[image]A shaft of pale green light, blinding in its brilliance, shot up to the roof.The Chinaman, who was probably at the outset less nervously organised than they, and was certainly inured to the conditions, was carefully paying out the chain over the wheel, with its weighted plate, into a hole in the floor. As Forrester now perceived, the two chains were one, which was much longer than had appeared when it was coiled up. When it was stretched to its full length, it rose vertically from the slab to the bar, ran through hooks in this for a few feet, then descended perpendicularly over the wheel. The Chinaman drew back, and leant against the wall in the relaxed attitude of one waiting. To the Englishmen, in this overpowering atmosphere, the period of inaction seemed an hour: it was really about five minutes. Then the Chinaman approached the chain, taking care to remain as far as possible from the hole, and with careful deliberateness hauled it in, moving backward as he did so. Forrester waited with feverish impatience as it clinked inch by inch over the wheel. When at last the square plate came to the top, the Chinaman raised it until there was room for the slab to pass beneath it, and prevented it from slipping down over the wheel by hooking the chain to the wall, leaving, however, the greater part of the chain free.Then, with a quickness all the more surprising because of his slow movements hitherto, he rushed with bent head at the slab, gave it one vigorous push, and darted back to the wall, catching at the chain in time to prevent the slab from falling violently. When it was settled in its place, and the blinding glare was shut off, the old man sank on the floor as if to rest after tremendous exertions.At first Forrester felt a dull disappointment. Without a definite expectation, he had anticipated some striking phenomenon as the result of this elaborate performance. The plate, whose upper surface was towards him, seemed after its long descent to be exactly as it was before: there was no change in it, nor had it brought anything up from the pit into which it had been plunged. But after a few minutes had passed, the Chinaman turned it over, and Forrester was mildly surprised to perceive that the under surface had changed its colour. It was now greenish yellow, like the chain, the bar, and all the other parts of the machinery. In his half-dazed condition he did not suspect the extraordinary character of the transformation.The Chinaman having reversed the plate, fastened it again to the chain, and went through the same series of careful movements as before. During the second period of waiting, Forrester, prompted by his companion, followed with his eyes the vertical path of the shaft of light from the hole to the roof. He noticed there an aperture, corresponding in size to the hole. A little fine dust was falling from this aperture, like soot from a chimney, into and around the opening of the pit, the minute particles dancing and glistening like the motes in a sunbeam.When the plate came up the second time, its colour was the same on both sides. The Chinaman unhooked it, carried it across the cavern into the recess, and reappeared with a similar plate, dull and lustreless as the first had been.Beresford drew Forrester away, and hurried him back through the passage, saying nothing until they regained the larger cavern. Then he halted, clutched the lapels of Forrester's coat, and said:--"Well, what do you think of that?""I don't understand," Forrester replied, something in his companion's manner convicting him of stupidity.Beresford smiled."I don't wonder," he said. "You have seen what the alchemists from Trismegistus to Roger Bacon spent their lives in fruitless efforts to discover, and what Paracelsus would have given the world to see. You have seen lead transmuted into gold! That is the Old Man of the Mountain's secret. Come along to my particular nook: I will tell you all I know."CHAPTER XIIEXPLANATIONS AND DISCOVERIES"I wish I had my pipe," growled Beresford as Forrester sat beside him against the wall of the cavern. "Good cut-bar is wasted on the desiccated old anatomy up above. However! ... Redfern and I, as you know, had gone to Chinese Turkestan for a few months' excavating. You have heard of the sand-buried ruins of Khotan. No? Well, seven or eight hundred miles north-west of us, between the vast Taklamakan desert and the icy Kara-Kash ranges, there is an oasis, stretching some three hundred miles from east to west, known as the oasis of Khotan. You think of an oasis, I daresay, as a verdant, beautiful spot. Khotan is not that. There is verdure: the people grow crops; but a great part of the district is simply dust. During long periods of time the sand of the desert has swept across it, destroying, and yet preserving, cities that were once the flourishing centres of an advanced civilisation.... That smacks rather of the lecture room, I'm afraid. Lecturing is my shop, of course."Well, not to bore you, excavations have been going on at Khotan, bringing to light highly artistic objects--vases, frescoes, coins, ivories, and so on--which prove that it was long ago the seat of an Indian Buddhist civilisation. Redfern and I had looked forward to making some interesting finds, but we never dreamed of the one we did actually make. We were poking about in a heap of decomposed rubbish and humus, among fragments of pottery, bones of animals, chips of rotten wood, copper coins and what not, when I suddenly spotted a painted tablet like nothing we had yet come upon. I picked it up, and, scraping away at the accretions of siliceous matter that defaced it--my dear fellow, the mere thought of it sets me all of a jigget even now--under that layer, I say, I found a strip of paper about eight inches by three, torn at one corner, and covered with a few lines of writing in what we call cursive Central-Asian Brahmi."It was a beautiful specimen at least twelve hundred years old, and valuable enough on that account; but when I came to decipher it--if one can jump out of one's skin, I nearly did so. It was a letter, apparently from father to son, a sort of death-bed farewell, and it gave detailed directions for a journey to the far side of the Himalayas--that is to say, the southern side--to a spot where lead was transmuted into gold! Redfern pooh-poohed it, chanted 'Rowley, Powley, gammon and spinach' like a schoolboy, and when I ventured to suggest there might be something in it, was so rude that I reminded him of what I should have done twenty years ago if my fag had cheeked me. However, I was very patient, and after much persuasion I got him to agree to make a start for the place on the off chance that the story was something more than a fable."We set off with a miscellaneous crew of Turki natives, following the very explicit directions of the paper. But the country was so extraordinarily difficult, and the hardships of travel so great, that our escort deserted one after another. We replaced them where we could with fellows picked up en route, Tibetans most of them; but these too, when it came to crossing the passes of the Himalayas, funked it, and ultimately we were left with a single follower, a Tibetan, a regular brick of a fellow."I won't tell you what we went through; after all, we couldn't expect a walk over! Unluckily, the paper was torn at the corner, as I said, and I believe the missing portion described the exact locality of the spot we were making for. Without it we were at a loss, and wandered a few miles farther south than we ought to have done, until we fell in with some little forest people who told us about a mysterious region beyond a gigantic waterfall, which they were afraid to approach because of the Eye. That seemed promising! We made tracks for the fall, just as you did; we found the rift, marched up it, saw the canoes, and flattered ourselves that we should before long be in a position to verify or disprove the ancient legend."I led the way; our Tibetan came next; Redfern brought up the rear. We kept a good look-out, of course; but had no suspicion of danger until I heard the clang of the shutter behind me. They had dropped it a minute too soon. The Tibetan and I were shut in; Redfern was shut out; they hadn't seen him, fifty yards or so behind, round the bend. What followed was pretty much as you described your own experiences. I had just time to fire off my revolver in a way that Redfern would understand as a warning, before the gas overcame me. My Tibetan was already unconscious: I never saw him again."Next day they took me into the Temple, and I had a very interesting interview with the August and Venerable. As I told you, he did not turn on the Eye for my benefit; indeed, he was very courteous and suave, and I didn't pay much attention to his exposition of the Law of the Eye. It was only when I had committed the unpardonable offence of knocking down one of his priests, and he sent me down here, that I thought him anything but a plausible old humbug with ogreish tendencies."Prepared as I was, his little hypnotic tricks with the green eye had made no impression on me. The general atmosphere of mystery, and what I learned from the people on the plateau, convinced me that he was hiding some precious secret below stairs, and the sight of his golden throne made me suspect its nature. Never in my life was I better pleased than when they brought me down their subterranean stairs to learn wisdom! And I hadn't been here an hour before my suspicions became certainty. That Chinaman yonder will be engaged all day in letting lead plates down into the pit, and drawing them up pure gold. The plates are brought down from above: they explain the knocking you heard from the building near the old iniquity's pagoda. There is not a tool of any kind here: nothing but chopsticks, even, for eating our food; the lead is cut and hammered into plates above. The first day I was on the plateau I saw some of the prisoners staggering to that building under heavy loads. I conjecture that the Old Man has confederates somewhere outside, in China probably, who supply him at intervals with the lead, and receive the gold in return.""It sounds incredible," exclaimed Forrester, interrupting his companion for the first time."The word 'incredible' ought to be banished from our vocabulary," Beresford rejoined emphatically. "Nothing is incredible. They'd have said the same thing only thirty years ago about petrol engines, wireless telegraphy, and aeroplanes. I am convinced that the search for the Philosopher's Stone, which baffled the alchemists for hundreds of years, was not the absurdity we have been taught to regard it. In some far distant age, someone discovered that Nature herself turned the base into the precious metal; the fact was rumoured abroad, though the scene of the transmutation was never allowed to become known; and the alchemists wasted their lives in trying to do artificially what had already been done by natural process. Why, aren't our chemists at the present day groping in the same direction? Don't they tell us that all terrestrial things are merely forms of the same ultimate element, or manifestations of the same ultimate force? Doesn't every fresh discovery point that way?""But how is it done?""I don't know; the Old Man doesn't know; nobody knows. In that pit yonder, a hundred and fifty feet deep, as I calculate, there is a bed of some substance that possesses this marvellous property--call it radio-active if you like. It can't be radium, for the emanations of radium produce sores on the body, as you know, and these wretched Chinamen have no sores. Its effect, from what you tell me--and I confess your news astonished and appalled me--is far more terrible. Evidently exposure to its direct ray causes instant demolition--annihilation is not the word; dust remains. Proximity to it brings about a sapping of the will; you yourself felt that in your cell; I feel it too. In the cavern yonder the effect is intensified. This mysterious power causes the mind to decay and the body to wither. How old do you suppose that Chinaman is?""He looks about seventy.""He is twenty-eight! I don't know it from himself; he has no memory, cannot even tell you his name. But one of the others is his cousin--looks forty and is actually twenty-two. He has been here a year, taking his turn with the rest at the work; they have a day each. And there's a mystery about the whole organisation which at present I can't fathom. All the prisoners here engaged in the horrible work are young Chinamen of good family. I was told that on the plateau. Why does the old villain employ none but his own countrymen? I shall find out by and by; I haven't been here long enough to learn much; the poor wretches are so mentally abject that I have to go slowly with them. I do know this: that they are all brought in by priests of the second order. When one dies--their bodies are cast into the pit--he is immediately replaced by another. It seems that some of these priests are constantly prowling about the country, snatching up likely subjects here and there, some to recruit the labourers on the plateau, others for this diabolical work below. Your old Indian told me that every now and then a priest of the second order shaves his moustache and head, and enters the ranks of the first, after which he never goes into the world outside. It suggests that they are promoted after they have bagged a certain number of prisoners. How the priests are themselves recruited I don't know. They are all celibates; I suppose the Old Man has emissaries out proselytising. But these are all conjectures: I hope to find out a good deal more for certain before we get away.""You know how to get away, then?" Forrester asked eagerly."I haven't given it a thought!" was the placid answer. "I pin my faith to old Runnymede--Redfern, Ruddyweed, Runnymede; you twig the process?""But if he doesn't come?--if he is dead?" cried Forrester, too much concerned with actualities to be interested in the evolution of nicknames. "We can't get down to the rift, even if we escape from here like the negrito.""What negrito?""Didn't you know? One escaped the other day, got on to the plateau, and took refuge with the old zamindar. He was caught, and I believe it was he that we saw destroyed by the Eye.""Dear me! That is very remarkable. I hadn't the least idea escape was possible. We must discover how the little fellow managed it, though it's of minor importance beside other things we have to learn. For instance, knowing what we do of the tremendous destructive power of that mysterious substance below ground, how did old what's-his-name above contrive to imprison a portion of it in his mitre without atomising himself? Clearly there must besomethings that it doesn't affect--like that slab yonder.""Why, I remember! Look at this!" Forrester exclaimed, taking from his pocket the crumpled sheet which he had found so useful in his cell. Unfolding it, he went on: "It was given me by the Indian girl, who received it from the negrito. She said that it saved from the Eye. When I held it between my eyes and the monster on the wall I could scarcely see the glare. It was a godsend.""Marvels upon marvels!" cried Beresford, fingering the crackling sheet curiously. "We must look into this. But here comes dinner: we shall have plenty of time!"CHAPTER XIIIA DRY BONEThe dishes containing the midday meal were brought to the prisoners by the two negrito sentinels, who received them from the guard at the further end of the ledge. The food, abundant in quantity, consisted of a variety of Chinese viands, strange to the Englishmen's taste, but not unpalatable."The Old Man feeds us well," Beresford remarked, handling his chopsticks dexterously. "He doesn't want to hasten Nature's destructive work by starving us. Drinking-water, by the way, is got from a little stream that trickles into the lake just round the corner. I confess I shouldn't care to drink the water in which that antediluvian monster disports himself. We'll take a look at him presently--if we get a chance, for he appears to be rather shy: I suppose he feels hopelessly old-fashioned, or perhaps he has an aristocratic pride in his long descent, and scorns the company of such new creatures as mere men.""Why isn't the place more stuffy than it is?" Forrester asked. "Where does the air come from?""That puzzled me at first, but I discovered the other day that there is a constant current of air, slight, but quite perceptible, over the surface of the lake, through this cavern, and into a narrow cleft which I'll show you by and by. There must be a passage into the upper air. The temperature is rather too high to suit me; but the air is pure enough, and many of the dungeons in medieval castles were much worse places--barring the peculiarly oppressive effect of the stuff below.... You don't get on very well with your chopsticks. Like everything else, they require practice.""One thing I can't make out is why we are allowed such freedom. You seem to be at liberty to move about as you please, talk to the prisoners--you speak Chinese?""Yes, but only out of earshot of the priest in his sentry-box yonder. I don't want him to blab to the August and Venerable--not that it matters, perhaps. The explanation of our freedom is, of course, that it is only such freedom as birds have in a cage. The passage by which we came is barred by the guards. There are no tools or implements of any kind which could be used as weapons; in fact, there's nothing here but ourselves and a few bamboo rods yonder against the wall, which I fancy must be used for keeping the sentry-box in repair. It's rather dull work for the priest, sitting there all day alone and mum; a new fellow comes every day."After dinner Beresford led Forrester back to the transmuting cavern, and across it into a passage similar to that by which they had reached the spot. It was a cul-de-sac, except that at its further end there was a narrow cleft in the wall. The opening was barely a foot wide, and the sides were of solid rock. There were slight marks which seemed to indicate that at some time or other an attempt had been made to enlarge the opening by chipping; but the marks were very old, and it was clear that the task, if attempted, had been abandoned as hopeless. The cleft had a slight upward slope, but looking along it, Forrester saw no sign of daylight, nor did he hear any sound from the further end, which was not visible. They both agreed that no human being could possibly squeeze himself through so constricted a passage.Returning to the outer cavern, they went to the entrance and stepped on to the ledge outside. They peered across the gloomy lake, but failed to discover the monster whose image they had seen outlined on the wall."He is not at home to-day, evidently," said Beresford. "Well, we have exhausted the objects of interest: all that we can do for the rest of the day is to sit on our bunkers and 'tell sad stories of the death of kings' or anything else you like. Later on I'll tackle the prisoners again. I try to stir them up a bit and get them to talk, without much success so far except with Wing Wu and his cousin. They are so horribly depressed, poor wretches! By Jove! I do wish I had my pipe."It was impossible to gauge the passage of time. The successive days, as Beresford explained, were marked only by the arrival and departure of the guardian priests, and by the cessation from work of the man in the smaller cavern, who returned to his companions when a certain number of the leaden plates had been changed into gold. These were placed in charge of the priest on duty, who superintended their removal by the negritos when relieved next day.That night, Beresford found the two younger Chinamen a little more communicative than they had been before. Wing Wu, indeed, evinced much pleasure in meeting Forrester again, and talked to him with a certain eagerness in English. He was the eldest son of a mandarin, he explained, and had kept a few terms at Oxford. Wen Shih, who had passed with distinction the innumerable examinations inflicted on Chinese literati, had been for a few months his father's secretary. In some subtle fashion he had obtained a commanding influence over the young man. Always courteous and agreeable, he enjoyed the complete confidence of his master, and gradually Wing Wu found himself consulting the secretary in every circumstance of his life, however trivial, until he lost all independence of judgment and even of action. He was at Wen Shih's beck and call, did his behests even against his own will, and felt that Wen Shih dictated the words he uttered, and arranged his very thoughts."As I half suspected," said Beresford, who had been listening intently, "these peripatetic priests are accomplished hypnotists. Under hypnotic influence a susceptible subject will declare black white, swear that his own blood is ink, and imagine himself his own grandfather, or any other absurdity. Go on, please."Wing Wu explained that one day Wen Shih announced that he was going a journey, and that the lad was to accompany him. The command was obeyed unquestioningly. All the details of the journey were a blank to Wing Wu until the adventure with the elephant, which seemed to have shocked him temporarily into his right mind. Here Forrester took up the tale, describing the peculiar dazed sensation which both he and Jackson had experienced once or twice on the march."He was trying his powers on you, of course," said Beresford. "Your friend Jackson was the most susceptible of the three, Mackenzie the least. You may be sure Wen Shih gave a full account of his experiments to his august master, and I can imagine the old villain taking a fiendish delight in sapping away at Mackenzie, the toughest of you. I only wonder he didn't send Mackenzie down here. We'll see if Chung Tong can tell us any more."He addressed the cousin in Chinese, trying with infinite patience to allure his mind from the present circumstances to his past life. Chung Tong's story, such as it was, told haltingly, resembled Wing Wu's in almost every particular. He added a detail which Beresford seized on, keeping the man's wandering attention fixed on it as firmly as possible. It came out that for many years past there had occurred at intervals mysterious disappearances in his family. Young men in the twenties had left their homes suddenly, leaving no clue to their destination, and never returning."A light dawns!" cried Beresford, in unacademic excitement. "The Old Man must have a spite against this particular family, and wreaks it upon them by stealing away these youths, doing them to death in this fatal laboratory of his. But why?--why? What have they done to incur vengeance so horrible?"But no further information could be elicited from the prematurely aged young Chinaman. His enfeebled brain was exhausted by its unaccustomed groping into the past. Beresford did not press him, but worried the problem, as a dog worries a bone, for hours before he slept.Next morning, the priest whose spell of duty had concluded, after a brief conversation with his newly arrived colleague, signified that Beresford was to accompany him on his return to the upper quarters. Forrester shook when he understood."Must you go?" he implored, the scenes in the Temple appearing luridly before his mind's eye."I shall go," Beresford replied tranquilly. "Buck up, my dear fellow. The August and Venerable won't demolish me yet. I expect it's a little cat-and-mouse performance. What if I bell the cat!""At any rate do take the screen with you!""Not at all. I don't want to lose that. We haven't discovered its secret yet. If Ishouldn'tcome back--well, keep up your courage. Pin your faith to Redfern: I needn't say any more."Forrester wrung his hand, and watched him pass along the half ledge, across the crazy bridge, over the rest of the ledge and into the passage beyond. At the entrance Beresford turned and waved his hand, smiling with the serenity of a man whose mind is at ease.Two or three hours went by. Forrester paced up and down the cavern in uncontrollable agitation. The thought of losing this cheery companion was torture. He wondered with a carking anxiety what had happened to Mackenzie and Jackson--to Hamid Gul, too, the faithful servant whose little odd turns of phrase assumed almost a pathetic winningness as they recurred to his mind. But always his thoughts came back to Beresford; his imagination focussed that solitary figure confronting the cold, implacable personification of Fate on his golden throne.Many times he went to the entrance, not heeding, unheeded by, the mute effigy in the sentry-box, and gazed across the lake into the opening beyond. For what seemed an eternity no vision of the lithe sturdy form came to gladden his eyes. But on one of these occasions his anxious ear caught the dull tramp of many feet, and presently, at the head of a negrito escort, appeared Beresford himself."Back again!" he shouted, his strong voice rolling over the lake.Forrester met him at the entrance of the cave, and clasped his hand in a nervous grip.[image]Forrester met him at the entrance of the cave."I've had quite a good time," said Beresford, linking arms. "The Old Man has been puzzling his wicked old head over my tablet, and he'll puzzle till doomsday for me! He orated solemnly, of course, about the Law of the Eye, and very cleverly hinted, without actually saying so, that the Law demanded an exact translation of the Brahmi writing. I told him, quite politely, to go to Jericho. He, quite politely, regretted that I had made such a poor use of my opportunities of learning wisdom. A mischievous impulse seized me to give him a shock, so I let out a few home-truths--in Chinese! Believe me, he didn't turn a hair: I don't believe he has one to turn. He scored there, but on the whole I think we may consider it a drawn game. He recommended me to persevere in the pursuit of wisdom, wrapped himself in his mist-blanket, and no doubt crept back like a disappointed spider to his web."Beresford found next day, however, that the Old Man's politeness had its reverse side. When the new priest arrived, he signified that the Englishman was to do a day's work in the inner cavern."It's not meant in kindness," Beresford remarked to Forrester, "but I couldn't have wished for anything better. I shall work quicker than the Chinamen, and when my tale of bricks is complete I shall have a good part of the day to myself. Lend me that screen of yours, will you?"Forrester waited impatiently for the day to end. When Beresford returned, very white and tired, he said:--"I've something to tell you. Give me forty winks after supper and I'll be as fresh as a lark."A little later, in their quiet corner, Beresford began:--"That slab! I'm convinced that it's nothing but a sort of cement, made of the dust that has fallen from the roof, and that this screen is of the same material. I believe that the mysterious force from below, while it turns lead into gold, makes powder of all other substances exposed to its rays. This dust is no longer subject to its influence, and forms a shield against it. But for the dust, it would have bored a hole right through the roof to the upper air ages ago; but the coating of dust on the sides and roof of the cavity has preserved it. Of course, the slight earth tremors that are constantly occurring, unnoticed by us, shake down particles of the dust, and leave portions of the rock surface exposed to the action of the rays. So there's a very gradual process of eating away going on, and in course of time the rock above the cavern will be pierced clean through.""I see," said Forrester. "The force must have been in action for ages, so that it may be ages before the hole is made. Anyway, it doesn't matter to us.""I'm not so sure of that," returned Beresford quietly. "If we could only hasten the process, and get a ladder, we might pay our venerable host a surprise visit one of these days, for I'm pretty sure, thinking over the direction of the passages we came through on the way here, that we're almost directly under the Temple. That itself is underground, or it wouldn't glow with the green light; and you may be sure it's connected with the Old Man's pagoda. It would give me great joy to intrude upon his solitude, and see him in his bath, so to speak.""I'd rather give him a wide berth," said Forrester. "Anyhow, it doesn't seem possible.""We have no ladder, and certainly we can't emulate the Earth-shaker, and engineer a series of mild earthquakes expressly for our own convenience. Ah well! like the heathen, I daresay we imagine a vain thing. What's that line of Virgil?--animum pictura... you remember the passage; where Æneas is looking at the frescoes in Dido's palace, 'and with an empty picture feeds his mind.' Well, better feed the mind even on fancies than let it starve, like these poor Chinamen. And now for sleep."It became clear that the Old Man had set himself pitilessly to undermine Beresford's courage. Instead of taking his turn with the Chinamen in rotation at the enervating work in the inner cavern, Beresford was given the task every second day. Robust as he was, and endowed with great strength of will, the electric atmosphere wrought its devitalising effect on him, and Forrester, after a week, noticed with sickening dread that his eyes were less bright, his cheeks less rounded, his voice less resonant. An offer to replace him was rejected by the priest; Forrester wondered why he himself was being spared.The hours dragged very heavily while Beresford was absent at his work. Forrester had nothing to do. He roamed about the cavern, talked a little to Wing Wu, looked in at Beresford occasionally; but during the greater part of the day he had only his thoughts to occupy him. But it happened one day, as he passed the spot where the spare bamboo poles were laid, that an idea flashed into his mind. It seemed fantastic, probably impracticable; but it might at least be attempted: anything was better than this stagnant life in death.The success or failure of the scheme that had occurred to him depended on the accuracy of Beresford's theory that the dust formed by the action of the rays on the cavern roof protected the rock from further destruction. If this was correct, and the dust could be removed, exposing fresh surfaces, the piercing of the chimney could be accelerated far beyond its normal rate. With a sufficiently long pole the dust coating could be brought down during the intervals when the rays were shut off by the slab. Such a pole might be constructed from the bamboo rods.A difficulty arose from the fact that the cavern was never dark. It was always pervaded by the dim green light emanating from the walls. But the rods were partially screened by the sentry-box, and Forrester thought that in the dead of night, when the priest was asleep, and the negritos more or less drowsy, he might succeed in purloining the bamboo, and carrying it into the passage beyond the inner cavern.Without mentioning the matter to Beresford, he waited till all was quiet, then stole round the wall towards the rods, picked up as many as he could carry, and made his way undetected to the place determined on. Next night he removed a few more in the same way. Their disappearance had apparently not been noticed by the priest.The following day was Beresford's turn of duty. In the early morning, after the new priest had arrived, Forrester told his companion what he had done."Fiat experimentum!" cried Beresford delightedly. "I will tell you the result to-night. But not a word to Wing Wu. One of these days Wen Shih may occupy the sentry-box, and the poor lad will blab everything."As soon as he had completed the transmutation of the allotted number of plates, Beresford fitted two of the bamboo rods together telescopically, tied his coat by its sleeves to the end of the pole thus formed, and inserting this wad into the cavity, thoroughly scoured its roof. A considerable quantity of fine dust fell on to the slab and the floor around. He then raised the slab, allowing the rays to play on the roof for a longer time than when the leaden plates were sunk in the pit. This process he repeated again and again, heedless of his increasing weariness and a stupefying headache, until Forrester rushed in hurriedly to say that the priest, evidently surprised at his unusually prolonged absence, was coming towards the passage to seek its explanation. Beresford instantly untied his coat, donned it, while Forrester laid the pole in the recess; then, taking Forrester's arm, met the priest at the entrance, feigning a deeper exhaustion than he actually felt. The priests seldom entered the inner cavern; this man threw a casual glance around it, and followed the prisoners back to the outer cavern, suspecting nothing."It works!" Beresford whispered when he got to his customary place, and at once fell into a dead sleep.Later on, he told Forrester that the experiment had succeeded beyond his hope."As nearly as I could measure with the pole," he said, "the cavity is lengthened by at least a foot. The rays act with tremendous rapidity. In a few days, unless we are much deeper than I think, we shall have cut a hole right through to the level of the Temple floor.""But what then?" asked Forrester dejectedly. "I thought of it merely as giving us something to do--you are doing it all!--something that would buck you up if it proved your theory; but it will do us no good.""It will at least scare the Old Man. If we are careful, he will never suspect that we have anything to do with it. He may even think the place no longer safe for his old carcase, and decamp.""Leaving us to perish!""There's an old saw, 'Never go up to the chimney-pots to look for the rain.' We'll take things as they come. By the way, do you feel able to take a turn to-night, when all's quiet? The clink of the chain can't be heard here, and it will quicken the job.""I'll try," said Forrester at once. "I've felt mean ever since they put you on and left me out.""Thanks! One thing we must be very careful about: to brush away the dust to the sides of the cavern. We mustn't arouse suspicion. Will you do that before you leave? Don't work for more than an hour or two, as nearly as you can guess, and come away at once if you feel faint. Lay the pole against the wall of the farther passage; the Chinamen never go there, and thank goodness the priests are shy of the place, small blame to them!"The work thus begun was continued at every opportunity during the succeeding days and nights. The pole had to be lengthened by the addition of another rod: foot by foot the chimney was excavated, the width of it remaining uniform, corresponding to the shape of the hole in the floor.Every night before they slept the Englishmen talked over the progress made during the day."If we only had a ladder!" said Beresford once. "I agree with you: the mere cutting of the chimney will be an empty triumph. We shouldn't be properly constituted men if we didn't wish to profit by our energies. Every man who isn't a mug, as soon as he has conquered one difficulty, burns to tackle another. I've puzzled and puzzled, but I see no way whatever of using the chimney as a channel of escape.""Couldn't we make a ladder of bamboo?""Quite impossible! To begin with, there isn't enough of it; then, we have no tools. It is tantalising in the extreme.""There's this to be said. Even if we did break through, it would only be to find ourselves in the midst of our enemies. It would mean the Eye for both of us.""I have been wondering lately whether that wouldn't after all be better than to stay here much longer. Forrester, the Old Man has beaten me at last. If he sends for me again, I'm afraid I shall ignominiously cave in. It was one thing to pity those poor Chinamen when we had no real personal knowledge of what they were suffering. It is quite another to share it, to feel the steady sapping of one's vigour, the horrible blankness that comes over one's mind. I know for the first time in my life what it is to writhe in the clutches of Giant Despair."In his many blank moments, Forrester reflected in utter desolation of spirit on their desperate case. Ill and miserable as he himself felt, he dwelt, not on his own condition, but on the appalling change that was creeping over the once buoyant-hearted companion of his imprisonment. The cheeriness was gone. It was an effort now to Beresford to talk. The sickly hue induced by the greenish light had become on his countenance a ghastly pallor. His limbs shook, his gait was slow and stumbling, his once upright frame was beginning to stoop like that of an old man. On his days off duty he lay like a log, sleeping, or simply existing in apathy and listlessness. Was he to drift thus on a slow tide towards death?One night, Forrester was wearily laying the pole in its resting-place, when he heard a sudden click near by, such as might be caused by the fall of some hard substance on the floor. He looked down, but there was nothing on the smooth rock to account for the sound. In a moment it was followed by a second click, apparently a little nearer, and from the direction of the cleft in the wall. His curiosity thoroughly aroused, Forrester stooped and glanced in. The light in the cleft was dim, but after peering for a few seconds, he caught sight of a small object at a distance of perhaps ten or twelve feet away. He had not noticed it when looking into the cleft before, but that might merely have been because he was not expecting to see anything, nor indeed making a keen examination. But it seemed that the object must have moved; otherwise the click was scarcely explicable; and Forrester was sufficiently interested to wish to get hold of it. It was far beyond reach; the cleft was too narrow to admit his head and shoulders; but he could edge one of the shorter bamboo rods sideways into the hole, and then worry the object forward until he could grasp it.This was the work of less than a minute. To his intense mortification, the thing, when it came to hand, turned out to be nothing but a bone.He was on the point of throwing it back, when the idea struck him that the discovery might give a momentary fillip to Beresford's flagging spirits. So he slipped the bone into his pocket, and returned to the outer cavern.Next morning he accompanied Beresford, as he sometimes did, to the entrance of the transmuting chamber, and watched him commence his daily task. He had forgotten the incident of the night. But when the place was irradiated with the brilliant rays, he chanced to put his hand into his pocket, felt the bone, and drew it out, thinking now so little of it as to purpose casting it into the open pit. But as he turned it over in his hand, he caught sight of some thin white scratches upon it, at first sight irregular and fortuitous, but, at a second glance, forming, as it seemed to him, the initials of his name, R.F.Puzzled, and a little excited, he looked at it more carefully. It was not an old bone; a fragment of tendon, still supple, adhered to it. Examining it end-wise, he saw that the interior was filled with a fine substance that might be desiccated marrow. He shook it; some of the powdery contents fell to the floor. He knocked it against his boot, and almost shouted with amazement: for at his feet lay a tiny spill of paper, apparently rice paper, very tightly wound.[image]He shook it: some of the powdery contents fell to the floor.Hot now with excitement, he unrolled the paper with nervous fingers, and saw on it, in small characters written, as it seemed, with the fire-blackened end of a sharp stick, the words, "Give me my bone."CHAPTER XIVHEAD COOKMackenzie and Jackson, it will be remembered, had been removed from the Temple before Forrester, at the close of the scene with the Old Man. They were taken back to their separate cells, and locked in for the rest of the day. Jackson's nerves were shaken all to pieces; Mackenzie, whose robuster physique was less affected, was in desperate anxiety as to Forrester's fate. He spent a wretched day, a still more wretched night. By turning his back on the monster he managed to fend off the worst effects of the baleful eye; but the consciousness that it was there behind him with its unwinking glare intensified his distress. When morning came, and he was escorted again to the foot of the rock stairway, he welcomed the respite afforded by the prospect of a day in the open air, and hoped against hope that the Old Man had relented, and would allow Forrester to join him.Night brings counsel, and Mackenzie was a long-headed Scot. He had come to the decision that it would be sheer folly, after what had happened, to repeat his refusal to work on the plantations. The depressing influence of solitude and the mysterious light was no doubt relied on by the Old Man to bring his prisoners to a proper docility. Well, Mackenzie would assume that virtue, if he had it not, and he would advise his friends, if they came, to fall in with his own plan: to work with apparent resignation, though always alert to seize on any opportunity of escape that might offer itself.When he was handed a spade, therefore, by the priest who appeared to act as taskmaster, he accepted it, and set to work on the plot of ground assigned to him. But he took care not to ply his implement too energetically, stopping every now and again to mop his brow with his sleeve and to heave the sigh appropriate to a forced labourer.As the day wore on, and neither of his friends appeared, he feared the worst. Jackson's absence might easily be accounted for by a nervous breakdown natural to a man of his temperament; but Forrester would have come if he had been at liberty to do so, and it seemed only too likely that he had either been demolished by the Eye, or that he was still confined to his cell, or possibly condemned to some other punishment whose nature Mackenzie could not guess. At the close of the day he sought to relieve his suspense by addressing a question to the priest, but received only a stony stare. He could not tell whether the man understood him or not.Several days passed in the same dreary, hopeless fashion. Mackenzie kept away from the old zamindar, who, though his daughter had been restored to him, was visibly broken down by a haunting dread of calamities yet to come. He exchanged only a few words now and again with Sher Jang, fearing, in the one case as in the other, that closer intercourse with them might tend to their harm. But one morning he was as much delighted as surprised to see Jackson appear at the head of the stairway. He had been supported in the climb, practically pushed up, by one of the priests. The taming process was evidently regarded as successful. From that time the two friends remained constantly on the plateau, being given a small hut among the cluster nearest to the dwellings of the priests. It contained no furniture; their only bedding was a blanket apiece.In the fresh air, and under the bracing influence of Mackenzie's companionship, Jackson, in some degree, recovered tone. The two friends worked side by side. No check was placed on their association; it was evidently assumed that they were resigned to their lot, or at any rate too much dominated by their fears to give trouble. After the first day together they never spoke of Forrester: in their hearts they believed that they would see him no more.But they sometimes speculated on the fate of Hamid Gul. They had never seen him since they passed his unconscious body in the rift. It seemed monstrous that so humble a member of their party should have fallen a victim to the Old Man's malignity; yet they could only surmise that, whatever the reason might be, the man had been put out of the way.It was therefore with a joyous surprise that they saw him one day staggering across a field under a load of vegetables. Mackenzie called to him, but Hamid, though he must have heard the cry, pursued his way without so much as a turn of the head."There's a reason for that," said Mackenzie. "Hamid is no fool."Some hours later, when work had ceased, and all the slaves had returned to their huts, a dark form appeared in the open doorway of that which Mackenzie and Jackson shared."Where is Forrester sahib, please to say, sahibs?" came in a whisper from Hamid Gul."Come away in, man," cried Mackenzie, "--if it is safe.""It is right as rain, sahib," replied the Bengali. "Chinky jossers believe me a one-eyed ass. But Forrester sahib?""We don't know: we fear he is dead."Hamid's one eye and twisted features told rather of rage than of sorrow. He poured forth a torrent of abuse in his own tongue, invoking the direst curses on the heads of the oppressors, and the uttermost defilement of their graves."Where have you been all this time? What have they done to you?" asked Mackenzie."I am head cook and bottle-washer, sahib--may the sons of pigs boil everlastingly in oil! Hiked into kitchen, there I was, I having sung my praises quite a lot. For sake of self and master, I pocketed feelings and dignity and concocted that pilaff of lamb Forrester sahib was such nuts on. A bald-headed chap kept eye on me, and made me gobble a bit; then carried dish away, and told me in due course it was well. When he was gone, pig of Chinky cook put his nose out of joint and was exceedingly rude, saying many things in barbarous lingo of libellous nature.""But you don't understand Chinese!" Mackenzie interposed."Exactly, quite so, sahib; but he had a face! My sublime effort took the cake, sahibs. They offered me job on spot. Every day I made something fresh and bilious, and cook in office did not get look in. He lost his wool, sahibs, and one day set on me tooth and nails, and bald-head found us going at it hammer and tongs. Chinaman got bag, and I got crib."Hamid went on to explain that the fly in his ointment was his employer's want of trust. His work was always done under the eyes of a priest, and he had to taste of every dish before it was removed. He was disgusted, too, because he received neither money nor thanks. He had never learnt who it was that consumed his viands; the dishes always came back empty, and his unknown master had evidently a keen tooth for dainty fare.His quarters were a lean-to adjoining the kitchen. On the other side was the door through which the priest carried the dishes to and fro. Hamid had had the curiosity one day to follow the priest at a safe distance, but was brought up by a closed door. In the wall of the passage there was a grating which had given him the idea that his employer must be a man of great wealth, for the bars of it appeared to be of pure gold. Once, to avoid the trouble of carrying a pail of dirty water to the field on which it was usually poured, he had been on the point of emptying it through the grating; but the priest had come by at that moment, and had rebuked him with such violence, and used such alarming threats about the punishment of the Eye, that he had never ventured to save his labour again."Do you know anything about the punishment of the Eye?" Mackenzie asked."Devil a bit, sahib. My one optic is only feature I have to boast of, and it goes without saying that I cannot afford to lose it."The Englishmen felt that Hamid had much to be thankful for. It was clear that he had no suspicion of the horrors of the place, and they saw no reason for enlightening him. The less his fear, the more useful he might be."Well, man, you had better not stop any longer," Mackenzie said. "And don't come here again: you may be spied on. But I wish you to keep your eyes open--your one is as good as two--and find out all you can. We are keen to get away; but we see no chance of it. Maybe you'll find out one of these days how they get down to the rift. Don't make any attempt to see us unless you have something important to communicate. We will always be on the look-out. You go into the fields sometimes. If we see you open and close your hand three times, we will know you have something to say, and we will find some way to hear you; but not here: it's maybe not safe.""Better warn him against the Old Man," Jackson suggested."Ah, true! Your cooking, Hamid, is done for the master of the place, a very old Chinaman. You may never see him; if you do, watch him carefully, and above all, never cross him. Now go, and mind yourself."In giving instructions to Hamid Gul, Mackenzie had no definite hope. The man, being practically confined to his kitchen when within doors, was not in a position to ascertain for himself the interior arrangements of the place; and his ignorance of any language but his own and English would prevent his understanding any conversation he might overhear among the Chinese. But he could be trusted to make the best use of such opportunities as might offer.Thinking over the little information that Hamid had been able to give, Mackenzie was struck with a suspicion. The grating!--was it not likely that here, as in European castles, there were dungeons beneath the floor of the principal chambers? Might not Forrester be immured underground, in a cellar to which the grating gave access? He wished he had thought of this when Hamid was with them, and enquired about the nature of the grating, and the size of the opening it covered. Why had the priest objected to its use as a sink? Not from any tenderness towards prisoners, if prisoners there were. Either there must be, below, some treasure of the Old Man which water might injure, or--and here Mackenzie felt some excitement--it was desired that the existence of the aperture should not be known to the prisoners.Impatient to question Hamid Gul, Mackenzie hoped every day to see him; but it was not until the third morning after his visit that the Bengali again appeared in the fields, with a basket slung on his back. He passed at some distance from the Englishmen, and they saw his left hand open and close three times. Looking around to make sure that no priest was on the watch, Mackenzie left his plot, struck off at an angle, and slipping round a plantation of tea shrubs, met Hamid in the enclosure where he was digging truffles.
[image]A shaft of pale green light, blinding in its brilliance, shot up to the roof.
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[image]
A shaft of pale green light, blinding in its brilliance, shot up to the roof.
The Chinaman, who was probably at the outset less nervously organised than they, and was certainly inured to the conditions, was carefully paying out the chain over the wheel, with its weighted plate, into a hole in the floor. As Forrester now perceived, the two chains were one, which was much longer than had appeared when it was coiled up. When it was stretched to its full length, it rose vertically from the slab to the bar, ran through hooks in this for a few feet, then descended perpendicularly over the wheel. The Chinaman drew back, and leant against the wall in the relaxed attitude of one waiting. To the Englishmen, in this overpowering atmosphere, the period of inaction seemed an hour: it was really about five minutes. Then the Chinaman approached the chain, taking care to remain as far as possible from the hole, and with careful deliberateness hauled it in, moving backward as he did so. Forrester waited with feverish impatience as it clinked inch by inch over the wheel. When at last the square plate came to the top, the Chinaman raised it until there was room for the slab to pass beneath it, and prevented it from slipping down over the wheel by hooking the chain to the wall, leaving, however, the greater part of the chain free.
Then, with a quickness all the more surprising because of his slow movements hitherto, he rushed with bent head at the slab, gave it one vigorous push, and darted back to the wall, catching at the chain in time to prevent the slab from falling violently. When it was settled in its place, and the blinding glare was shut off, the old man sank on the floor as if to rest after tremendous exertions.
At first Forrester felt a dull disappointment. Without a definite expectation, he had anticipated some striking phenomenon as the result of this elaborate performance. The plate, whose upper surface was towards him, seemed after its long descent to be exactly as it was before: there was no change in it, nor had it brought anything up from the pit into which it had been plunged. But after a few minutes had passed, the Chinaman turned it over, and Forrester was mildly surprised to perceive that the under surface had changed its colour. It was now greenish yellow, like the chain, the bar, and all the other parts of the machinery. In his half-dazed condition he did not suspect the extraordinary character of the transformation.
The Chinaman having reversed the plate, fastened it again to the chain, and went through the same series of careful movements as before. During the second period of waiting, Forrester, prompted by his companion, followed with his eyes the vertical path of the shaft of light from the hole to the roof. He noticed there an aperture, corresponding in size to the hole. A little fine dust was falling from this aperture, like soot from a chimney, into and around the opening of the pit, the minute particles dancing and glistening like the motes in a sunbeam.
When the plate came up the second time, its colour was the same on both sides. The Chinaman unhooked it, carried it across the cavern into the recess, and reappeared with a similar plate, dull and lustreless as the first had been.
Beresford drew Forrester away, and hurried him back through the passage, saying nothing until they regained the larger cavern. Then he halted, clutched the lapels of Forrester's coat, and said:--
"Well, what do you think of that?"
"I don't understand," Forrester replied, something in his companion's manner convicting him of stupidity.
Beresford smiled.
"I don't wonder," he said. "You have seen what the alchemists from Trismegistus to Roger Bacon spent their lives in fruitless efforts to discover, and what Paracelsus would have given the world to see. You have seen lead transmuted into gold! That is the Old Man of the Mountain's secret. Come along to my particular nook: I will tell you all I know."
CHAPTER XII
EXPLANATIONS AND DISCOVERIES
"I wish I had my pipe," growled Beresford as Forrester sat beside him against the wall of the cavern. "Good cut-bar is wasted on the desiccated old anatomy up above. However! ... Redfern and I, as you know, had gone to Chinese Turkestan for a few months' excavating. You have heard of the sand-buried ruins of Khotan. No? Well, seven or eight hundred miles north-west of us, between the vast Taklamakan desert and the icy Kara-Kash ranges, there is an oasis, stretching some three hundred miles from east to west, known as the oasis of Khotan. You think of an oasis, I daresay, as a verdant, beautiful spot. Khotan is not that. There is verdure: the people grow crops; but a great part of the district is simply dust. During long periods of time the sand of the desert has swept across it, destroying, and yet preserving, cities that were once the flourishing centres of an advanced civilisation.... That smacks rather of the lecture room, I'm afraid. Lecturing is my shop, of course.
"Well, not to bore you, excavations have been going on at Khotan, bringing to light highly artistic objects--vases, frescoes, coins, ivories, and so on--which prove that it was long ago the seat of an Indian Buddhist civilisation. Redfern and I had looked forward to making some interesting finds, but we never dreamed of the one we did actually make. We were poking about in a heap of decomposed rubbish and humus, among fragments of pottery, bones of animals, chips of rotten wood, copper coins and what not, when I suddenly spotted a painted tablet like nothing we had yet come upon. I picked it up, and, scraping away at the accretions of siliceous matter that defaced it--my dear fellow, the mere thought of it sets me all of a jigget even now--under that layer, I say, I found a strip of paper about eight inches by three, torn at one corner, and covered with a few lines of writing in what we call cursive Central-Asian Brahmi.
"It was a beautiful specimen at least twelve hundred years old, and valuable enough on that account; but when I came to decipher it--if one can jump out of one's skin, I nearly did so. It was a letter, apparently from father to son, a sort of death-bed farewell, and it gave detailed directions for a journey to the far side of the Himalayas--that is to say, the southern side--to a spot where lead was transmuted into gold! Redfern pooh-poohed it, chanted 'Rowley, Powley, gammon and spinach' like a schoolboy, and when I ventured to suggest there might be something in it, was so rude that I reminded him of what I should have done twenty years ago if my fag had cheeked me. However, I was very patient, and after much persuasion I got him to agree to make a start for the place on the off chance that the story was something more than a fable.
"We set off with a miscellaneous crew of Turki natives, following the very explicit directions of the paper. But the country was so extraordinarily difficult, and the hardships of travel so great, that our escort deserted one after another. We replaced them where we could with fellows picked up en route, Tibetans most of them; but these too, when it came to crossing the passes of the Himalayas, funked it, and ultimately we were left with a single follower, a Tibetan, a regular brick of a fellow.
"I won't tell you what we went through; after all, we couldn't expect a walk over! Unluckily, the paper was torn at the corner, as I said, and I believe the missing portion described the exact locality of the spot we were making for. Without it we were at a loss, and wandered a few miles farther south than we ought to have done, until we fell in with some little forest people who told us about a mysterious region beyond a gigantic waterfall, which they were afraid to approach because of the Eye. That seemed promising! We made tracks for the fall, just as you did; we found the rift, marched up it, saw the canoes, and flattered ourselves that we should before long be in a position to verify or disprove the ancient legend.
"I led the way; our Tibetan came next; Redfern brought up the rear. We kept a good look-out, of course; but had no suspicion of danger until I heard the clang of the shutter behind me. They had dropped it a minute too soon. The Tibetan and I were shut in; Redfern was shut out; they hadn't seen him, fifty yards or so behind, round the bend. What followed was pretty much as you described your own experiences. I had just time to fire off my revolver in a way that Redfern would understand as a warning, before the gas overcame me. My Tibetan was already unconscious: I never saw him again.
"Next day they took me into the Temple, and I had a very interesting interview with the August and Venerable. As I told you, he did not turn on the Eye for my benefit; indeed, he was very courteous and suave, and I didn't pay much attention to his exposition of the Law of the Eye. It was only when I had committed the unpardonable offence of knocking down one of his priests, and he sent me down here, that I thought him anything but a plausible old humbug with ogreish tendencies.
"Prepared as I was, his little hypnotic tricks with the green eye had made no impression on me. The general atmosphere of mystery, and what I learned from the people on the plateau, convinced me that he was hiding some precious secret below stairs, and the sight of his golden throne made me suspect its nature. Never in my life was I better pleased than when they brought me down their subterranean stairs to learn wisdom! And I hadn't been here an hour before my suspicions became certainty. That Chinaman yonder will be engaged all day in letting lead plates down into the pit, and drawing them up pure gold. The plates are brought down from above: they explain the knocking you heard from the building near the old iniquity's pagoda. There is not a tool of any kind here: nothing but chopsticks, even, for eating our food; the lead is cut and hammered into plates above. The first day I was on the plateau I saw some of the prisoners staggering to that building under heavy loads. I conjecture that the Old Man has confederates somewhere outside, in China probably, who supply him at intervals with the lead, and receive the gold in return."
"It sounds incredible," exclaimed Forrester, interrupting his companion for the first time.
"The word 'incredible' ought to be banished from our vocabulary," Beresford rejoined emphatically. "Nothing is incredible. They'd have said the same thing only thirty years ago about petrol engines, wireless telegraphy, and aeroplanes. I am convinced that the search for the Philosopher's Stone, which baffled the alchemists for hundreds of years, was not the absurdity we have been taught to regard it. In some far distant age, someone discovered that Nature herself turned the base into the precious metal; the fact was rumoured abroad, though the scene of the transmutation was never allowed to become known; and the alchemists wasted their lives in trying to do artificially what had already been done by natural process. Why, aren't our chemists at the present day groping in the same direction? Don't they tell us that all terrestrial things are merely forms of the same ultimate element, or manifestations of the same ultimate force? Doesn't every fresh discovery point that way?"
"But how is it done?"
"I don't know; the Old Man doesn't know; nobody knows. In that pit yonder, a hundred and fifty feet deep, as I calculate, there is a bed of some substance that possesses this marvellous property--call it radio-active if you like. It can't be radium, for the emanations of radium produce sores on the body, as you know, and these wretched Chinamen have no sores. Its effect, from what you tell me--and I confess your news astonished and appalled me--is far more terrible. Evidently exposure to its direct ray causes instant demolition--annihilation is not the word; dust remains. Proximity to it brings about a sapping of the will; you yourself felt that in your cell; I feel it too. In the cavern yonder the effect is intensified. This mysterious power causes the mind to decay and the body to wither. How old do you suppose that Chinaman is?"
"He looks about seventy."
"He is twenty-eight! I don't know it from himself; he has no memory, cannot even tell you his name. But one of the others is his cousin--looks forty and is actually twenty-two. He has been here a year, taking his turn with the rest at the work; they have a day each. And there's a mystery about the whole organisation which at present I can't fathom. All the prisoners here engaged in the horrible work are young Chinamen of good family. I was told that on the plateau. Why does the old villain employ none but his own countrymen? I shall find out by and by; I haven't been here long enough to learn much; the poor wretches are so mentally abject that I have to go slowly with them. I do know this: that they are all brought in by priests of the second order. When one dies--their bodies are cast into the pit--he is immediately replaced by another. It seems that some of these priests are constantly prowling about the country, snatching up likely subjects here and there, some to recruit the labourers on the plateau, others for this diabolical work below. Your old Indian told me that every now and then a priest of the second order shaves his moustache and head, and enters the ranks of the first, after which he never goes into the world outside. It suggests that they are promoted after they have bagged a certain number of prisoners. How the priests are themselves recruited I don't know. They are all celibates; I suppose the Old Man has emissaries out proselytising. But these are all conjectures: I hope to find out a good deal more for certain before we get away."
"You know how to get away, then?" Forrester asked eagerly.
"I haven't given it a thought!" was the placid answer. "I pin my faith to old Runnymede--Redfern, Ruddyweed, Runnymede; you twig the process?"
"But if he doesn't come?--if he is dead?" cried Forrester, too much concerned with actualities to be interested in the evolution of nicknames. "We can't get down to the rift, even if we escape from here like the negrito."
"What negrito?"
"Didn't you know? One escaped the other day, got on to the plateau, and took refuge with the old zamindar. He was caught, and I believe it was he that we saw destroyed by the Eye."
"Dear me! That is very remarkable. I hadn't the least idea escape was possible. We must discover how the little fellow managed it, though it's of minor importance beside other things we have to learn. For instance, knowing what we do of the tremendous destructive power of that mysterious substance below ground, how did old what's-his-name above contrive to imprison a portion of it in his mitre without atomising himself? Clearly there must besomethings that it doesn't affect--like that slab yonder."
"Why, I remember! Look at this!" Forrester exclaimed, taking from his pocket the crumpled sheet which he had found so useful in his cell. Unfolding it, he went on: "It was given me by the Indian girl, who received it from the negrito. She said that it saved from the Eye. When I held it between my eyes and the monster on the wall I could scarcely see the glare. It was a godsend."
"Marvels upon marvels!" cried Beresford, fingering the crackling sheet curiously. "We must look into this. But here comes dinner: we shall have plenty of time!"
CHAPTER XIII
A DRY BONE
The dishes containing the midday meal were brought to the prisoners by the two negrito sentinels, who received them from the guard at the further end of the ledge. The food, abundant in quantity, consisted of a variety of Chinese viands, strange to the Englishmen's taste, but not unpalatable.
"The Old Man feeds us well," Beresford remarked, handling his chopsticks dexterously. "He doesn't want to hasten Nature's destructive work by starving us. Drinking-water, by the way, is got from a little stream that trickles into the lake just round the corner. I confess I shouldn't care to drink the water in which that antediluvian monster disports himself. We'll take a look at him presently--if we get a chance, for he appears to be rather shy: I suppose he feels hopelessly old-fashioned, or perhaps he has an aristocratic pride in his long descent, and scorns the company of such new creatures as mere men."
"Why isn't the place more stuffy than it is?" Forrester asked. "Where does the air come from?"
"That puzzled me at first, but I discovered the other day that there is a constant current of air, slight, but quite perceptible, over the surface of the lake, through this cavern, and into a narrow cleft which I'll show you by and by. There must be a passage into the upper air. The temperature is rather too high to suit me; but the air is pure enough, and many of the dungeons in medieval castles were much worse places--barring the peculiarly oppressive effect of the stuff below.... You don't get on very well with your chopsticks. Like everything else, they require practice."
"One thing I can't make out is why we are allowed such freedom. You seem to be at liberty to move about as you please, talk to the prisoners--you speak Chinese?"
"Yes, but only out of earshot of the priest in his sentry-box yonder. I don't want him to blab to the August and Venerable--not that it matters, perhaps. The explanation of our freedom is, of course, that it is only such freedom as birds have in a cage. The passage by which we came is barred by the guards. There are no tools or implements of any kind which could be used as weapons; in fact, there's nothing here but ourselves and a few bamboo rods yonder against the wall, which I fancy must be used for keeping the sentry-box in repair. It's rather dull work for the priest, sitting there all day alone and mum; a new fellow comes every day."
After dinner Beresford led Forrester back to the transmuting cavern, and across it into a passage similar to that by which they had reached the spot. It was a cul-de-sac, except that at its further end there was a narrow cleft in the wall. The opening was barely a foot wide, and the sides were of solid rock. There were slight marks which seemed to indicate that at some time or other an attempt had been made to enlarge the opening by chipping; but the marks were very old, and it was clear that the task, if attempted, had been abandoned as hopeless. The cleft had a slight upward slope, but looking along it, Forrester saw no sign of daylight, nor did he hear any sound from the further end, which was not visible. They both agreed that no human being could possibly squeeze himself through so constricted a passage.
Returning to the outer cavern, they went to the entrance and stepped on to the ledge outside. They peered across the gloomy lake, but failed to discover the monster whose image they had seen outlined on the wall.
"He is not at home to-day, evidently," said Beresford. "Well, we have exhausted the objects of interest: all that we can do for the rest of the day is to sit on our bunkers and 'tell sad stories of the death of kings' or anything else you like. Later on I'll tackle the prisoners again. I try to stir them up a bit and get them to talk, without much success so far except with Wing Wu and his cousin. They are so horribly depressed, poor wretches! By Jove! I do wish I had my pipe."
It was impossible to gauge the passage of time. The successive days, as Beresford explained, were marked only by the arrival and departure of the guardian priests, and by the cessation from work of the man in the smaller cavern, who returned to his companions when a certain number of the leaden plates had been changed into gold. These were placed in charge of the priest on duty, who superintended their removal by the negritos when relieved next day.
That night, Beresford found the two younger Chinamen a little more communicative than they had been before. Wing Wu, indeed, evinced much pleasure in meeting Forrester again, and talked to him with a certain eagerness in English. He was the eldest son of a mandarin, he explained, and had kept a few terms at Oxford. Wen Shih, who had passed with distinction the innumerable examinations inflicted on Chinese literati, had been for a few months his father's secretary. In some subtle fashion he had obtained a commanding influence over the young man. Always courteous and agreeable, he enjoyed the complete confidence of his master, and gradually Wing Wu found himself consulting the secretary in every circumstance of his life, however trivial, until he lost all independence of judgment and even of action. He was at Wen Shih's beck and call, did his behests even against his own will, and felt that Wen Shih dictated the words he uttered, and arranged his very thoughts.
"As I half suspected," said Beresford, who had been listening intently, "these peripatetic priests are accomplished hypnotists. Under hypnotic influence a susceptible subject will declare black white, swear that his own blood is ink, and imagine himself his own grandfather, or any other absurdity. Go on, please."
Wing Wu explained that one day Wen Shih announced that he was going a journey, and that the lad was to accompany him. The command was obeyed unquestioningly. All the details of the journey were a blank to Wing Wu until the adventure with the elephant, which seemed to have shocked him temporarily into his right mind. Here Forrester took up the tale, describing the peculiar dazed sensation which both he and Jackson had experienced once or twice on the march.
"He was trying his powers on you, of course," said Beresford. "Your friend Jackson was the most susceptible of the three, Mackenzie the least. You may be sure Wen Shih gave a full account of his experiments to his august master, and I can imagine the old villain taking a fiendish delight in sapping away at Mackenzie, the toughest of you. I only wonder he didn't send Mackenzie down here. We'll see if Chung Tong can tell us any more."
He addressed the cousin in Chinese, trying with infinite patience to allure his mind from the present circumstances to his past life. Chung Tong's story, such as it was, told haltingly, resembled Wing Wu's in almost every particular. He added a detail which Beresford seized on, keeping the man's wandering attention fixed on it as firmly as possible. It came out that for many years past there had occurred at intervals mysterious disappearances in his family. Young men in the twenties had left their homes suddenly, leaving no clue to their destination, and never returning.
"A light dawns!" cried Beresford, in unacademic excitement. "The Old Man must have a spite against this particular family, and wreaks it upon them by stealing away these youths, doing them to death in this fatal laboratory of his. But why?--why? What have they done to incur vengeance so horrible?"
But no further information could be elicited from the prematurely aged young Chinaman. His enfeebled brain was exhausted by its unaccustomed groping into the past. Beresford did not press him, but worried the problem, as a dog worries a bone, for hours before he slept.
Next morning, the priest whose spell of duty had concluded, after a brief conversation with his newly arrived colleague, signified that Beresford was to accompany him on his return to the upper quarters. Forrester shook when he understood.
"Must you go?" he implored, the scenes in the Temple appearing luridly before his mind's eye.
"I shall go," Beresford replied tranquilly. "Buck up, my dear fellow. The August and Venerable won't demolish me yet. I expect it's a little cat-and-mouse performance. What if I bell the cat!"
"At any rate do take the screen with you!"
"Not at all. I don't want to lose that. We haven't discovered its secret yet. If Ishouldn'tcome back--well, keep up your courage. Pin your faith to Redfern: I needn't say any more."
Forrester wrung his hand, and watched him pass along the half ledge, across the crazy bridge, over the rest of the ledge and into the passage beyond. At the entrance Beresford turned and waved his hand, smiling with the serenity of a man whose mind is at ease.
Two or three hours went by. Forrester paced up and down the cavern in uncontrollable agitation. The thought of losing this cheery companion was torture. He wondered with a carking anxiety what had happened to Mackenzie and Jackson--to Hamid Gul, too, the faithful servant whose little odd turns of phrase assumed almost a pathetic winningness as they recurred to his mind. But always his thoughts came back to Beresford; his imagination focussed that solitary figure confronting the cold, implacable personification of Fate on his golden throne.
Many times he went to the entrance, not heeding, unheeded by, the mute effigy in the sentry-box, and gazed across the lake into the opening beyond. For what seemed an eternity no vision of the lithe sturdy form came to gladden his eyes. But on one of these occasions his anxious ear caught the dull tramp of many feet, and presently, at the head of a negrito escort, appeared Beresford himself.
"Back again!" he shouted, his strong voice rolling over the lake.
Forrester met him at the entrance of the cave, and clasped his hand in a nervous grip.
[image]Forrester met him at the entrance of the cave.
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Forrester met him at the entrance of the cave.
"I've had quite a good time," said Beresford, linking arms. "The Old Man has been puzzling his wicked old head over my tablet, and he'll puzzle till doomsday for me! He orated solemnly, of course, about the Law of the Eye, and very cleverly hinted, without actually saying so, that the Law demanded an exact translation of the Brahmi writing. I told him, quite politely, to go to Jericho. He, quite politely, regretted that I had made such a poor use of my opportunities of learning wisdom. A mischievous impulse seized me to give him a shock, so I let out a few home-truths--in Chinese! Believe me, he didn't turn a hair: I don't believe he has one to turn. He scored there, but on the whole I think we may consider it a drawn game. He recommended me to persevere in the pursuit of wisdom, wrapped himself in his mist-blanket, and no doubt crept back like a disappointed spider to his web."
Beresford found next day, however, that the Old Man's politeness had its reverse side. When the new priest arrived, he signified that the Englishman was to do a day's work in the inner cavern.
"It's not meant in kindness," Beresford remarked to Forrester, "but I couldn't have wished for anything better. I shall work quicker than the Chinamen, and when my tale of bricks is complete I shall have a good part of the day to myself. Lend me that screen of yours, will you?"
Forrester waited impatiently for the day to end. When Beresford returned, very white and tired, he said:--
"I've something to tell you. Give me forty winks after supper and I'll be as fresh as a lark."
A little later, in their quiet corner, Beresford began:--
"That slab! I'm convinced that it's nothing but a sort of cement, made of the dust that has fallen from the roof, and that this screen is of the same material. I believe that the mysterious force from below, while it turns lead into gold, makes powder of all other substances exposed to its rays. This dust is no longer subject to its influence, and forms a shield against it. But for the dust, it would have bored a hole right through the roof to the upper air ages ago; but the coating of dust on the sides and roof of the cavity has preserved it. Of course, the slight earth tremors that are constantly occurring, unnoticed by us, shake down particles of the dust, and leave portions of the rock surface exposed to the action of the rays. So there's a very gradual process of eating away going on, and in course of time the rock above the cavern will be pierced clean through."
"I see," said Forrester. "The force must have been in action for ages, so that it may be ages before the hole is made. Anyway, it doesn't matter to us."
"I'm not so sure of that," returned Beresford quietly. "If we could only hasten the process, and get a ladder, we might pay our venerable host a surprise visit one of these days, for I'm pretty sure, thinking over the direction of the passages we came through on the way here, that we're almost directly under the Temple. That itself is underground, or it wouldn't glow with the green light; and you may be sure it's connected with the Old Man's pagoda. It would give me great joy to intrude upon his solitude, and see him in his bath, so to speak."
"I'd rather give him a wide berth," said Forrester. "Anyhow, it doesn't seem possible."
"We have no ladder, and certainly we can't emulate the Earth-shaker, and engineer a series of mild earthquakes expressly for our own convenience. Ah well! like the heathen, I daresay we imagine a vain thing. What's that line of Virgil?--animum pictura... you remember the passage; where Æneas is looking at the frescoes in Dido's palace, 'and with an empty picture feeds his mind.' Well, better feed the mind even on fancies than let it starve, like these poor Chinamen. And now for sleep."
It became clear that the Old Man had set himself pitilessly to undermine Beresford's courage. Instead of taking his turn with the Chinamen in rotation at the enervating work in the inner cavern, Beresford was given the task every second day. Robust as he was, and endowed with great strength of will, the electric atmosphere wrought its devitalising effect on him, and Forrester, after a week, noticed with sickening dread that his eyes were less bright, his cheeks less rounded, his voice less resonant. An offer to replace him was rejected by the priest; Forrester wondered why he himself was being spared.
The hours dragged very heavily while Beresford was absent at his work. Forrester had nothing to do. He roamed about the cavern, talked a little to Wing Wu, looked in at Beresford occasionally; but during the greater part of the day he had only his thoughts to occupy him. But it happened one day, as he passed the spot where the spare bamboo poles were laid, that an idea flashed into his mind. It seemed fantastic, probably impracticable; but it might at least be attempted: anything was better than this stagnant life in death.
The success or failure of the scheme that had occurred to him depended on the accuracy of Beresford's theory that the dust formed by the action of the rays on the cavern roof protected the rock from further destruction. If this was correct, and the dust could be removed, exposing fresh surfaces, the piercing of the chimney could be accelerated far beyond its normal rate. With a sufficiently long pole the dust coating could be brought down during the intervals when the rays were shut off by the slab. Such a pole might be constructed from the bamboo rods.
A difficulty arose from the fact that the cavern was never dark. It was always pervaded by the dim green light emanating from the walls. But the rods were partially screened by the sentry-box, and Forrester thought that in the dead of night, when the priest was asleep, and the negritos more or less drowsy, he might succeed in purloining the bamboo, and carrying it into the passage beyond the inner cavern.
Without mentioning the matter to Beresford, he waited till all was quiet, then stole round the wall towards the rods, picked up as many as he could carry, and made his way undetected to the place determined on. Next night he removed a few more in the same way. Their disappearance had apparently not been noticed by the priest.
The following day was Beresford's turn of duty. In the early morning, after the new priest had arrived, Forrester told his companion what he had done.
"Fiat experimentum!" cried Beresford delightedly. "I will tell you the result to-night. But not a word to Wing Wu. One of these days Wen Shih may occupy the sentry-box, and the poor lad will blab everything."
As soon as he had completed the transmutation of the allotted number of plates, Beresford fitted two of the bamboo rods together telescopically, tied his coat by its sleeves to the end of the pole thus formed, and inserting this wad into the cavity, thoroughly scoured its roof. A considerable quantity of fine dust fell on to the slab and the floor around. He then raised the slab, allowing the rays to play on the roof for a longer time than when the leaden plates were sunk in the pit. This process he repeated again and again, heedless of his increasing weariness and a stupefying headache, until Forrester rushed in hurriedly to say that the priest, evidently surprised at his unusually prolonged absence, was coming towards the passage to seek its explanation. Beresford instantly untied his coat, donned it, while Forrester laid the pole in the recess; then, taking Forrester's arm, met the priest at the entrance, feigning a deeper exhaustion than he actually felt. The priests seldom entered the inner cavern; this man threw a casual glance around it, and followed the prisoners back to the outer cavern, suspecting nothing.
"It works!" Beresford whispered when he got to his customary place, and at once fell into a dead sleep.
Later on, he told Forrester that the experiment had succeeded beyond his hope.
"As nearly as I could measure with the pole," he said, "the cavity is lengthened by at least a foot. The rays act with tremendous rapidity. In a few days, unless we are much deeper than I think, we shall have cut a hole right through to the level of the Temple floor."
"But what then?" asked Forrester dejectedly. "I thought of it merely as giving us something to do--you are doing it all!--something that would buck you up if it proved your theory; but it will do us no good."
"It will at least scare the Old Man. If we are careful, he will never suspect that we have anything to do with it. He may even think the place no longer safe for his old carcase, and decamp."
"Leaving us to perish!"
"There's an old saw, 'Never go up to the chimney-pots to look for the rain.' We'll take things as they come. By the way, do you feel able to take a turn to-night, when all's quiet? The clink of the chain can't be heard here, and it will quicken the job."
"I'll try," said Forrester at once. "I've felt mean ever since they put you on and left me out."
"Thanks! One thing we must be very careful about: to brush away the dust to the sides of the cavern. We mustn't arouse suspicion. Will you do that before you leave? Don't work for more than an hour or two, as nearly as you can guess, and come away at once if you feel faint. Lay the pole against the wall of the farther passage; the Chinamen never go there, and thank goodness the priests are shy of the place, small blame to them!"
The work thus begun was continued at every opportunity during the succeeding days and nights. The pole had to be lengthened by the addition of another rod: foot by foot the chimney was excavated, the width of it remaining uniform, corresponding to the shape of the hole in the floor.
Every night before they slept the Englishmen talked over the progress made during the day.
"If we only had a ladder!" said Beresford once. "I agree with you: the mere cutting of the chimney will be an empty triumph. We shouldn't be properly constituted men if we didn't wish to profit by our energies. Every man who isn't a mug, as soon as he has conquered one difficulty, burns to tackle another. I've puzzled and puzzled, but I see no way whatever of using the chimney as a channel of escape."
"Couldn't we make a ladder of bamboo?"
"Quite impossible! To begin with, there isn't enough of it; then, we have no tools. It is tantalising in the extreme."
"There's this to be said. Even if we did break through, it would only be to find ourselves in the midst of our enemies. It would mean the Eye for both of us."
"I have been wondering lately whether that wouldn't after all be better than to stay here much longer. Forrester, the Old Man has beaten me at last. If he sends for me again, I'm afraid I shall ignominiously cave in. It was one thing to pity those poor Chinamen when we had no real personal knowledge of what they were suffering. It is quite another to share it, to feel the steady sapping of one's vigour, the horrible blankness that comes over one's mind. I know for the first time in my life what it is to writhe in the clutches of Giant Despair."
In his many blank moments, Forrester reflected in utter desolation of spirit on their desperate case. Ill and miserable as he himself felt, he dwelt, not on his own condition, but on the appalling change that was creeping over the once buoyant-hearted companion of his imprisonment. The cheeriness was gone. It was an effort now to Beresford to talk. The sickly hue induced by the greenish light had become on his countenance a ghastly pallor. His limbs shook, his gait was slow and stumbling, his once upright frame was beginning to stoop like that of an old man. On his days off duty he lay like a log, sleeping, or simply existing in apathy and listlessness. Was he to drift thus on a slow tide towards death?
One night, Forrester was wearily laying the pole in its resting-place, when he heard a sudden click near by, such as might be caused by the fall of some hard substance on the floor. He looked down, but there was nothing on the smooth rock to account for the sound. In a moment it was followed by a second click, apparently a little nearer, and from the direction of the cleft in the wall. His curiosity thoroughly aroused, Forrester stooped and glanced in. The light in the cleft was dim, but after peering for a few seconds, he caught sight of a small object at a distance of perhaps ten or twelve feet away. He had not noticed it when looking into the cleft before, but that might merely have been because he was not expecting to see anything, nor indeed making a keen examination. But it seemed that the object must have moved; otherwise the click was scarcely explicable; and Forrester was sufficiently interested to wish to get hold of it. It was far beyond reach; the cleft was too narrow to admit his head and shoulders; but he could edge one of the shorter bamboo rods sideways into the hole, and then worry the object forward until he could grasp it.
This was the work of less than a minute. To his intense mortification, the thing, when it came to hand, turned out to be nothing but a bone.
He was on the point of throwing it back, when the idea struck him that the discovery might give a momentary fillip to Beresford's flagging spirits. So he slipped the bone into his pocket, and returned to the outer cavern.
Next morning he accompanied Beresford, as he sometimes did, to the entrance of the transmuting chamber, and watched him commence his daily task. He had forgotten the incident of the night. But when the place was irradiated with the brilliant rays, he chanced to put his hand into his pocket, felt the bone, and drew it out, thinking now so little of it as to purpose casting it into the open pit. But as he turned it over in his hand, he caught sight of some thin white scratches upon it, at first sight irregular and fortuitous, but, at a second glance, forming, as it seemed to him, the initials of his name, R.F.
Puzzled, and a little excited, he looked at it more carefully. It was not an old bone; a fragment of tendon, still supple, adhered to it. Examining it end-wise, he saw that the interior was filled with a fine substance that might be desiccated marrow. He shook it; some of the powdery contents fell to the floor. He knocked it against his boot, and almost shouted with amazement: for at his feet lay a tiny spill of paper, apparently rice paper, very tightly wound.
[image]He shook it: some of the powdery contents fell to the floor.
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He shook it: some of the powdery contents fell to the floor.
Hot now with excitement, he unrolled the paper with nervous fingers, and saw on it, in small characters written, as it seemed, with the fire-blackened end of a sharp stick, the words, "Give me my bone."
CHAPTER XIV
HEAD COOK
Mackenzie and Jackson, it will be remembered, had been removed from the Temple before Forrester, at the close of the scene with the Old Man. They were taken back to their separate cells, and locked in for the rest of the day. Jackson's nerves were shaken all to pieces; Mackenzie, whose robuster physique was less affected, was in desperate anxiety as to Forrester's fate. He spent a wretched day, a still more wretched night. By turning his back on the monster he managed to fend off the worst effects of the baleful eye; but the consciousness that it was there behind him with its unwinking glare intensified his distress. When morning came, and he was escorted again to the foot of the rock stairway, he welcomed the respite afforded by the prospect of a day in the open air, and hoped against hope that the Old Man had relented, and would allow Forrester to join him.
Night brings counsel, and Mackenzie was a long-headed Scot. He had come to the decision that it would be sheer folly, after what had happened, to repeat his refusal to work on the plantations. The depressing influence of solitude and the mysterious light was no doubt relied on by the Old Man to bring his prisoners to a proper docility. Well, Mackenzie would assume that virtue, if he had it not, and he would advise his friends, if they came, to fall in with his own plan: to work with apparent resignation, though always alert to seize on any opportunity of escape that might offer itself.
When he was handed a spade, therefore, by the priest who appeared to act as taskmaster, he accepted it, and set to work on the plot of ground assigned to him. But he took care not to ply his implement too energetically, stopping every now and again to mop his brow with his sleeve and to heave the sigh appropriate to a forced labourer.
As the day wore on, and neither of his friends appeared, he feared the worst. Jackson's absence might easily be accounted for by a nervous breakdown natural to a man of his temperament; but Forrester would have come if he had been at liberty to do so, and it seemed only too likely that he had either been demolished by the Eye, or that he was still confined to his cell, or possibly condemned to some other punishment whose nature Mackenzie could not guess. At the close of the day he sought to relieve his suspense by addressing a question to the priest, but received only a stony stare. He could not tell whether the man understood him or not.
Several days passed in the same dreary, hopeless fashion. Mackenzie kept away from the old zamindar, who, though his daughter had been restored to him, was visibly broken down by a haunting dread of calamities yet to come. He exchanged only a few words now and again with Sher Jang, fearing, in the one case as in the other, that closer intercourse with them might tend to their harm. But one morning he was as much delighted as surprised to see Jackson appear at the head of the stairway. He had been supported in the climb, practically pushed up, by one of the priests. The taming process was evidently regarded as successful. From that time the two friends remained constantly on the plateau, being given a small hut among the cluster nearest to the dwellings of the priests. It contained no furniture; their only bedding was a blanket apiece.
In the fresh air, and under the bracing influence of Mackenzie's companionship, Jackson, in some degree, recovered tone. The two friends worked side by side. No check was placed on their association; it was evidently assumed that they were resigned to their lot, or at any rate too much dominated by their fears to give trouble. After the first day together they never spoke of Forrester: in their hearts they believed that they would see him no more.
But they sometimes speculated on the fate of Hamid Gul. They had never seen him since they passed his unconscious body in the rift. It seemed monstrous that so humble a member of their party should have fallen a victim to the Old Man's malignity; yet they could only surmise that, whatever the reason might be, the man had been put out of the way.
It was therefore with a joyous surprise that they saw him one day staggering across a field under a load of vegetables. Mackenzie called to him, but Hamid, though he must have heard the cry, pursued his way without so much as a turn of the head.
"There's a reason for that," said Mackenzie. "Hamid is no fool."
Some hours later, when work had ceased, and all the slaves had returned to their huts, a dark form appeared in the open doorway of that which Mackenzie and Jackson shared.
"Where is Forrester sahib, please to say, sahibs?" came in a whisper from Hamid Gul.
"Come away in, man," cried Mackenzie, "--if it is safe."
"It is right as rain, sahib," replied the Bengali. "Chinky jossers believe me a one-eyed ass. But Forrester sahib?"
"We don't know: we fear he is dead."
Hamid's one eye and twisted features told rather of rage than of sorrow. He poured forth a torrent of abuse in his own tongue, invoking the direst curses on the heads of the oppressors, and the uttermost defilement of their graves.
"Where have you been all this time? What have they done to you?" asked Mackenzie.
"I am head cook and bottle-washer, sahib--may the sons of pigs boil everlastingly in oil! Hiked into kitchen, there I was, I having sung my praises quite a lot. For sake of self and master, I pocketed feelings and dignity and concocted that pilaff of lamb Forrester sahib was such nuts on. A bald-headed chap kept eye on me, and made me gobble a bit; then carried dish away, and told me in due course it was well. When he was gone, pig of Chinky cook put his nose out of joint and was exceedingly rude, saying many things in barbarous lingo of libellous nature."
"But you don't understand Chinese!" Mackenzie interposed.
"Exactly, quite so, sahib; but he had a face! My sublime effort took the cake, sahibs. They offered me job on spot. Every day I made something fresh and bilious, and cook in office did not get look in. He lost his wool, sahibs, and one day set on me tooth and nails, and bald-head found us going at it hammer and tongs. Chinaman got bag, and I got crib."
Hamid went on to explain that the fly in his ointment was his employer's want of trust. His work was always done under the eyes of a priest, and he had to taste of every dish before it was removed. He was disgusted, too, because he received neither money nor thanks. He had never learnt who it was that consumed his viands; the dishes always came back empty, and his unknown master had evidently a keen tooth for dainty fare.
His quarters were a lean-to adjoining the kitchen. On the other side was the door through which the priest carried the dishes to and fro. Hamid had had the curiosity one day to follow the priest at a safe distance, but was brought up by a closed door. In the wall of the passage there was a grating which had given him the idea that his employer must be a man of great wealth, for the bars of it appeared to be of pure gold. Once, to avoid the trouble of carrying a pail of dirty water to the field on which it was usually poured, he had been on the point of emptying it through the grating; but the priest had come by at that moment, and had rebuked him with such violence, and used such alarming threats about the punishment of the Eye, that he had never ventured to save his labour again.
"Do you know anything about the punishment of the Eye?" Mackenzie asked.
"Devil a bit, sahib. My one optic is only feature I have to boast of, and it goes without saying that I cannot afford to lose it."
The Englishmen felt that Hamid had much to be thankful for. It was clear that he had no suspicion of the horrors of the place, and they saw no reason for enlightening him. The less his fear, the more useful he might be.
"Well, man, you had better not stop any longer," Mackenzie said. "And don't come here again: you may be spied on. But I wish you to keep your eyes open--your one is as good as two--and find out all you can. We are keen to get away; but we see no chance of it. Maybe you'll find out one of these days how they get down to the rift. Don't make any attempt to see us unless you have something important to communicate. We will always be on the look-out. You go into the fields sometimes. If we see you open and close your hand three times, we will know you have something to say, and we will find some way to hear you; but not here: it's maybe not safe."
"Better warn him against the Old Man," Jackson suggested.
"Ah, true! Your cooking, Hamid, is done for the master of the place, a very old Chinaman. You may never see him; if you do, watch him carefully, and above all, never cross him. Now go, and mind yourself."
In giving instructions to Hamid Gul, Mackenzie had no definite hope. The man, being practically confined to his kitchen when within doors, was not in a position to ascertain for himself the interior arrangements of the place; and his ignorance of any language but his own and English would prevent his understanding any conversation he might overhear among the Chinese. But he could be trusted to make the best use of such opportunities as might offer.
Thinking over the little information that Hamid had been able to give, Mackenzie was struck with a suspicion. The grating!--was it not likely that here, as in European castles, there were dungeons beneath the floor of the principal chambers? Might not Forrester be immured underground, in a cellar to which the grating gave access? He wished he had thought of this when Hamid was with them, and enquired about the nature of the grating, and the size of the opening it covered. Why had the priest objected to its use as a sink? Not from any tenderness towards prisoners, if prisoners there were. Either there must be, below, some treasure of the Old Man which water might injure, or--and here Mackenzie felt some excitement--it was desired that the existence of the aperture should not be known to the prisoners.
Impatient to question Hamid Gul, Mackenzie hoped every day to see him; but it was not until the third morning after his visit that the Bengali again appeared in the fields, with a basket slung on his back. He passed at some distance from the Englishmen, and they saw his left hand open and close three times. Looking around to make sure that no priest was on the watch, Mackenzie left his plot, struck off at an angle, and slipping round a plantation of tea shrubs, met Hamid in the enclosure where he was digging truffles.