappearance, but nothing more was seen. If the strange people had observed the group of onlookers, they had paid no heed to them. At last, Mackenzie hurried forward to search for the steps and the subterranean passage to which they gave access. The rest of the party followed him, save Hamid Gul, who remained as one transfixed, shivering with awe.
When they came to the wall they were thrown into a state of utter consternation. The surface of the rock was wholly unbroken; there was neither stairway nor passage into the ground--the cliff was as smooth as polished granite. They looked upwards, to the right along the rift; they passed their hands over the face of the rock, struck it here and there, probed with their rifles the floor--all was apparently solid. An uncomfortable feeling of creepiness stole over them. What mysterious secret lurked in this gloomy cleft in the mountain?
None of them had yet uttered a word. When Forrester spoke, it was in a whisper.
"Were they shadows?" he asked.
They turned about and looked back along the rift. There was no light between the walls. Far above, the sunlight illumined their summits, a bright streak in the gloom. But no shadow could have been cast so low.
"Och!" exclaimed Mackenzie, shaking himself. "We cannot get to the bottom of yon. Come away!"
Every man of them, without confessing it to the others, was thinking of the singular things they had heard in the forest village. Their minds were oppressed by the villagers' superstitious dread; it required an effort to proceed with the march, leaving this uncanny incident unexplained. But they braced themselves at Mackenzie's words. Whatever the explanation of the procession might be, it argued the presence of beings other than themselves in the cleft or its neighbourhood; and the remembrance of their errand nerved them to go on. If Captain Redfern's unfortunate companion were indeed held captive in this mysterious region, it appeared that they must look forward to something more than a straight fight; but they could not allow themselves to be daunted by apparitions, which, after all, might have a simple explanation.
When they resumed their march it was with more caution than before. Despite themselves, they had a sense of being watched, of something impending, almost of helplessness, strange though this sensation was to their robust Western minds. Almost unconsciously they kept closer together, holding their rifles ready in one hand, and unbuttoning their revolvers with the other. Only Hamid Gul walked alone. He followed with trembling knees some yards in the rear, wishing that he had courage enough to run back to the entrance, where there were at least space and air.
They turned to the right with the rift. Soon the walls began to converge, and the twilight grew dimmer and dimmer. At one spot the passage was scarcely eight feet wide. Beyond this it broadened again, and the light improved. Then, with startling suddenness, the silence behind them was broken by a harsh sound that caused them to jump round in a tingle of apprehension. It was like the rattling of heavy chains, followed by a loud grating squeak, and a second or two later by a metallic clang that echoed ominously in the narrow rift. The echoes died away; all was again silent.
Mackenzie had already started back, a vague inkling of what had happened freezing him to the marrow. In the semi-darkness he collided with Hamid Gul, who let out a yell and dropped his rifle, which fell with resounding crash on the ground. The others hurried close on Mackenzie's heels. He reached the narrow passage recently left, and here, in the greater obscurity, he came full tilt against an obstacle that barred the way. His rifle clashed against it, and when his friends joined him they found that their escape was cut off by a huge iron shutter that filled the whole width of the passage.
Mackenzie struck a match, and held it aloft. To their dismay they saw that the shutter was at least twenty feet high. It fitted into grooves on either side and in the floor beneath, which the darkness had not allowed them to see when they passed a few minutes before. Its surface was decorated with an elaborate and fantastic design, the prevailing note of which was a monstrous eye, which glared with a singularly sinister effect in several parts of the pattern. The upper part of the shutter was attached to two heavy chain cables, one on each side of the rift. These cables seemed to disappear into the walls another twenty feet or so above; but from the position of the trapped party, with the poor aid of match-light, it was impossible to see beyond the points at which the chains appeared to enter the rock. Lighting several matches together, however, Mackenzie held them high above his head, and the flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering down upon them over the top of the shutter. It was visible only for an instant, then it was gone; but in that instant the three men felt the culminating shock of amazement. In those features--the high cheekbones, the slanting eyes, the long, thin, grey moustache--they thought they recognised the countenance of the elder of the two Chinamen who had been the companions of their march--the man whom the bemused lad had called Wen Shih.
[image]The flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering down at them from over the shutter. It was visible only for an instant, but the three recognized with amazement the face of the man called Wen Shih.
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The flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering down at them from over the shutter. It was visible only for an instant, but the three recognized with amazement the face of the man called Wen Shih.
CHAPTER VII
EUTHANASIA
"Did you see yon?" cried Mackenzie, turning to the others.
"The Chinky!" gasped Jackson, under his breath.
"Och, man! there's no need to moderate your voice. We've no hobgoblins or supernatural beings of any kind whatever to deal with, but just that ruffian of a fellow I've had my suspicions about all along. That's an established fact."
Mackenzie spoke loudly and emphatically; he was indeed a little sore at the recollection of his own uneasiness. To his practical mind the secret stairway and the mysterious procession counted for nothing against the solid fact that here was the Chinaman whom he had mistrusted.
"He has shut us in," he added. "Well, he may be sorry for it yet. We'll just gang on, my laddies."
"But how about getting back?" asked Jackson.
"Eh, now! That's not a practical question. The shutter is a sort of portcullis, you may say, defending a sort of castle. Well, we will assume that this Beresford man is a prisoner in the castle. To get him out, the first thing was to get in ourselves. That we have done. What's more, we can't get out just at present, and, speaking for myself, I'll not go out without Beresford, if he's alive."
"I'm with you, Mac," said Forrester. "But, after all, we don't know that Beresford is here."
"We don'tknow, but there's good warrant for the suspicion. D'ye ken what I've been thinking? Beresford and the other man happened upon some secret here about, and the inhabitants--Chinese, by the look of it--collared them to prevent the secret getting abroad. That ruffian guessed from our line of march that we were coming here, just out of curiosity, maybe, for he couldn't have known anything about Beresford----"
"Unless he was here at the time, and left after Redfern's escape," Forrester suggested.
"Ah! That didn't occur to me. Anyway, he gave us the slip in the scrub back yonder just to prepare for our reception if we came along, and I acknowledge that the nature of our reception is a disagreeable surprise."
"Whatever the motive for detaining Beresford may be, it applies to us, too," said Forrester.
"True, and therefore we'll have to watch out. It's a difficult situation."
"They might starve us, or murder us, or anything," said Jackson, somewhat nervously.
"There's just one thing against that," returned Mackenzie, "and that's the fact that our carriers are not with us. The Chinky knows that; he'll guess, or discover, that they're waiting for us in the village away yonder, and fear that if we don't return they'll hie back to Dibrugarh, and give the alarm."
"What do you think he'll do, then?" Forrester asked.
"Keep us here until we're starved or cowed into submission, and then let us go under a vow to say nothing at all. But it's no good speculating. We're in the castle; the first thing is to explore it. Come away!"
There seemed nothing better to be done. The party turned their backs on the shutter, and once more marched along the rift. The events of the last half-hour had made Mackenzie more uneasy than he cared to admit; but as the most level-headed of the party he felt the necessity of keeping up the spirits of his companions, and resolutely tried to conquer his misgivings.
They pushed on through the rift, searching the wall on either side for signs of an outlet; but the rock was still as smooth as heretofore. At last a couple of unusually sharp bends brought them to another constricted passage, which, like the one behind them, was closed by an iron shutter. Checked by this, they stood for a few moments in absolute silence, looking at one another without any attempt to disguise their alarm. The distance between the two shutters was, perhaps, 120 yards. On each side rose an unscalable wall. They were prisoners, as it were, at the bottom of a well.
The silence was broken by a wail from Hamid Gul. It served to brace up the white men.
"Whisht!" exclaimed Mackenzie. "Wait while I strike a light."
He kindled a match, and raised it above his head.
"This shutter is not so high as the other," he said. "We've just got to climb over it."
"How?" asked Forrester. "It's twelve or fourteen feet high, and as smooth as a board. There's nothing to stand on."
"Except our shoulders," Mackenzie retorted. "Here, Sher Jang, you're the broadest of us. Come and stand just here. I'll mount you; then, Bob, you're the slimmest, you swarm up. On my shoulders you'll be able to see over. Take the matches. Keep a look-out, Dick, and if you see anyone above threaten mischief, just fire off your revolver--not to hit him, you understand. Diplomacy comes before war."
Sher Jang stooped while Mackenzie mounted his back, then slowly rose to his full height. Mackenzie rested his hands on the shutter, and Jackson clambered up the human pedestal, and grasped the top of the iron gate.
Next moment he fell back with a stifled cry. Mackenzie caught him in his arms; but his weight was too much for the stability of the column. It tottered, and all three men fell sprawling on the ground.
"The top was red hot!" cried Jackson, lifting himself and rubbing his elbow.
"Hold up your hands, man!" cried Mackenzie, picking up the fallen box of matches. He struck a light and examined Jackson's palms. "Your nerves are all to pieces," he added. "Yon's no red hot, or your hands would be blistered and branded red. There's something in it, though. Look here, Dick!"
They saw a faint purple streak about an inch wide across the middle of the fingers of each hand.
"Any pain now?" asked Forrester.
"No; only a sort of tingle," Jackson replied, feeling a little ashamed of himself. "I was taken by surprise, but it really is hot."
"I'll have a try," said Forrester. "Get up again, Mac."
Once more Mackenzie stood on the shikari's shoulders, and Forrester clambered up as Jackson had done. Forewarned, he did not start back and upset the balance when he touched the top of the shutter; but he removed his fingers from it quickly, and called out that it was certainly very hot--too hot to grasp while he hauled himself over. He slid down, Mackenzie leapt to the ground, and they looked at one another in a sort of despair.
"Can't we blow down the shutter with our cartridges?" Forrester at length suggested.
"We might not succeed, and, anyway, it would be a loss of ammunition we may badly need before long," replied Mackenzie.
"What in the world are we to do?" muttered Jackson, peering about him anxiously.
"The fact is----" Forrester was beginning; but at this moment they were all startled, and yet relieved, at hearing a human cry from above them.
"Who's that?" Mackenzie called, lifting a lighted match above his head. For a moment they searched the face of the rock in vain; but then the light struck dimly upon a head, projecting, as it were, out of the solid wall thirty feet above them. They could distinguish neither shape nor feature, but before the match went out they saw a second head projecting, like a gargoyle from a Gothic wall, close beside the first.
"Who's that?" Mackenzie called again.
"Gentlemen!"
The word floated down eerily; it was as though a gargoyle were speaking; and the voice was that of the younger Chinaman whom they knew--high pitched, yet low in tone, hardly more than a whisper.
"Gentlemen," he said, "the August and Venerable welcomes you to his sanctuary. Uninvited you come, but none the less are you welcome. The August and Venerable will extend to you such hospitality as lies within his means. But it is not meet that armed parties should enter the holy precincts. Be content, therefore; withdraw to the lower gate, and leave your weapons there. When you return, this upper gate will be opened to you, and I shall have the honour and privilege of introducing you to the Presence."
This speech was delivered in the dull, dreamy, expressionless tone which had characterised all the young man's utterances, except in those few tense minutes succeeding his rescue from the elephant--the monotonous sing-song of a child nervously reciting a lesson.
"The 'Presence' is that one-armed rascal beside him, I suppose," whispered Forrester. "The poor weed says what he is told to say. What's our answer?"
"We're in an awkward fix," Jackson began, but Mackenzie cut him short.
"Things aren't so hopeless as that," he said, quickly. "We'll not part with our arms--our only protection. We don't know when we may need them. I'll answer the fellow." Raising his voice, he said: "We refuse to lay down our arms. We have no hostile intentions--we're as meek as lambs--but the shutting of the gates is a dashed unfriendly act, and makes us mighty doubtful about our welcome. Lift this gate, and lead us to the presence of the August and Venerable. We demand an audience with him."
His comrades thought that a more conciliatory manner and more formal phrases might have served them better, but they said nothing. There was no reply from above; they supposed that the young Chinaman was translating to his master, though they heard no sound. It was too dark to see the heads without artificial light; and after a minute or two had passed in silence Mackenzie struck a match, and held it so that its light would fall on the spot where the shapes had been seen. But the wall was blank; the gargoyles had disappeared.
"What's going on now?" Forrester murmured.
"Maybe they're sending someone to work the machinery," answered Mackenzie.
They waited silently, expecting every moment to hear the harsh grating of the rising shutter, and the rattle of the chains. But minutes passed, and there was no sound except the hard panting breaths of Hamid Gul. Gradually, however, they became conscious of a strange feeling of oppression. The mustiness of the air, which they had felt ever since they entered the rift, became impregnated with a subtle new odour. At first they paid little attention to it, merely remarking on it one to another. But presently Jackson began to sway on his feet.
"I feel funny," he said, slowly. "Getting--awfully--sleepy."
"Hold up, man!" said Mackenzie, sharply, as Jackson staggered against him. "Dick, take him by the arm; we'll walk him about."
"If I can," returned Forrester. "I feel uncommonly drowsy, too."
They took Jackson by the arms, and led him down the rift in the direction of the first shutter. A few yards away they passed Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground. With growing alarm Mackenzie tried to hurry the pace, but his companions became moment by moment heavier on his hands. After a minute or two he let Jackson's arm go without knowing it. In a few seconds more his grip of Forrester loosened, and he walked on two or three paces alone. Then he, too, fell a prey to the overmastering influence of the atmosphere.
[image]Taking Jackson by the arms, they led him down the rift, and a few yards away, they came upon Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground.
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Taking Jackson by the arms, they led him down the rift, and a few yards away, they came upon Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground.
"Hold up, I'm telling you!" he muttered, staggering and reaching out with his hands.
Next moment, without volition of his own, he sat down on the ground, striving, like a man half drunk, to keep himself erect, and declaring to himself that he was "quite all right." But his hands fell limply to his sides, his body swayed gently, his head nodded, and in a few seconds he, like the rest, was prone in unconsciousness.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LAW OF THE EYE
Some two hours later, Mackenzie awoke, heaving a great sigh.
"Hech! But I've a sore head the morn," he murmured, rubbing his eyes drowsily as he looked around him. The sight of bare blank walls instead of the walls of his bungalow, decorated with colour plates from the illustrated papers, caused him to sit up suddenly and rub his eyes again. It was a minute or two before full consciousness and the recollection of recent incidents returned to him. Then he remembered that his last waking moments had been spent in the rift; but he had awaked in a stone-walled, stone-floored cell, cubical in shape, and ten feet in each dimension.
His comrades, still asleep, lay at full stretch on the floor, on either side of him.
"Eh, Dick! Bob! waken yourselves," he called.
There was no response.
He got up, moved, somewhat totteringly, to Forrester, and prodded him in the ribs.
"Waken!" he called again. "Man, what's wrong with you?"
He gazed anxiously into his friend's face as Forrester slowly opened his eyes. Turning away, he hastened to Jackson, poked him, bawled in his ear, felt his pulse; then, assured that he was not dead, as he had begun to fear, raised him in his arms and shook him vigorously.
"Haven't got the ball, you ass!" Jackson spluttered.
"This isn't rugger, old man," said Forrester with a light laugh, coming to his side. "Wake up and see where the beggars have carried us."
Jackson recovered his wits more tardily than the others.
"His face is green," Forrester whispered uneasily.
"So is yours," said Mackenzie.
"And yours too, by Jove!" cried Forrester, after a good look at him. "What the mischief have they been doing to us?"
"I cannot say. I know that my head is sore."
"I've a headache, if that's what you mean," said Forrester.
"So have I, splitting," added Jackson, sitting up, but still resting his hands on the floor. "By Jinks, the stone is warm!"
"It is that," said Mackenzie, feeling it. "They're wishful we shan't take a chill, by the look of it."
They gazed around their narrow chamber. Walls and floor appeared to be of solid rock. In the centre of one wall was a door of stout timber, without lock or handle. High in another was an opening, like the arrow slits in medieval castles, through which a white light filtered.
"Get on my back, Dick, and keek out," said Mackenzie.
In a moment Forrester was mounted.
"I see nothing but a blank wall twenty feet away," he called down. "And not much of that. It looks like the wall of the rift. I tell you what: this room must be cut out of the wall this side. When you called it a castle, you spoke better than you knew, Mac."
"Ay, so it seems," Mackenzie replied, as Forrester sprang down. "But I'm fair flummoxed. The room's perfectly light, though yon slit isn't more than twelve by two. Where does the light come from? It's greenish, too, which accounts for our delicate complexions. And look! you see that?"
He pointed to the faint shadow of a fourth human figure that passed across the wall opposite to the window. It flitted through their own shadows, and disappeared.
A moment's glance assured them that it had not been cast from without; yet the wall appeared solid, in no degree transparent.
There was no furniture in the room. Silently they sat upon the floor, watching the wall nervously for a return of the mysterious inexplicable shadow. But it did not reappear. The strange light, the stranger apparition, brought back upon them redoubled the uneasiness they had felt ever since they entered the rift, and especially after seeing the ghostly procession on the wall. At that moment they could have believed that they lay in the haunt of some necromancer, whose magic art might manifest itself in terrors unconceived.
"They must have hocussed us," murmured Forrester at length, his thoughts reverting to his last conscious moments in the rift.
"Ay, put us to sleep with some narcotic gas," said Mackenzie. "What'll they do next?"
"What have they done with our men?" said Jackson.
"Separated the goats from the sheep," replied Mackenzie sardonically. "They are evidently respecters of persons!"
"But----"
Forrester's voice ceased. The door had swung open, and there entered two small black men, almost wholly naked, with the uncouth bodies, hideous features, and coarse woolly hair of the wild pigmy races. Each carried a large bowl, one containing water, the other a sticky mess resembling porridge, and three spoons. Through the open doorway, in a brighter greenish light, the prisoners descried a group of similar negroes, armed with short spears and knives, like the dwarfs of the procession. The two food-bearers laid down the bowls and went out silently, the door swung to, a bolt grated in its sockets, and the prisoners were again alone.
Forrester bent over the larger bowl, smelling its contents.
"D'you think it's poisoned?" he asked.
"No, no," replied Mackenzie. "They wouldn't keep us alive to poison us out of hand. I'm for having a go. We've had nothing to eat since noon."
He spooned up a quantity of the stuff and tasted it.
"Sticky but not bad: would be the better of a pinch of salt. Hunger is the best condiment; dip your spoons."
By the time they had finished their meal and emptied both the bowls the daylight had faded, and the window slit was black. Yet the greenish rays that pervaded the room were as strong as ever. They sat discussing the strange phenomenon. Mackenzie advanced the theory that the rock was phosphorescent, and Jackson claimed that he had disproved it when, after rubbing his hand on the warm floor, there was no emanation of light from his fingers. Presently, tired out, and lulled by the warm close air, they fell asleep.
They were awakened by finding themselves gently shaken. The door had been silently opened, and two visitors were in the room. The prisoners recognised them at once. They were the two Chinamen with whom they had unforgettable links.
"Arise!" said the lad in his hushed faltering tone. "Arise! The August and Venerable commands you to his presence."
"The August and Venerable isn't this one-armed villain after all," whispered Forrester. "We must go with them: there's no help for it."
They noticed that the one-armed man had changed his dress. He wore now a long, white, full-sleeved garment with a green girdle about his waist. He signed to them to precede him through the open doorway. On passing out into a vaulted corridor, which, like their room, seemed to have been hewn out of the solid rock, they found awaiting them an escort of a dozen little black men like those they had already seen, and similarly armed. They followed them through corridor after corridor, the floors of which sloped gradually upward, then into a kind of ante-chamber, and finally into a huge rectangular hall. The greenish light had grown stronger and stronger as they proceeded, and the hall was brilliantly illuminated, though the illumination had no visible source. Like diffused daylight, when the sun has gone down, it came apparently from no definite direction: it was everywhere.
At first the three white men took in no details of the scene before them. They were dazzled by the brightness, oppressed with a sense of mystery, an apprehension of they knew not what, the dead silence that prevailed. But when their first sensations had passed, they gazed about them with a tingling curiosity. The walls, glowing with the all-pervading greenish light, were decorated with Chinese designs. The predominant feature of the scheme was a figure which at first sight might have been mistaken for the conventional Chinese dragon; but, on closer examination, it seemed to the spectators to resemble more nearly the reconstruction of some prehistoric sea-monster, such as European zoologists have attempted on the basis of fossil discoveries. The figures were arranged in a regular order. Some were large, some small, but all were of the same type, and they were rendered more life-like, and at the same time more hideous, by the fact that their eyes glowed with a green light much more intense than the light that filled the hall itself.
Silent though it was, the hall was not unpeopled. Drawn up in two crescent ranks stood, motionless as statues, perhaps two hundred Chinamen, young and old. The cheeks of all alike were clean shaven, but there were differences between the first two ranks. The heads of those in the first were absolutely hairless: their scalps shone like balls of old polished ivory. They were clad in long sleeveless robes resembling ecclesiastical copes, white with an edging of gold, and a large blue monster, like those on the walls, ramping across the middle of the back. The men in the second row were moustachioed, and had a topknot of hair. Their principal garment was a full-sleeved tunic, white also, but without embroidery of any kind. It was among these that Wen Shih, the one-armed Chinaman, placed himself after leaving his young compatriot and the three Englishmen with their escort just inside the doorway.
The silent assembly faced a huge dais or throne at the farther end of the hall, rising six or eight feet from the floor. It was of Chinese design; the material of which it was made shone like gold; and its surface was marked with images of the symbolic monster, sculptured in high relief.
The Englishmen noticed that, immediately opposite the throne, there was a gap in the ranks of the company, eight or ten paces wide. Beyond this gap--that is, nearer to the end of the hall at which they had entered--stood a low pedestal, like the pedestal of a statue. But there was no statue upon it. Nor was the throne occupied. The eyes of the silent throng, indeed, appeared to be fixed on a doorway in the wall behind and above the throne. It was covered with a cream-coloured hanging of some rich material, ornamented with monsters embroidered in gold. From it to the rear of the throne a broad stairway led.
The hush of expectancy which brooded over the whole assembly seized upon the three strangers. Their fascinated eyes were drawn as by some magnetic attraction to the curtained doorway. Not one of them was tempted to speak: they were possessed by awe the same in kind as that which holds the worshippers in some vast cathedral.
Presently they became aware of a trembling in the air immediately above the throne, like that which is sometimes seen above the funnel of a locomotive engine at rest. By degrees a screen of mist, delicate as muslin, formed itself in front of the throne, the outlines of which became blurred and were finally blotted out altogether. There was a momentary rustle, like the breaking of surf upon a long shore; then the same deathly stillness; the Chinamen had bent forward simultaneously with the precision of trained soldiers, until their brows touched the floor. Of all the men in the hall, only the three Englishmen at the end stood upright upon their feet.
They gazed in mute amazement, tensely awaiting the explanation of this extraordinary scene. Presently they caught the gleam of gold through the shimmering screen; the mist slowly dispersed; the outlines of the throne were once more clear and distinct; and they thrilled as with an electric shock when they beheld, seated motionless upon the throne, a remarkable figure.
It was the figure of an old, old man, low in stature, bent and frail, but indued with a certain impressiveness and majesty. A long ivory-hued cope, stiff with gold, and emblazoned with purple monsters, descended to his feet, concealing a frame which the three spectators divined to be spare and emaciated. His head was covered with a towering head-dress like a bishop's mitre, but loftier, fantastically shaped, and gleaming with gold and jewels.
But the eyes of the beholders were drawn away from his gorgeous trappings to his countenance. Ivory pale, lined and wizened with great age, it was rendered strangely impressive by the eyes, which beamed with the lustre and brilliance of youth. His glance passed over the prostrate forms of the assembly, and fastened for one brief moment on the three straight figures at the end of the hall. Then in a clear bell-like voice, surprising in so old a man, he uttered one word. The men prostrate below him rose to their feet; there was a brief pause; then for the space of several minutes a sort of litany was chanted, the old man reciting a sentence, the others making responses in monotone. There was no gesture, no movement save the motions of their lips.
When the litany came to an end, at a word from the old man Wen Shih left his place in the second rank, and approached the Englishmen. He made them understand by signs that they were to accompany him to the foot of the throne. Moving as under a spell, they passed through the gap, scarcely conscious of the eyes of the men around, and halted a few paces from the seated patriarch. Wen Shih returned to his place. All was silent as the grave.
The old man gazed fixedly at them for a moment, and his searching look, bright as an eagle's, yet cold and paralysing, filled them with a chill foreboding. His lips moved, and in spite of themselves they started in amazement as they heard the first words that fell.
"What brings you striplings here?"