.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 40751
   :PG.Title: The Old Man of the Mountain
   :PG.Released: 2012-09-13
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Herbert Strang
   :MARCREL.ill: Cyrus Cuneo
   :MARCREL.ill: René Bull
   :DC.Title: The Old Man of the Mountain
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1916
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

===========================
THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
===========================

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   .. _`Cover`:

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      Cover

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   .. _`"STOP! STOP!" HE CRIED, RAISING HIS HANDS ALOFT`:

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      :alt: "STOP! STOP!" HE CRIED, RAISING HIS HANDS ALOFT. 

      "STOP! STOP!" HE CRIED, RAISING HIS HANDS ALOFT. *See page* `154`_.

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      THE OLD MAN
      OF THE MOUNTAIN

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      BY

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      HERBERT STRANG

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      *FRONTISPIECE IN COLOUR BY CYRUS CUNEO*
      *BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS BY RENÉ BULL*

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      LONDON
      HENRY FROWDE
      HODDER AND STOUGHTON

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      *First printed in 1916*

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      PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD.,
      BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

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      CONTENTS

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      CHAPTER I

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      `OUT OF THE NIGHT`_


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      CHAPTER II

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      `A COUNCIL OF WAR`_


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      CHAPTER III

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      `THE REFUGEES`_


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      CHAPTER IV

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      `MORE MYSTERY`_


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      CHAPTER V

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      `THE EYE`_


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      CHAPTER VI

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      `THE IRON SHUTTER`_


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      CHAPTER VII

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      `EUTHANASIA`_


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      CHAPTER VIII

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      `THE LAW OF THE EYE`_


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      CHAPTER IX

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      `THE MONSTER ON THE WALL`_


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      CHAPTER X

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      `THE UNDERWORLD`_


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      CHAPTER XI

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      `ALCHEMY`_


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      CHAPTER XII

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      `EXPLANATIONS AND DISCOVERIES`_


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      CHAPTER XIII

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      `A DRY BONE`_


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      CHAPTER XIV

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      `HEAD COOK`_


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      CHAPTER XV

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      `THE MOLES`_


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      CHAPTER XVI

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      `THE HOLE IN THE WALL`_


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      CHAPTER XVII

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      `THE CARNIVORE`_


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      CHAPTER XVIII

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      `UNDER THE STARS`_


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      CHAPTER XIX

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      `THE FIGHT IN THE PAGODA`_


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      CHAPTER XX

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      `BURSTING THE BONDS`_


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      CHAPTER XXI

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      `DOOM`_



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   LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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   *COLOUR FRONTISPIECE BY CYRUS CUNEO*

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   `"STOP! STOP!" HE CRIED, RAISING HIS HANDS
   ALOFT`_ (See p. `154`_)    *Frontispiece*


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   LINE DRAWINGS BY RENÉ BULL

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   `THE MAN DANGLED A FOUR-INCH CENTIPEDE BEFORE
   HIS EYES.  "IT HAD CHEEK TO CRAWL UP
   HONOURABLE BACK!" HE SAID`_

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   `AS THEY APPROACHED, THE MAN TRIED TO RISE,
   UTTERED A FAINT CRY, THEN FELL FORWARD WITH A MOAN`_

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   `THE TERRIFIED CHINAMAN RACED UP THE HILL, THE
   ELEPHANT, SCREAMING SHRILLY, CLOSE BEHIND
   HIM.  FORRESTER THREW UP HIS RIFLE AND
   FIRED, BUT ON THAT TOUGH HIDE THE BULLET
   HAD NO EFFECT`_

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   `AS THE OLD MAN WAS LED FORWARD, THE NAGAS
   POINTED TO HIM WITH WILD EXCITEMENT,
   CONTINUALLY EXCLAIMING, "THE EYE!  THE EYE!"`_

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   `THE FLAME GLINTED FOR A MOMENT ON A DARK
   FACE PEERING DOWN UPON THEM OVER THE
   TOP OF THE SHUTTER`_

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   `A FEW YARDS AWAY, THEY CAME UPON HAMID GUL,
   LYING WITH RELAXED LIMBS ON THE GROUND`_

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   `HIS LIPS MOVED, AND IN SPITE OF THEMSELVES
   THEY STARTED AS THEY HEARD HIS FIRST
   WORDS: "WHAT BRINGS YOU STRIPLINGS HERE?"`_

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   `"IT SAVES FROM THE EYE, SAHIB"`_

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   `THE MUTE IMMOBILE FIGURE MERELY RAISED AN ARM
   AND POINTED DOWNWARDS AT THE STAIRWAY`_

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   `A SHAFT OF PALE GREEN LIGHT, BLINDING IN ITS
   BRILLIANCE, SHOT UP TO THE ROOF`_

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   `FORRESTER MET HIM AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE CAVE`_

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   `HE SHOOK IT: SOME OF THE POWDERY CONTENTS
   FELL TO THE FLOOR`_

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   `MACKENZIE MET HAMID IN THE ENCLOSURE WHERE
   HE WAS DIGGING TRUFFLES`_

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   `ON LIFTING HIMSELF, HE SAW HAMID CROUCHING
   BENEATH THE SHELTER OF THE EMBANKMENT`_

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   `THERE HE SAW THE PRIEST, PEERING UP TOWARDS
   THE HOLE IN WHICH THE LADDER RESTED`_

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   `A RUSH OF HOT BLOOD MADE HIM DIZZY, AND HE
   ALMOST SWOONED WHEN HE HEARD A WHISPER
   IN OLD MAC'S WELL-KNOWN VOICE`_

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   `HE SPRANG TO THE WALL, AND RAISED HIS SPEAR
   TO MEET THE EXPECTED ATTACK`_

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   `FORRESTER STOOD IN THE DOORWAY, IN FULL VIEW
   OF THE PRIESTS`_

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   `TAILPIECE`_





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.. _`OUT OF THE NIGHT`:

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   CHAPTER I


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   OUT OF THE NIGHT

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"Jolly good curry!" said Bob Jackson,
looking up over his spoon.  "What do you
say, Mac?"

"Ay," responded Alan Mackenzie, in a
drawl.  He was a man of few words.

"Your Hamid is certainly a treasure of a
cook," Jackson went on.  "Has he done
you yet, Dick?"

"Probably, but I haven't found him out,
so it doesn't matter," answered Dick
Forrester, the third of the party.  "It shows
you!"

"What?" asked Mackenzie, who always
required statements in full.

"Why, you owl, that it's sometimes better
to rely on your instincts than on the advice
of kind busybodies.  When I came through
Calcutta, everybody advised me to wait till
I got up country before engaging a man, told
me the casuals of the Calcutta hotels were
sharks ready to prey on any griffin, and so
on.  But I came across Hamid, liked the
look of him----"

"You've a rummy taste in looks,"
interposed Jackson, with a laugh.  "What with
his crooked nose and his one eye, he can't
pass for a beauty."

"And that's a fact," said Mackenzie, solemnly.

"Well, anyway, I took him on, and that's
three years ago, and I've had no reason to regret it."

"He's a champion cook, at any rate," said Jackson.

"He is that," added Mackenzie, with emphasis.

At this moment the man in question
entered with the next course, and further
discussion of his qualities was impossible.

The three young fellows were taking their
evening meal in a tent pitched near the bank
of a stream some twenty miles north of
Dibrugarh on the Brahmaputra.  They were
almost the same age, Mackenzie, the eldest,
having recently completed his twenty-first
year.  Three years before, they had met as
strangers on the deck of the liner conveying
them to Calcutta, and had struck up one of
those shipboard friendships which seldom
last.  In their case it was otherwise.  All
three were learning tea-planting in Assam,
and, as the "gardens" on which they were
severally engaged were many miles apart,
their opportunities of foregathering were not
very frequent.  But they met as often as
they could for sport in the form of
snipe-shooting, boar-hunting, and other avocations
that diversify the monotony of a planter's
life, and they had become good comrades,
knit one to another closely by the bonds of
mutual trust and knowledge.

Three months' leave was now due to each
of them.  Forrester intended to go home:
the others had arranged to make an extended
tour in Northern India, and see Delhi,
Lahore, and other cities of old renown.
But it happened that, a few days before they
were to start, they heard that a tiger had
been doing mischief in a village some thirty
miles from their stations.  Fired by the
news, they got permission from their
managers to make a dash for the scene.
Elephants were out of the question.  They
made the journey on foot, with four coolies
to carry the baggage, Forrester's bearer,
Hamid Gul--the man whom he had picked
up in Calcutta, and who added to his many
accomplishments a considerable skill in
cooking--and a veteran shikari named Sher Jang,
whose services they had often employed in
their sporting expeditions.  Sher Jang, with
the aid of local talent, tracked the animal to
its haunt in the jungle; after a few crowded
moments it fell to the white men's guns;
and its skin, already stripped from the
carcase by the deft shikari, now lay stretched
on the sward near the tent.

"Excuse, sahib!" said Hamid Gul, as he
passed behind his master's chair after
handing round the cutlets.  He had been so long
accustomed to use English of a sort with
globe-trotters that he seldom spoke Hindustani
with his master, like the average native
servant.

"What is it?" asked Forrester.

The man's reply was to dangle a four-inch
centipede before his eyes.

"It had cheek to crawl up honourable
back, sahib," he explained.

.. _`The man dangled a four-inch centipede before his eyes.  "It had cheek to crawl up honourable back!" he said`:

.. figure:: images/img-012.jpg
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   :alt: The man dangled a four-inch centipede before his eyes.  "It had cheek to crawl up honourable back!" he said.

   The man dangled a four-inch centipede before his eyes.  "It had cheek to crawl up honourable back!" he said.

"Kill the beast!" said Forrester.

Hamid dropped the centipede, settled it
with his heel, and moved silently out of the tent.

"I can stand mosquitoes, but centipedes
make me squirm," said Forrester.  "If you
know any sound more horrid than the plop
of a centipede falling from the roof to the
floor, tell me."

"To me the drone of a mosquito is ten
times worse," said Jackson.  "Apparently
they don't like you, but they can never have
enough of me, the brutes!"

"Soft and sweet!" murmured Mackenzie.

"What's the tiger-skin worth, Dick?"
asked Jackson, ignoring the Scotsman's jibe.

"I don't know; but a goodish sum,
probably.  A man-eater's skin is usually
mangy, but old Sher says that this is in
good condition.  Look out, Bob!"

Jackson ducked his head, already warned
by a booming noise like the hum of an
aeroplane engine that a beetle had flown in
at the door.  They watched the insect
whirling about, until it came blindly in contact
with the tent pole, and fell to the ground.
There it lay on its back, spinning round and
round with ever-increasing uproar, until
Mackenzie picked it up, and flung it out--into
the face of Hamid, approaching with
the dessert.

The three men soon finished their meal,
and, taking their camp chairs, went out into
the open.  When they were seated, Hamid
came up with a brass salver filled with
glowing charcoal, and presented to each a
pair of small silver tongs with which to lift
a ruddy chip for lighting his pipe.  He
prided himself on keeping up old customs.
Then, with a good-night salaam, he passed
into the tent to clear away.

It was a glorious night.  The candlelight
from the open tent paled in the rays of the
moon, soaring aloft in a cloudless sky.  A
faint breeze stirred the feathery tops of the
jungle grass, and ruffled the glassy surface
of the rivulet.  From the distance came the
piercing lugubrious notes of bull frogs; the
air sang with the hum of innumerable
insects; ever and anon a bat flitted past like
a shadow.  At one side of the tent, on an
upturned tub, sat Sher Jang, the shikari,
smoking a long pipe, and gazing solemnly
into space.  A few yards away the coolies
squatted round their camp fire, replete from
their unaccustomed meal of tiger's meat,
which they had devoured in the joyous
belief that it would endue them with a
ferocious courage.

The white men puffed away in silence,
thinking over the day's sport, dreaming,
maybe, of the anticipated delights of the
approaching holiday.  Hamid noiselessly
finished his work, and then crouched with
his pipe on a mat by the tent, studiously
ignoring Sher Jang, as a cat ignores the
dog on the hearthrug.

Thus half an hour passed.  Then Mackenzie's
cutty dropped from his mouth, and
he snored.

"Hullo, Mac, it's time you turned in!"
said Forrester, shaking him by the arm.

"Ay," said Mackenzie, sleepily.  "Where's
my pipe?"

"At your feet."

The Scotsman picked it up, stood erect,
yawned, stretched himself, then suddenly
dropped his hands to his sides.

"What's yon?" he said.

His companions sprang up.  They, too,
had heard a rustling in the jungle close at
hand--a sound louder than the swish and
scrape of the grass in the breeze.  Sher Jang
came up to them silently, and handed them
their rifles.  They heard the sound again,
and stood in line, peering into the thicket
up-stream, their fingers on the triggers.

The rustle ceased.

"Is it a tiger?" Forrester whispered in
Hindustani to the shikari.

"No, sahib; tigers make no noise.  It
may be a bear."

"Or a native?" suggested Jackson.

"No, sahib; *badmashes* might prowl at
dawn, but not in the night.  I think it is a
bear."

The rustle recommenced, and drew nearer
and nearer.  The white men waited with
bated breath, ready to fire the instant the
beast showed itself.  Hamid had not moved;
he was no sportsman, and trusted the sahibs
to preserve him from harm.  The coolies had
run behind the tent.

Moment by moment the sound grew
louder.  Sher Jang gazed impassively into
the jungle; he was too old a hand to show
any feeling; but the young planters were
tingling with excitement, drew quick breaths,
and itched for action.  All at once the long
grass parted, and in the flicker of the
firelight they saw a form emerge.

"Great Scott!" ejaculated Forrester.

They lowered their rifles, and stood for
a moment in hesitation.  Then all three
hastened forward, wondering, alarmed.  The
form was that of a man, clothed in European
style.  But he was not walking erect, as men
walk.  He was creeping slowly, painfully, on
all fours.  Seeing them advancing towards
him, he uttered a faint cry and tried to rise,
only to fall forward with a moan.  They
came to him, and lifted him to his feet.

.. _`As they approached, the man tried to rise, uttered a faint cry, then fell forward with a moan`:

.. figure:: images/img-017.jpg
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   :alt: As they approached, the man tried to rise, uttered a faint cry, then fell forward with a moan.

   As they approached, the man tried to rise, uttered a faint cry, then fell forward with a moan.

"Pull--yourself--together--man!" he
murmured, brokenly.  "Pull--yourself--together!"

"What is it, sir?" asked Forrester, feeling
the man shiver in his sodden clothes.

"Hoots, man!" exclaimed Mackenzie,
"get him to the fire.  He's fair wandered."

Acting on this practical suggestion, they
led the stranger to the fire.  The shikari
meanwhile remained fixedly on guard, his
eyes never quitting the jungle, his ears alert
for further sounds.

"A blanket, Hamid!" Forrester shouted.

The man brought a blanket from the tent,
and in this they rolled the stranger, setting
him as close to the fire as they dared.
Mackenzie unscrewed a brandy flask, and
poured a little of the liquor between his lips.
He gasped and lay quite still, his eyes staring
without seeing.  Every now and then his
body twitched convulsively.

"The fever, sahib," said Hamid.

"A bad attack, too," said Forrester.
"Quick!  A rubber sheet, a pillow, and my
bottle of quinine."

In a few minutes the stranger had been
dosed with quinine and made comfortable.
As yet he was unable to talk.  Enveloped
in the blanket, only his face was now visible--the
face of a man about thirty-five, refined
of feature, with thick brown beard and
moustache, matted with damp and dirt.
The sun-tanned cheeks were sunken, the
eyes within their hollow sockets blazed with
the fire of fever.  They watched him
anxiously, their concern for his pitiable
condition mingled with curiosity.  How
came this man to be wandering alone and
unarmed in the jungle?

"Poor body!" muttered Mackenzie.
"Did you notice his hands?"

"They shook like a leaf," replied Jackson.

"Ay, but the blood!"

"Was there blood on them?"

"Ay, on the palms."

"Torn by thorns as he crawled along,"
said Forrester.  "He saw the glow of our
fire, no doubt, and staggered towards it;
you remember he said, 'Pull yourself
together!'  He has been pulling himself
together for days, by the look of him--and it
came to crawling at the last!  No sign of
pursuit, Sher?" he asked, as the shikari
came up.

"No, sahib, there is no sound."

"Give him another dose," said Mackenzie.

After the brandy and quinine had been
poured between the sick man's lips, his eyes
closed and he seemed to sleep.

"We must take turns to watch him
during the night," said Forrester, "and get
him to my bungalow as quickly as we can
to-morrow."

"If he's not away!" said Mackenzie,
gloomily.  "I'm no liking the looks of him."

"We'll hope for the best.  Malcolm has
pulled through many bad cases.  We'll dose
him every hour or so.  I'll take first watch;
you fellows turn in.  I'll call one of you in
three hours."

Soon the camp slept; only Forrester
remained awake.  He sat beside the invalid,
bending forward to catch any sign of change
upon the fever-flushed countenance.  He
rose once to replenish the fire, and once to
brush away a small beetle that was crawling
on the blanket.  The eerie wail of a jackal
broke in presently upon the lesser sounds of
the night; but that was so commonly heard
in Assam that Forrester scarcely noticed it.

In an hour he repeated the dose of
medicine, and started involuntarily when
the sick man, opening his eyes, uttered a name.

"Beresford!"

Feeble as his voice was, there was in it a
note of eagerness and relief.  For a moment
Forrester thought of encouraging the
delusion, but it flashed upon him that the man
might not have been alone after all.  Was
his companion lost in the jungle?  Leaning
forward, he said, quietly:--

"My name is not Beresford, it is Forrester."

At first the man appeared not to have
understood, but after a few moments a
look of dread gathered in his eyes, and he
struggled to get up.  Gently pressing him
down Forrester said, in slow, clear tones:--

"You are with friends.  You came
towards our light, you remember.  Won't
you lie still and collect yourself, and tell
me about it?  'Pull yourself together,' you
know?"

"Pull yourself together!" the man
repeated, like a child.

He lay back and closed his eyes, reopening
them presently and turning them upon the fire.

"A light!" he muttered, eagerly.  "My
last chance!  Pull yourself--ah! they've
got him!"  He shuddered, then with a
sudden lapse into partial consciousness, he
went on: "There's no time to lose.  They've
got him!  Don't you hear?  They've got
him!  The shutter!  I came on for help.
One company will do it; but hurry them, for
heaven's sake!  Take your hand off me,
you hound!"

Then followed a bewildering jumble of
Hindustani and a language of which
Forrester was ignorant.  Taking a cup,
Forrester hastened to the stream, filled it
with water, and, returning, bathed the
stranger's burning brow.  The raving ceased.
After a brief silence the weak voice again
spoke coherently, though the speaker, as the
words showed, did not realise his position.

"Don't wait for me.  In the hills--four
days; nights are better; you won't meet
men by night.  But march day and night;
there's no time to lose, I tell you."

"How shall we find the way?" asked
Forrester, in the quiet tone he had employed
before.

"I'll show you," said the man, eagerly,
trying again to rise.  "No, I'm dead beat,"
he added, falling back.  "I'll follow you up.
I made a jotting; you can't miss them.
What are you waiting for?"

"The paper.  Where is it?"

The man wriggled within the blanket, and
a look of agony distorted his face as he felt
his helplessness.

Forrester quickly loosed the wrappings.

"Which pocket?" he asked.

But a stream of incoherent babbling
poured from the exhausted man's lips.  He
lay passive as Forrester felt in his breast
pocket and drew forth a small leather case.
Opening it, Forrester discovered a folded
paper lying loose.  He spread it out, and
saw what at first seemed to be nothing but
a smudge.  But when he held the paper
nearer to the firelight, he distinguished a
design.  It was disappointing, puzzling.  A
pencil line slanted from the left-hand top
corner to the middle of the sheet, then
branched horizontally to the right.  The
pencil marks had rubbed and smudged in
the man's pocket, but looking at them
closely, Forrester made out a few words in
addition to the line.  At the angle he read
"Camel's Hump," at the end on the right,
"Monkey Face."  There was nothing more.





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.. _`A COUNCIL OF WAR`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   A COUNCIL OF WAR

.. vspace:: 2

Forrester sat musing on what he had
learnt from the sick man's broken phrases
and the scrap of paper.  It was little
enough.  The stranger's companion,
Beresford, had been captured, presumably by
natives, at a spot four days' march distant
in the hills.  His friend had come alone
over at least a hundred miles of wild country
to seek help.  The pencil line traced his
course; the names no doubt roughly
described conspicuous natural features that
would serve as landmarks on his return.
But who were the captors?  Where was
the place of durance?  What did he mean
by "the shutter"?  In what direction lay
the point on the route called "Monkey
Face"?  Without answers to these
questions it seemed to Forrester that nothing
could be attempted on behalf of the prisoner.

A glance at the invalid showed that he
was either asleep or fallen into a stupor.
Forrester rose, and paced to and fro, half
inclined to wake his friends before the
time.  The dismal hoot of an owl close at
hand, several times repeated, jarred his
nerves; by the natives the bird was
suspected of possessing the power to scent out
those about to die.  Though scouting such
superstitions, Forrester felt oppressed and
uneasy, so that it was with real relief he
heard, as he passed the tent, Mackenzie's
voice rasp out from the interior:--

"De'il take the fowl!"

"You're awake, Mac?" he said, putting
his head in.

"Who could sleep through yon soul-terrifying clamour?"

"Neither soft nor sweet," murmured
Jackson.  "How is he, Dick?"

"Asleep now, but he's been talking.  As
you're awake, get up, and I'll tell you."

Throwing rugs about them, they joined
him, and all three returned to the fire.
Forrester repeated the man's words, and
showed them the paper.

"He's not daft, think ye, with his camels
and monkeys?" said Mackenzie.

"He was sane enough when he drew this
diagram," Forrester replied.

They examined it in turn.

"I say, here's a word you've missed,"
said Jackson, suddenly.  "It's very faint,
and badly smudged.  I can hardly make
it out, but it's 'Falls,' isn't it?"

They scrutinised the paper eagerly in the
firelight.

"You're right," said Forrester.  "That's
his starting-point, by the look of it: some
waterfall or other."

The stranger's pocket-book was lying on
the ground where Forrester had placed it after
removing the paper.  Mackenzie picked it up.

"Don't you think we might?" he asked.

"It's the only way," said Jackson.  "Find
out who he is, and make inquiries about
him as soon as we get back."

Mackenzie opened the case.  From one
of its pockets he drew forth a roll of rouble
notes, from another a couple of letters
addressed to Captain Redfern at Peshawar,
and finally a small note-book.

"There's his name," said Forrester.  "The
note-book may help us."

He found, however, on opening this, that
the leaves contained nothing but jottings
of words and phrases in unfamiliar tongues,
with their English equivalents.  There was
no clue to his destination or the object of
his journey, no mention of his companion.

"We're not much forarder," said Forrester.
"The only thing to do is to get home as
quickly as possible to-morrow, and wire
through to Sadiya or Calcutta.  Somebody
will know something about him."

They talked for a few minutes longer;
then Forrester and Jackson returned to the
tent, leaving Mackenzie to take his spell of
watching.

The camp was astir early.  While the
coolies were packing up, and Hamid was
preparing breakfast, Forrester sent Sher
Jang to the village half a mile away to
enlist carriers for the sick man.  In an hour
the shikari returned with four lithe,
well-developed young Mishmis, whose only
clothing was a loin-cloth of bark and strips of
bamboo coiled about their arms and legs.
The villagers' gratitude for the destruction
of the man-eater disposed them to undertake
any service for their deliverers, especially when
that service was to be rewarded with pay.

After breakfast, a litter was quickly
constructed of a blanket and two bamboo
stalks cut from the border of the stream.
On this they placed Captain Redfern; he
was still unconscious, and neither spoke nor
stirred; and by eight o'clock the caravan
was in movement.

Their way led them through the village.
Here they waited to receive the thanks of
the head-man, who presented them with
a number of fowls in token of his gratitude.
A crowd of men gathered around the litter,
chattering excitedly in sing-song tones.  Sher
Jang presently drew Forrester aside.

"They talk of prisoners, sahib," he said
in a whisper.  "There are two strangers;
may one of them be the captain sahib's friend?"

"Ask the head-man," said Forrester, eagerly.

The shikari's question seemed to cause
the head-man some embarrassment.  At first
he denied that there was any truth in his
young men's gossip, but on Sher Jang's
insisting, with threats which Forrester would
hardly have countenanced, he confessed
that two strangers had indeed been brought
into the village the night before.  A party
of the villagers had been away on an
excursion some fifteen miles across the
Brahmaputra.  (He did not disclose the object of
the expedition, but the shikari guessed that
it was not unconnected with head hunting.)  They
were marching through the jungle
when suddenly they heard a rustle and hid
themselves.  Two men came in sight, not
naked Abors, as they had expected to see,
but strangers, clothed.  They had captured
them without difficulty, for the men bore
no weapons and one of them had lost his
right arm, and brought them back to the village.

"Where are they?" asked Forrester,
when Sher Jang repeated this story to him.

"In the *moshup*," the head-man replied,
pointing to a spacious building in the heart
of the village.  It was built on piles, the
walls and the sloping roof made of plantain
leaves laid one upon another like the tiles
of a European house.  There the affairs of
the community were discussed by day, and
the unmarried men slept at night.

"Let me see them," said Forrester, hoping
that by some strange coincidence Captain
Redfern's friend, having escaped from
captivity, had wandered in much the same
direction.

The head-man besought the sahib not to
be angry with him.  The presence of the
strangers was a trouble to him, for he did
not know what to do with them.  He could
not speak their speech, and he was afraid.
His young men ought not to have laid
hands on men who were clothed.  Forrester
cut short his apologies, promising that he
should suffer no harm; whereupon the
head-man sent a messenger to the building
aforesaid, to bring forth the prisoners.

The Englishmen awaited their coming
with mingled hope and anxiety.  By and by
two figures emerged from the building.

"Chinamen, by Jinks!" Jackson ejaculated.

Disappointed at the dashing of their
hopes, the three were no longer much
interested in the Mishmis' prisoners, through
whom their journey was being delayed.  But
they could not help remarking a certain
strangeness in the Chinamen's manner of
approach.  They did not hasten across the
open space with the eager gait of men to
whom had come sudden deliverance from
a terrible fate (for there was not much
doubt that the villagers would ultimately
have solved their dilemma by adding the
Chinamen's heads to their collection).  After
leaving the *moshup*, and perceiving the
unmistakable forms of Englishmen in the
distance, the two men halted and appeared
to consult together.  Then they advanced
slowly, one before the other, in the manner
of a shepherd driving a solitary sheep.

The first comer was a young man, well
grown, but curiously slack in his gait and
bearing.  His head hung forward a little;
his arms drooped limply at his sides; and
in his eyes, as he drew nearer, the Englishmen
discerned a languorous and sleepy expression.
The second man presented a striking
contrast.  His age was between fifty and
sixty, but he was upright as a dart; and his
features, his eyes, his whole mien bespoke
energy and determination.  The right sleeve
of his coat was empty, and lay pinned across
his breast.

Escorted by a noisy crowd of the villagers,
the Chinamen came up to the Englishmen,
and bowed in salutation.  Then, before
Forrester could utter a word, the younger
man began to speak in a breathless, jumpy
fashion, strangely unlike the stolidity which
is usually associated with the Chinese.

"We ask your assistance, gentlemen," he
said in good English; only his reedy tone,
the usual difficulty with the letter "r," and
a certain formality of phrase proclaimed
him a Chinaman.  "Being accused of
sedition we were on our way from Yunan to
Tibet with a small caravan; but a week
ago we were pursued by Government troops,
and with difficulty escaped, leaving our
men and stores behind us."

This was uttered rapidly, as if he were
repeating a lesson.  At the end of the
sentence he glanced timidly at the elder man,
who had stood the while gazing unswervingly
upon his companion.  In his eyes there was
a hard, metallic glitter, under which the
younger man appeared to droop.  Turning
again to the Englishmen he went on:--

"Driven from our course by the presence
of regular troops near the frontier, we
diverged to the south-west towards the
borders of Assam.  But when we were
making our way north-west again towards
Tibet, we fell into the hands of these people,
and we thank you very much for rescuing
us from our terrible plight."

"That's all right," said Forrester, with
the Englishman's usual anxiety to avoid any
display of feeling.  "Does your friend speak
English?"

"No," returned the man with a momentary
energy.  "I myself----"

He broke off suddenly, with a look of
apprehension at his companion, who had
not spoken, but whose eyes had never left
the young man's face.  Hurriedly he went on:--

"These people searched us, but did not
find the little gold we carry, and the bundle
of notes they found have no value for them,
though they have not returned them to us.
There is plenty of money to pay our way if
we are assured of safety, and we ask to be
allowed to accompany you until we can
resume our journey."

"By all means," said Forrester.  "I will
get your notes back.  I suggest that you
make a small present to the head-man, and
he will no doubt let you come with us
without any bother."

A brief conversation ensued between
Forrester and the head-man, through Sher
Jang.  The notes were surrendered; a few
coins were given to the Mishmi; the Chinamen
attached themselves to the Englishmen's
party, and the march was resumed.

"He talks fine," said Mackenzie to
Forrester, "but there's something fishy
about yon Chinkies."

"The elder man has told the other not
to give too much away, I think," said
Forrester.  "But they needn't be afraid
of us.  Political refugees are safe with
Englishmen."

"Man, maybe they're murderers," said
Mackenzie.

"You had better look out then," replied
Forrester, with a laugh.

"Anyway, there's a hang-dog look about
the youngster," said Jackson.  "He's like
a puppy afraid of a whipping."

More than once during the journey they
tried to converse with the young Chinaman,
but failed to draw more than a word or two
from him.  The elder man kept close to his
side, and the Englishmen, finding that their
well-meant remarks tended only to increase
the young man's painful nervousness, gave
up the attempt and left the Chinamen to
themselves.

It was drawing towards sunset when they
reached the plantation on which Forrester
was employed.  The long march through
the hot and humid air had tired them all,
and the condition of the sick man had
become alarming.  With the planter's traditional
hospitality, the manager, Mr. Paterson,
at once arranged to receive the captain in
the bungalow he shared with Forrester, and
offered to accommodate the Chinamen for
the night in one of his godowns.  At the
instance of the elder man the younger
politely, but with evident reluctance,
declined this offer, preferring to push on to
Dibrugarh, only a few miles away.  The
Englishmen did not press them; they were
anxious to have as soon as possible the
opinion of Dr. Malcolm, the medical officer
of the gardens, on the invalid's chances of
recovery.

"Eh, man, it's a verra bad case," said
the bluff Scots surgeon after making his
examination.  "Malaria is bad enough, as
ye know, but I would not say but this is
jungle fever.  However, never say die; I'll
do what I can."

Early next morning Forrester rode over
to Dibrugarh, and telegraphed to a military
friend of Mr. Paterson's in Calcutta, asking
if anything was known of Captain Redfern.
The manager had advised this course in
preference to communicating with officials,
as likely to avoid red tape and save time.
In a few hours the answer came:--

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left small

   Redfern Captain Bengal Fusiliers on furlough exploring
   buried cities Chinese Turkestan with Beresford
   archaeologist.

.. vspace:: 2

Forrester was not very strong in geography,
but he knew that Chinese Turkestan must
be at least a thousand miles from Dibrugarh.
What had brought the explorers so far from
the scene of their labours?  The pressing
question, however, was the whereabouts of
Beresford.  Without loss of time Forrester
took the first train for Sadiya, the frontier
village where resided the Political Officer
whose duty was to keep an eye on the hill
tribes.

"Your man is where he had no business
to be," said that gentleman when he had
heard Forrester's scanty story.  "He has
been collared, I should think, by the hillmen
somewhere south of Tibet--quite beyond
my jurisdiction."

"Do you know anything of a waterfall a
hundred miles or so north?" asked Forrester.

"There are falls in plenty, no doubt,"
was the reply; "but the country on the
right bank of the Brahmaputra up there is
practically unexplored.  Part of the course
of the Brahmaputra itself is unknown."

"Before he became delirious Redfern talked
of sending up a column to rescue his friend."

"My dear fellow, he was talking through
his hat.  It's entirely out of the question.
The Government won't run the risk of
provoking a general rising of the hillmen
whenever a roving explorer has come to grief in
a district where he has no earthly right to
be.  It would mean one of those little
frontier wars that cost no end of money and
set the Labour Members barking."

"But surely something ought to be done--can
be done for an Englishman," Forrester
persisted.

"I'll communicate with headquarters and
let you know the result; but I promise you
it's no good.  The country is a sort of no
man's land.  Representations at Lhasa and
at Pekin would be equally useless; China
and Tibet would both wash their hands of
the matter.  Besides, Government wheels
move slowly, the man would be done for
before any move could be made; he may
be done for already.  I'm sorry for him, but
he has only himself to blame."

Forrester went away very indignant at
what he regarded as official callousness, yet
recognising the soundness of the Political
Officer's contention.  He remembered the
Abor expedition, in which a large military
force had been engaged for six months in
making its way through the jungle to exact
retribution for the murder of two
Englishmen.  Remembering, too, the uncertainty
of Beresford's whereabouts, he was forced
to admit that the Government might
reasonably hesitate to commit themselves to an
enterprise of which the end could not be
foreseen.

When he returned to the plantation, and
told his friends the results of his journey,
Jackson, who was excitable and quick-tempered,
stamped up and down the room,
abusing Governments and Political Officers
and mankind generally.  Mackenzie, on the
other hand, sat placidly smoking his pipe,
silent and thoughtful.  In the course of a
few minutes, when Jackson had blown off
steam, the Scotsman said quietly:--

"Now ye've done blethering, Bob, listen
to me.  We'll do it ourselves."

"What?"

"Ay!"

"What do you mean, Mac?" asked Forrester.

"I'm telling you.  A score or two of the
Assam Light Horse----"

"Oh, rats!" cried Jackson, impatiently.
"If the Government won't undertake it,
d'you suppose they'll let a lot of amateurs
go careering about?  They'd expect to have
to send a Field Force to bring us off.  It's
absurd."

"Don't blow my head off.  I've another
proposition.  I'm not particular about my
leave.  Let the three of us see what we
can do."

"D'you mean it, Mac?" cried Forrester.

"Ay!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE REFUGEES`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium

   THE REFUGEES

.. vspace:: 2

The credit of the arrangements made
during the next two days must be divided
between Mackenzie and Sher Jang.  The
former showed a capacity for organisation
which his friends had not suspected.

"Just ye listen to me," he said, when they
were discussing the proposal he had sprung
upon them.  "If I tell ye nothing, ye'll no
have to tell fibs, d'ye ken?  The least wee
bit suspicion, and our leave will be stopped.
All ye need to know is that before we start
for our holiday in earnest we're going on a
private hunting expedition, which will be
perfectly true.  Sher Jang and I between us
will make things ready."

"That's the longest speech I've ever heard
from your lips, Mac," said Forrester with a
laugh.

"Maybe," Mackenzie replied.

He was not the man to let grass grow under
his feet.  Within an hour Sher Jang set off
to interview certain Nagas of his
acquaintance--active forest-bred natives who had
served from time to time as beaters in
hunting expeditions, and were to be
depended on for nerve and steadiness.  The
shikari's mission was to engage half a dozen
as carriers for such stores as it would be
necessary to take.  They would be armed
in case of difficulties with the natives they
might encounter on the way, though
Mackenzie hoped that no hostility would be
aroused by the passage of what was ostensibly
a hunting party.

Meanwhile, Mackenzie himself sought out
in Dibrugarh a local native contractor, whom
he engaged to deliver a carefully calculated
quantity of food within two days at a village
about twelve miles north of the Brahmaputra.
He went about among his acquaintances,
trying discreetly to pick up any
information they might possess about the
country northward; but none of them had
travelled more than a score of miles in that
direction, so that his cautious inquiries had
little result.  As Captain Redfern was still
in the delirium of fever, it became clear
that the leaders of the expedition would
have to rely on themselves to discover the
place of Beresford's captivity.  They
anticipated little difficulty in locating the spots
Redfern had marked as "Camel's Hump"
and "Monkey Face," because in the country
through which they were going the mountains
rose to a height of many thousands of feet,
and eminences so distinctive as to invite
special names would no doubt be conspicuous
at a very great distance.

On the appointed day the three young
fellows set off with Sher Jang and Hamid
Gul.  Their departure awakened no
suspicion, but only a mild envy among those
whose holidays were still to come.  Arriving
at the rendezvous, they found the half-dozen
Nagas awaiting them, and the Assamese
contractor with the supplies.  On entering the
village, Jackson turned round with a start.

"What's up, Bob?" Forrester asked,
noticing a strange look of bewilderment in
his friend's eyes.

"Nothing.  I don't know," Jackson replied,
slowly.  "I had the rummiest feeling--just
as if some one were calling me."

Forrester laughed.

"Nerves, old chap," he said.

They went on together, thinking no more
of the matter.  The Nagas soon shouldered
their loads, which consisted of a light camp
equipment and a quantity of food.  Forrester
was about to give the order to start when
there came from a hut on the far side of the
village the two Chinamen with whom they
were already acquainted, followed by two
Nagas carrying packages.  The men approached
in the same order as on the occasion
of their first meeting, and the younger man
looked more miserable than ever.  Coming
up to the Englishmen, he addressed them
haltingly, in the manner of one performing
a distasteful duty against his will.

"I make humble excuses, gentlemen," he
said, "but I beg a favour.  Learning that
you were travelling in this direction, we ask
that you will permit us to accompany you
and enjoy the benefit of your protection until
our ways part."

"I wish to goodness the fellow wouldn't
look as if he were going to snivel," Jackson
whispered to Mackenzie.

"All right; don't apologise," said
Forrester.  "We're in rather a hurry; I hope
we shan't walk you off your legs."

The Chinaman thanked him, and fell back
with his one-armed friend, whose eyes had
been bent steadily upon his face.  Mackenzie
went up to the Assamese contractor.

"Ye blethering idiot!" he said.  "Didn't
I tell you to hold your tongue?"

The Assamese cringed and rubbed his
hands together deprecatingly.  He explained
that the Chinese gentlemen had lodged in his
house, and he had only mentioned casually
that he was providing stores for a hunting
party.  It was an honour he much
appreciated.

"Eh!  Get out!" Mackenzie exclaimed
in disgust.  "A man that cannot hold his
tongue is a very pitiful body.  We must get
away at once," he added, addressing his
friends.  "If this wretched creature has
been talking, the authorities have maybe got
wind of it, and they'll be sending after us."

To avoid the risk of being stopped, they
wasted not a minute.  The company formed
up in marching order and set off.  Forrester
and Mackenzie led the way with Sher Jang;
the Nagas followed: then Hamid Gul and
the Chinamen with their retainers, Jackson
bringing up the rear.  The Nagas, sturdy
little fellows about five feet high, brown of
skin, with bright eyes tinged with smoke,
stepped out cheerfully under their loads.
These were carried in conical-shaped baskets
slung from their shoulders, and kept in
position by a band of plaited cane round the
forehead.

The way led through open grass land amid
trailing creepers and patches of bog.  Insects
buzzed around, darting in to sting, and
leeches clung to the clothes of the white men
and the bare bodies of the natives, and could
only be dislodged by the lighted tip of a
cigarette.  Streams had to be forded, through
beds of rushes and bamboo rising to a
height of eight or nine feet.  The air was hot
and moist, and the white men, lightly clad
though they were, were soon dripping with
perspiration; but they held gamely on until
near mid-day, when they took a light meal,
resting afterwards for a couple of hours.

During the afternoon, Mackenzie noticed
that the Chinamen had pushed forward
beyond their allotted position, and,
outstripping the Nagas, had closed up within a
few yards of the leaders.

"Get back to your place," he said.

The men at once fell back, and for the rest
of the day the order was unbroken.

"You spoke rather sharply, Mac," said
Forrester.

"Ay.  The beggars wanted to hear our talk."

"D'you think so?  They carry no loads,
and, of course, walk faster than the Nagas."

"That's true, but I don't trust 'em."

"They only want company, I fancy.  The
poor wretches won't feel safe until they
reach Tibet.  I've read of Chinese torture,
and if they're political refugees they'll be
in mortal terror of falling into the hands of
their enemies."

"Maybe," Mackenzie replied.  "They've
a long road to go."

"Look here, you're suspicious," said
Forrester.  "What's in your mind?"

"Nothing in particular.  But I don't like
'em too near."

Towards nightfall they encamped in a
fairly open space, and Mackenzie assigned
to the Chinamen a position well out of
hearing.

On the following day they found marching
more difficult.  The country rose gradually,
presenting many sharp ascents and declivities,
jungle alternating with stretches
of bare stony ground.  As they pursued their
toilsome way they realised the stupendous
exertions that Captain Redfern must have
made in travelling alone, unarmed, and
without provisions except such edible plants
as he could find in this trackless country.
They met no men; Sher Jang turned aside
whenever he saw human tracks.  But they
sighted elephants, wild boars, and other
game which appealed to their sporting
instincts.  They would not delay, however,
to try their skill: on the way back, perhaps,
when their errand was completed, they might
secure trophies of the chase.

Late in the afternoon of the second day
they made their camp on a rocky hillside
within a few hundred yards of a small
mountain stream, which swirled its impetuous way
between grassy banks.  One of the Nagas
descended the slope to fetch water for
cooking; the white men, weary with the day's
march, were reclining near their tent,
smoking in silence.

They were suddenly disturbed by a shout
from below, an agonised cry for help.  It
was followed by a shrill sound which the
white men had never heard before, but which
caused the shikari to spring to his feet in
excitement.

"Elephant, sahib!" he cried.

Almost at the same moment the Naga, his
eyes distended with terror, broke out of the
long grass at the edge of the stream, and ran
up the slope towards the camp.  A few
yards behind him came a huge elephant, its
trunk uplifted, filling the air with its squeals
of rage.

The white men seized their guns.  But
between them and the elephant were the
Nagas, who, on the first alarm, rushed
helter-skelter towards the tent.  It was
impossible to fire without hitting them.
Heedless of the white men's shouts, they did not
turn aside and so allow a clear space for
shooting.

"We must cut and run," cried Forrester.

The three turned among the terrified
natives, and the whole party scattered in all
directions up the hill.  The elephant charged
on, crashed into the tent and levelled it with
the ground, and rushed with infuriated
bellowings in pursuit of the fugitives.

In the haste and excitement of the
moment, Forrester had taken no heed of the rest
of the party.  The appearance of the
monstrous beast was so sudden and unexpected,
the fury of its thunderous onset so alarming,
that dismay and confusion might have been
forgiven to the most experienced of hunters.
But he became aware that in the dispersion
of the party, the young Chinaman, whether
by accident or design, was within a few feet
of him, making, like himself, for the shelter
of a belt of trees a little above them.  They
entered it almost side by side, and Forrester,
gathering his wits, began to dodge in and
out among the trees, knowing that the
elephant would be at a great disadvantage
in following him by reason of its unwieldy bulk.

For a few moments he was too much
preoccupied to think of the Chinaman.  But the
thuds of the great hoofs growing fainter, he
stood still and looked to see what had become
of the young man.  To his horror he saw
that the youth had run straight through the
copse to a clear rocky space beyond, where
the elephant, with a speed which its
lumbering frame little promised, was rapidly
overtaking him.  Divided between alarm for the
Chinaman's safety and annoyance at his
stupidity, Forrester sprinted through the
copse, hoping at least to divert the beast and
give the fugitive a chance.

The Chinaman's luck was against him.
Ignorant of the fact that elephants have
difficulty in running obliquely up a slope,
he was racing straight up hill, the animal,
screaming shrilly, only a dozen yards behind.
Forrester perceived that in a very few
moments the hapless youth must inevitably be
run down and trampled to death unless the
elephant were checked at once.  He stopped
short, threw up his rifle and fired.  The bullet
had as little effect on the tough hide as a
pea might have had.  Neither the report nor
the impact caused the elephant to swerve.

.. _`The terrified Chinaman raced up the hill, the elephant, screaming shrilly, close behind him. Forrester threw up his rifle and fired, but on that tough hide the bullet had no effect`:

.. figure:: images/img-049.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: The terrified Chinaman raced up the hill, the elephant, screaming shrilly, close behind him. Forrester threw up his rifle and fired, but on that tough hide the bullet had no effect.

   The terrified Chinaman raced up the hill, the elephant, screaming shrilly, close behind him. Forrester threw up his rifle and fired, but on that tough hide the bullet had no effect.

"Behind the ear!" Forrester said to
himself, as he lifted the rifle for a second shot,
and steadied himself to take a careful aim.
He fired, and could scarcely believe his eyes
when the huge creature stumbled forward,
recovered itself, then rolled over sideways
and lay stretched upon the ground.

Breathless, quivering from his exertions,
Forrester stood gazing upon the inert lump.
He was barely conscious of the shouts of his
party beyond the copse and higher up the
hill.  But in a moment he was roused from
his brief abstraction.  The young Chinaman,
seeing that there was nothing more to fear,
had hastened back.  He came eagerly up to
his rescuer, and began to speak in a low,
agitated voice.

"Sir--sir," he gulped, trying to regain his
breath; and Forrester was amazed at the
change that had come over him.  Gone was
the languid droop, the timid mien, the furtive
cringing expression of the eye.  The lad stood
erect; his eyes shone; words flowed from
his lips, not in the sing-song of one repeating
a lesson, but with the modulations of
spontaneous energy and a full heart.

"Sir, sir," he said, "twice you have saved
my life.  Will you not help me again?  Save
me from I know not what.  I am not what I
seem, the servant of that horrible man.  We
are not refugees.  My father is a mandarin,
the governor of Szechuan; I am his eldest
son.  Six months ago that man, Wen Shih,
entered my father's service; he was a diligent
servant, and was trusted by all.  He gained
my confidence; we were much together.
One day he bade me come with him a
journey, and I came, and I cannot get away.
Where we go I know not, but I fear, I fear!
He holds me, he commands me, he--he is
calling me!"

At these last words his tone fell to a
murmur, his jaw dropped, and a look of
terror came into his eyes.

"Go on; tell me more," said Forrester,
taking the Chinaman by the arm.

"He is calling me," the youth murmured
again, though his elder companion was not
within sight, nor could his voice be heard.
He turned slowly about, and with head hung
forward and arms outstretched before him,
in the attitude of a man groping in the dark,
he staggered rather than walked back
towards the camp.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MORE MYSTERY`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium

   MORE MYSTERY

.. vspace:: 2

Forrester's attention was diverted from
the Chinaman by the appearance of his
friends, whom the sound of his lucky shot
had drawn through the copse.

"By Jinks!" Jackson cried as they came
up, "you killed him!"

"I never made such a fluke in my life,"
Forrester replied.  "Come and have a look
at him."

They found that the bullet, entering
behind the ear, had passed clean through the
animal's brain.

"You *must* take his tusks," Jackson went
on.  "It would be simply idiotic not to
carry home the trophies of your first
elephant.  That's a job for Sher Jang."

"Where is he?" Forrester asked.

"Ay, where?" Mackenzie echoed.  "He's a
queer sort of shikari to run from an elephant."

"We can't fling a stone at him over that,"
Forrester remarked, with a laugh.  "Let's
get back to camp, and send him up.  I dare
say the men would relish elephant meat for
supper."

As they turned towards the camp, the
Chinaman's strange words recurred to
Forrester's mind.

"I say, you fellows, there *is* something
mighty queer about those Chinamen," he
said.  "The youngster was running with
me, and after I had shot the elephant he
began to tell me things--not in what Bob
calls his snivelling style; he seemed a new
man altogether.  He said they're not political
refugees at all."

"Eh!  I thought as much," Mackenzie
put in.  "They're criminals."

"I don't know.  He said the elder man
was a servant in his father's house, and his
father is a mandarin, governor of some place
or other.  The servant has some sort of a
hold over the fellow.  But just as he was
getting to the most interesting part of his
story, he suddenly broke off, whispered that
the man was calling him, and looked as
terrified as if he'd seen a ghost.  I asked
him to go on, but he turned away, stretched
out his hands like that," he illustrated the
gesture, "and began to stumble back like a
blind man.  Didn't you see him as you came
through the copse?"

"I caught sight of him, but didn't notice
him particularly," said Jackson.  "What
do you make of it?  Is he cracked?"

"Upon my word I should have thought
so, only he spoke sensibly enough.  I'll see
if I can get more out of him presently.  The
other man doesn't know English, so the
young one can tell us anything he likes
without his being any the wiser."

On emerging from the copse they saw that
the Nagas had collected in a group up the
hill, evidently awaiting assurance that all
danger was past.  Hamid Gul was helping
Sher Jang to re-erect the flattened tent.
Near by, the elder Chinaman sat cross-legged
on a rock, and the younger stood before him
in the attitude of a suppliant.

As the three men approached the tent,
Sher Jang came to them.

"I have shot the elephant," Forrester said
to him.  "Go up presently and cut him up.
We'll keep the tusks.  Why didn't you come
with me?"

"I watched, sahib," the man replied.

"But watching is not work for a shikari."

"Sometimes it is, sahib.  Why did not
the stranger yonder run with the rest?"

"What do you mean?"

"He sat on the rock where he sits now,
sahib.  The elephant passed within a few
feet of him, but he did not move.  He sat
there, and his eyes were fixed like glass.  I
thought: why is he so still, like a Buddha
in stone?  And I stayed to watch him; it
seemed good to me, sahib."

"And what did you see?"

"No more than I have said, sahib, except
that presently the young stranger came back
like a blind beggar feeling his way through
the bazar.  Then the elder man smiled, and
his smile was like the grin of a tiger.  That
is all, sahib."

"Well, get the tent up.  Is the pole broken?"

"We have spliced it with rope, sahib.
That simpleton," indicating Hamid, "wrung
his hands and declared the pole useless, but
I showed him the way."

The three men went on towards the
Chinamen.  At their approach the elder man
rapped out a few words in a stern and
peremptory tone to his companion, then
rose to his feet with a respectful salutation
to the white men.  Forrester acknowledged
it, and, turning at once to the younger
man, asked him to continue the story he
had so abruptly broken off.  A pitiful
look of distress came into the lad's eyes;
his lips moved, but not a sound issued from
them.

"Come, there's nothing to be afraid of,"
Forrester urged.  "You may speak quite
freely."

"Forget what I said, sir," the lad
muttered.  "It was false.  I beg you think no
evil of my kind friend."

His voice hardly rose above a whisper;
every word seemed to be wrung from him.

"But surely there is something in it,"
Forrester persisted.  "Was your friend a
servant in your father's house?  You did
not invent that?"

The lad cast a look at his companion that
might have been interpreted as terror or
anxiety.  The elder man did not return the
glance, but stood beside him with a mien
suggesting patient forbearance or even
absence of mind.

"I do not know what I said," the young
man replied slowly, like one talking in his
sleep.  "I was excited after the great peril
I had escaped, my mind was troubled, and
my tongue spoke foolishness.  Pardon me,
I pray you."

Seeing that nothing more was to be got out
of the lad, Forrester turned away with his
companions.

"There's some mystery here," he said,
when they were out of earshot.  "What's
the matter, Bob?" he asked, noticing a
strange look in Jackson's face.

"I don't know: I feel as if this were all a
dream--a queer sort of fuzzy feeling in my
head."

"I feel puzzled enough," said Forrester.
"Why should the fellow make out that he
was telling lies?  It looks as if he's mortally
afraid of the other man, but I can't make it
out, for the chap doesn't know English, and
wouldn't understand, whatever was said.
What do you say, Mac?"

"There's no call to say anything," Mackenzie replied.

"There's the canny Scot," Forrester said
with a laugh.  "You'll think all the more, I
suppose."

"I'm thinking they're worth watching,"
was Mackenzie's answer.

Next morning a slight change was made in
the order of the march.  Mackenzie asked
Jackson to go ahead with Forrester, while he
brought up the rear.

"I don't mind, but what's your reason?"
Jackson asked.

"I just wish to contemplate the Chinkies
from the rear," was the reply.

Whatever the result of his examination
was, Mackenzie said nothing about it.

Towards mid-day the snow-clad peaks of a
mountain range opened up ahead of the
party; although in the clear atmosphere they
seemed to be only a few miles distant, the
nearest was probably fifty miles away.  The
intervening country was a series of undulations,
bare stretches of rock, here and there
deeply fissured, alternating with thickly
wooded valleys and dense jungle.  Ever
since they left Dibrugarh the party had been
steadily climbing, and the higher they rose,
the less their progress was impeded by
undergrowth; and the lower temperature made
their exertions less fatiguing.  But the white
men were more and more impressed with
the courage and endurance which Captain
Redfern had shown in traversing this wild
region.

They kept a keen look-out for hills answering
to the names he had given them, for they
had no other landmarks by which to direct
their course.  It was impossible to believe
that they were peaks of the snowy range so
far ahead: four days would not have sufficed
for the covering of so immense a distance.
Forrester was already feeling very doubtful
of the possibility of distinguishing the hills,
when Sher Jang suddenly pointed to the
eastern end of a smaller range that crossed
the prospect perhaps twenty miles away.  It
was a precipice falling away abruptly to the
general level from a height of two or three
thousand feet, and the contours of the scarp
bore a strong resemblance to a monkey's
face.  Forrester swept his eyes along the
range from east to west, and gave a cry of
delight when he distinguished at the western
end a rounded eminence shaped like the
hump of a camel.

"We're on the right track," he said.
"We shall have to round that range, then
cut away northward to find the falls.
Probably they won't be so easy to discover."

"It will be to-morrow night before we
reach the Camel's Hump," said Jackson.
"The falls can't be more than a day's march
farther, or Redfern couldn't possibly have
done it in four days."

"We go slower than he did, owing to our
baggage.  If we only came across some
natives we might ask them the way, but the
whole country seems to be uninhabited."

When they halted to form camp, Mackenzie
said:--

"Just now I caught the young Chinky
talking to Hamid Gul, and I stopped it.
Hamid told me the fellow asked where we
were going, and why we didn't look for
game.  I got up to them in time to prevent
the answer."

"They were very natural questions," said
Forrester.  "We are supposed to be a
hunting party."

"Ay, and the Chinkies are supposed to be
political refugees, but I have my doubts.  I
would like well to see the back of them.
Have you had any return of that fuzzy
feeling, Bob?"

"No.  You haven't had it?"

"Not I.  What about you, Dick?"

"D'you think it's catching?" Forrester
asked with a laugh.  "My head's perfectly
clear, thanks."

But a couple of hours later, when all three
were sitting smoking at the door of the tent,
Forrester suddenly stood up, looked round
him with an air of perplexity, then took a step
in the direction of the spot where the
Chinamen were reclining.  Mackenzie grasped his
coat, and pulled him back into his seat.

"What are ye about, man?" he asked.

For a moment Forrester was silent, then he
said:--

"It's very queer.  I felt as if I must walk
over there, goodness knows what for.  The
feeling has gone now.  What's wrong with me?"

"Malaria, as like as not," said Mackenzie.
"Here, take a stiff dose of quinine.  We
don't want an invalid on our hands."

Forrester had no return of his strange
vertigo, if such it were, and after supper
he laughed at himself for his momentary
weakness.

By the afternoon of the next day they had
worked round the Camel's Hump, and,
turning northwards, saw stretched out before
them a tract of dense scrub, beyond which
in the far distance towered the peaks of the
snowy range.  They decided to continue
their march until sunset, hoping that
somewhere amid the scrub a suitable camping
place would offer itself.  So difficult was the
passage now, that the party became more
split up than had hitherto been the case;
but there was no danger of anyone straying,
since the order had been given that those
behind should not turn aside from the
tracks of those who had preceded them.

In course of time Sher Jang reached a fairly
open space, and a halt was called.  The
Nagas straggled in, Hamid Gul followed them
and Mackenzie appeared last of all.  For a
few moments his companions were too much
occupied to notice a diminution of their
party, but presently Forrester, after a look
around, cried:--

"Where are the Chinkies, Mac?"

"Aren't they here?" Mackenzie asked in
return.

"You ought to know--you were contemplating
their backs," Jackson remarked.

There was no sign of them.  Forrester
called up their Naga carriers, and Sher Jang
questioned them.  The men could give no
information.  Once or twice they had lost
sight of the Chinamen as the scrub hid
them from view.  They had thought nothing
of that.

The three white men looked at each other.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE EYE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium

   THE EYE

.. vspace:: 2

Forrester was the first to break the
silence.

"They've gone a little out of the way,"
he suggested.  "By the time we've got the
tent up, they'll be here."

But minutes passed, and the men did not
appear.

"We had better go and look for them,"
said Jackson.

"It's a good riddance," Mackenzie replied.

"But we can't leave them in the lurch,"
said Forrester.  "They've absolutely no
defence against wild beasts.  Come along!
We three will go with Sher Jang back into
the scrub and beat it.  We mustn't lose touch
with each other.  Every man give a coo-ee
every few seconds."

The suggestion was carried out.  The four
men scattered, and worked back through
the scrub until daylight was almost gone.  No
trace of the Chinamen could be discovered.
Forrester called to his companions to join him.

"It's my belief they've done a bolt," he
said.  "They couldn't possibly have missed
the track.  But where can they have gone?
Tibet is still very far off, and they run no end
of risks going through the country unarmed."

"D'you think they've got friends in this
neighbourhood?" Jackson asked.

"Eh, what use is it talking?" Mackenzie
replied.  "They're gone, and for my part I
don't wish to see them again."

"All the same, it's queer their going away
suddenly without their carriers, and not
saying a word," Forrester remarked.  "They
were polite enough in asking to be allowed to
join us."

"Ay, there's something mysterious about
them; we must be on our guard," said
Mackenzie.  "It's not very likely they're in
league with the natives of these parts, but
you never can tell."

"I'd give something to learn the history
of that one-armed fellow," said Jackson,
reflectively.

Next day, on emerging from the tract of
scrub, the party found themselves on a bare
rocky ridge below which stretched a broad
and densely wooded valley.  On the farther
side the ground rose steeply to the foot-hills
of the snowy range.  The hollows were
clothed with vegetation, which formed dark
green patches amid bare brown spaces of rock.

"Which way are we to go now?" Forrester
said, as they halted on the ridge to
survey the country.

"Camel's Hump and Monkey Face are
clean out of sight," said Jackson, after a
glance behind.  "All we can do is to make
straight for the north.  The falls must be
part of a river, and when we get a bit higher
we may see it winding through the country.
If it's of any size, we must work up its course
until we find the falls."

"Ay, there's nothing else for it," said
Mackenzie.  "I'm beginning to think we've
tackled a tough job."

"I've thought that for some time," said
Forrester.  "However, we'll go through
with it.  The first thing now is to cross this
valley.  Lead the way, Sher Jang."

To descend the precipitous slope through
entangling undergrowth that reminded them
of bramble bushes in England was a long and
arduous undertaking.  The surface of the
ground was so irregular that they dared not
take a step without first probing the bushes
for a foothold.  Every few yards there was
the risk of a sprained ankle or a broken neck.
It was mid-day before they reached the
bottom, and then the ascent on the farther
side was even more toilsome, though less
dangerous.

As the day drew on, the air became sultry
and oppressive, portending a storm, and the
party pushed on as rapidly as possible in
order to fix their camp before the rain began.
Late in the afternoon, Sher Jang suddenly
halted in a clump of woodland, and pointed
to some tree-stumps on which there were
clear marks of axes.

"There are men hereabout, sahib," he said
to Forrester.

"Thank goodness!" Mackenzie ejaculated.
"Now, perhaps, we will find someone who'll
tell us the road."

"Keep a look-out, though," said Jackson.
"We don't want to tumble into a hornets' nest."

They advanced cautiously, noting as they
proceeded more stumps, and at one spot a
pile of newly felled logs.  The trees grew
thickly, and to a considerable height, so that
they marched in a dim twilight.  Presently,
almost without warning, they came to a wide
open space, on the far side of which a number
of small, dark-skinned, half-naked people were
gathered about cooking-pots.  Behind them,
a line of grass huts stood at the fringe of the
woodland.  Forrester called a halt at the
edge of the clearing, intending to discover
from his Naga carriers whether they could
identify the people.  But some slight sound
must have been heard by the natives, for
they suddenly sprang up; the women and
children rushed into the huts, and the men
seized their long bows and arrows, and stood
facing the quarter from which they had
heard the alarming sound.

Trusting in the appearance of a white man
to allay their fears, Forrester stepped
forward out of the gloom of the forest.  His
action had an effect exactly the contrary of
what he intended.  At the first sight of him
the little men uttered a wild howl, and fled
among the trees, followed by the women and
children, who streamed out of their huts with
screams of fright.

"They take you for a bogey-man, Dick,"
said Jackson.  "Evidently they have never
seen a white man before."

"What shall we do?" Forrester asked of
Sher Jang.

The shikari suggested that the Nagas
might be able to communicate with the
natives, and reassure them.  Accordingly the
head carrier, dropping his burden, stepped
forth into the clearing, and shouted
"He-hoh!  He-huh!" in a tone that might have
been heard half a mile away.  Some time
elapsed before his shouts had any result;
then a few of the men came slinking back,
dodging from tree to tree with the utmost
wariness.

The Naga spread his arms to show that he
carried no weapon; then squatted in the
middle of the clearing and began to talk in
a musical sing-song, every now and then
waving his hand in the direction of his
employers.  What he said they did not
know, nor did Sher Jang, though he could
speak to him in his own tongue; but it was
clear that he had managed to make himself
understood by the villagers, for these came
dropping back by twos and threes, until
apparently the whole population was once
more assembled.

Forrester sent the Naga to them with a
number of slight gifts, and through him
asked to be allowed to camp in the clearing
for the night.  After some discussion among
themselves, this permission was granted,
provided the strangers would remain on the
opposite side.  Some of them plucked up
courage to cross the clearing and watch the
erection of the tent, and the other
movements of the white men; and, finding that
they were not molested, they squatted in a
ring on the ground, following every operation
with a lively curiosity that found expression
in monosyllabic cries and clicking noises
in-their throats.

When the white men had eaten their
supper, they decided to profit by the
friendliness of these peaceable villagers.  To hold
a palaver would be a difficult matter, since
Sher Jang had to interpret Forrester to the
Naga, and the Naga to translate to the
village head-man.  But the opportunity of
gaining some clue to their destination was
too good to be neglected.  It was a strange
scene in that forest glade, illuminated by the
camp fires on opposite sides.  The three
white men sat in front of the tent, their
followers ranging themselves on the wings.
A few yards in front of them the chief men of
the village crouched in a half circle.  Behind
stood the rest of the community, young and
old, gazing wide-eyed over the heads of the
men.  Everybody, white and brown, old
and young, men and women, smoked a pipe.
Sher Jang and the Naga stood between the
white men and the villagers, the former
imperturbable as ever, the latter assuming
a comical air of importance, and turning
now and again to his friends for admiration.
The conversation took the form of question
and answer.

"Do they know of a waterfall hereabouts?"
Forrester asked.

"Yes," was the reply.  "There is a little
fall close at hand; but it is nothing to the fall
yonder in the mountains, where the river pours
from the clouds into the depths of the earth."

"Have they ever been there?"

"No, but they have seen it afar off."

"Do they know whether men live in its
neighbourhood?"

At this question the little man hesitated,
and spoke a few words to his companions.
Then he admitted that there were men living
near the waterfall.

"Why haven't they ever been there,
then?" asked Forrester.

"They have never dared."

"Are the men enemies of theirs?"

This question again was not answered as
promptly as the others.  The reply came at
last that the men were not exactly enemies,
but there was the Eye.

"What does he mean?  What is the
Eye?" Forrester asked.

"What is the Eye?"

The Naga repeated the question.  The
villager hesitated.  At this moment there
was a slight rumble of thunder in the
distance, and the man started backward,
spreading his arms.  A second and a louder
rumble followed, and then a lightning flash.
The man and his companions bent forward,
till their heads touched the ground, covering
their eyes with their hands.  In tones of
awe a few words fell from their lips.

"What do they say?" Forrester asked.

"That is the Eye, sahib," Sher Jang
replied, after questioning the Naga.

Then the thunder pealed directly overhead,
clap succeeding clap, and sheets of
lightning moment by moment threw a
blinding glare over the clearing.

The women fled screaming into their huts,
the men cowered on the ground, and showed
signs of abject terror, uttering piteous cries
which the white men, though they did not
understand the words, recognised as appeals
for mercy.  The little spokesman addressed
a word or two to the Naga interpreter, then
rushed back across the clearing with his
friends.  All disappeared into their dwellings.

"What did he say?" Forrester asked.

"'He speaks!  He speaks!'"

"They take the thunder to be the voice
of an angry god," Jackson suggested.

"Maybe," said Mackenzie, "but our
Nagas aren't afraid, and they are akin to
these people."

"It's because they have had dealings with
white men, perhaps," said Forrester.  "It's
only the untutored savage who is likely to
cherish such a superstition.  Anyhow, it's
clear that we shan't get anything more out
of them to-night.  We had better try again
in the morning."

The tempest heralded by the thunder and
lightning soon broke over the camp.  Rain
fell in floods, quenching the fires in a few
seconds, and turning the hollow centre of
the glade into a lake.  The travellers,
accustomed to the torrential rains of north-eastern
India, had brought oil-skins and rubber
sheeting; but even these did not avail to
protect them thoroughly from the terrific
downpour.  Their native followers sought
a partial shelter in the forest, where they
remained until the violence of the storm
abated.  The Englishmen spent an
uncomfortable night on the sodden ground, and
dosed themselves with quinine to ward off
the malarial fever that so often ensues on
exposure to the damp in tropical climes.

The morning broke fair and sunny, and
a fierce cold wind blew down from the
mountains.  With the change of weather
the villagers had regained their courage,
and crowded about the travellers with the
same curiosity as they had shown the
evening before.  Some of the men fraternised
with the Naga carriers, exchanging
food with them, and talking freely.

"I daresay we shall be able to persuade
them to guide us to the fall," Forrester
remarked, watching them as he sat at
breakfast with his friends.

"But the man said they had never dared
to go there, because of the Eye, whatever
that is," said Jackson.

"Well, they will at least put us in the
right direction," said Forrester.  "If they
bring us within sight of it, that will be
enough."

"What are they saying to our Nagas?"
said Mackenzie.  "Look at them!"

The faces of the carriers wore an expression
of uneasiness, and they glanced at their
employers with the sidelong stealth of men
conscious of a fault.

"You had better ask about guiding us
at once," said Jackson.

Forrester sent Sher Jang for the
spokesman of the previous evening and the Naga
who had interpreted.  A bargain was soon
struck.  In return for a few trifling articles
of the camp equipage, the villager agreed
to guide the party in the direction of the
waterfall.  Part of the payment was handed
over at once, and the customary preparations
for marching were made.  But, when
Forrester gave the order to shoulder loads,
to his astonishment the Nagas made no
movement.  They stood back with an air
of sullen obstinacy, muttering under their
breath.

"What does this mean?" Forrester asked
Sher Jang.

"They say they will go no farther, sahib,"
the shikari replied.

"Nonsense!  What's the matter with them?"

"They engaged for the job," Mackenzie
added.  "Tell them they'll lose their pay
if they back out."

But the Nagas treated with equal
indifference all that was said to them.  When
Sher Jang threatened them with the loss
of their pay, one of them blurted out that
they would carry the baggage back for
nothing, rather than go farther northward.

"But why is it?" Forrester cried in
exasperation.  "What has upset them?
What are they scared of?"

"They say the Eye, sahib," Sher Jang
replied, after he had questioned the men.

"The Eye again!"

"That is what they were colloguing about
just now, no doubt," said Mackenzie.

"Tell them it's all a pack of nonsense,
Sher Jang," said Forrester.  "There is no
eye that can do them any harm, and our
guns will protect them."

The Nagas' response to this was to shout
to the villagers who stood looking on.  Two
of these ran across the clearing, and entered
one of the huts.

"They say you shall see, sahib," Sher
Jang explained.

"It is some ridiculous superstition, I
suppose," said Forrester.  "We shall have
to squash it somehow, or we are dished."

In a few moments the villagers emerged
from the hut, leading an old man whose
long hair and beard betokened the neglect
of all tendance.  His right arm was missing,
and his eyes had the dull, pathetic, wistful
look of the half-witted.  His guides brought
him up to within a few yards of the white
men, and the Nagas pointed to him with
wild excitement, continually exclaiming:--

"The Eye!  The Eye!"

.. _`As the old man was led forward, the Nagas pointed to him with wild excitement, continually exclaiming, "The Eye!  The Eye!"`:

.. figure:: images/img-076.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: As the old man was led forward, the Nagas pointed to him with wild excitement, continually exclaiming, "The Eye!  The Eye!"

   As the old man was led forward, the Nagas pointed to him with wild excitement, continually exclaiming, "The Eye!  The Eye!"

Forrester asked Sher Jang to get from
the people an explanation of the connection
of this old man with the Nagas' refusal to
march.  The story, as told by the villager
through the Naga head-man, was that the
one-armed greybeard had been a brave
warrior in his youth, and was one of a war
party who, many years before, had ventured
beyond the great waterfall.  Of them all,
only he had returned, without his right arm.
When his people asked him what had
happened to his companions, and how he had
lost his arm, his only answer was "The
Eye!"  Ever since, his mind had been a
blank.  He could tell them nothing, had no
recollection of what had happened; and the
people had kept him with them, showing
him the veneration which simple races often
pay to the half-witted.

The white men were mystified.  The story
seemed incredible, yet there was the man in
proof of it.

"None of the people have ever been
beyond the fall since?" asked Forrester.

"None of us," was the reply, "but we
have seen men go sometimes, and we have
never known them to return.  Yes: there
was one who returned.  He was fair of skin
like these lords, and wore clothes like them.
There were two who went, but only one
returned.  Some of our people saw him
hasting by the lake near the fall, and the
little men were running after him, but he
escaped them, and went into the forest."

"Who are the little men?" Forrester asked.

"They are men like monkeys," replied
the man, holding his hand about four feet
from the ground to indicate their height.
"They are the men who take the wood from us."

On further questioning, the men
explained that the country beyond the falls
was destitute of large trees, and the little
men paid the villagers for timber cut in the
forest.  This timber was conveyed to a
certain spot some distance short of the
waterfall, and removed thence by the little
men to their home in the mountains, which
the villagers had never beheld.

"How long ago was the white man
seen?" Forrester asked.

The man held up his hands with fingers
outspread.

"Redfern, to a certainty!" Jackson
exclaimed.  "We must go on, and get to the
bottom of this mystery.  It's horrible to
think of what may possibly happen to
Beresford."

"Ay, there's something uncanny beyond,"
Mackenzie said, thoughtfully.

"Whatever they mean by the Eye, it is
clear that something gruesome goes on
among the little men," said Forrester.
"There's nothing for it but to forge ahead,
and tackle them if there's the ghost of a
chance for us.  What do you say?  Are
you game to stick to it, even if we can't
persuade the Nagas to come?"

"Ay, I'm for going on," said Mackenzie.

"I too," said Jackson.  "We can but
try, and I don't suppose the little men,
whoever they are, have rifles.  Let us start
at once."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE IRON SHUTTER`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium

   THE IRON SHUTTER

.. vspace:: 2

"You come with us, Sher Jang?" asked
Forrester.

"Sahib, I am your servant," the man
replied, simply.

"And you, Hamid?"

The cook pulled nervously at his beard,
turned up the whites of his eyes, shot a
savage glance at the shikari, then said in a
voice which all his resolution could not
prevent from trembling:--

"Sir, I step out like a man.  One
volunteer is worth tons of pressed beef."

"Which means that without these idiotic
carriers we shall have to travel light," said
Forrester.  "Just put up enough food for
two days; we'll carry it somehow among
us.  We must leave the tent with the Nagas.
They had better remain here until we return."

"Can't we take more grub?" Jackson asked.

"If we don't do it in two days we shan't
do it at all, so it's useless overloading
ourselves.  We risk losing the tent, of course,
but that can't be helped."

Their preparations were quickly made,
and they set off while the morning was still
young.  Hamid Gul carried his cooking
utensils, plates, knives and forks, and other
articles; Sher Jang shouldered some blankets,
in which he had wrapped a quantity of
ammunition, and the three white men divided
the food among them.  Each of the party
had his rifle slung behind his back.

Their guides, a dozen of the villagers,
harnessed themselves to tree trunks, which
they dragged through the wood and down
the rocky slope beyond.  It had been
arranged before they started that the white
men should follow at some little distance,
so that the natives, in case of need, might
repudiate knowledge of them, and escape
all responsibility for bringing the strangers
to the neighbourhood of the falls.

At the foot of the slope they came to a
rivulet.  Without the Naga head-man Sher
Jang could not hold any oral communication
with the villagers; but they managed to
convey to him the information that the
smaller falls of which they had spoken were
a little way down-stream; the larger falls
lay a much greater distance in the other
direction.  Some minutes were occupied in
forming the balks of timber into a raft.
When this was done half the party of
natives swam to the farther bank, carrying
ropes attached to the raft, and then the
two sections hauled their wares against the
sluggish current, tramping along towpaths
which must have been trodden by several
generations of their forebears.

The view ahead was shut out by the trees
that grew almost to the edge of the winding
stream; but it was not long before the white
men, walking about half a mile behind their
guides, were aware of a dull rumble that
grew louder moment by moment as they
proceeded.

"That's the fall!" cried Jackson.  "We
can't be far away."

"A pretty big one, by the sound of it,"
Forrester remarked.  "Small falls make a
sort of crash--this is more of a roar.  Perhaps
we shall find a second Niagara."

"I'm fair flummoxed!" said Mackenzie,
inconsequently.

"What about?"

"About yon Eye.  You see, these folks
were terrified by the storm: 'He speaks,'
they said.  Well, that was the thunder.
By what the philosophers call parity of
reasoning, the Eye is lightning.  Well,
lightning can take off a man's arm, and strike
him daft or dead; but what about the little
men up yonder?  Are they scunnered at
the Eye, too?  What has the Eye to do
with Beresford?"

"Trust a Scot to ask questions!" said
Jackson.  "But you won't reason it out,
Mac; you'll just have to wait, like an
Englishman."

"Och, man!  I want facts.  Give me
facts, and I'll draw my own conclusions."

"Well, this row is a fact, and a stunning
one," said Forrester.  "It's time we caught
sight of the fall that's making such an uproar."

But they marched on for a couple of
hours without seeing any sight of a waterfall,
or even any quickening of the current.
The noise had gradually increased to a
stupendous din, and thoughts of their
ultimate errand were overborne by excitement
as they looked eagerly ahead for the mass
of falling water.  At last the belt of forest
land came to an abrupt end, and they gazed
forth over a wide rocky plain, in the midst
of which was an immense lake that appeared
to be considerably below the level of the
surrounding country.  From it ran the
stream whose course they were following,
and a larger stream far to the right.

Beyond the plain rose the mountains,
towering up peak behind peak to the
summits of the snowy range in the remote
distance.  The three men halted involuntarily,
struck both by the majesty of the
scene and by the deafening roar which
almost drowned their voices.

"Man, it's grand!" Mackenzie shouted.

"But where is it?" Forrester bawled in his ear.

They looked all around, but saw nothing
to account for the thunderous noise.  The
sky was overcast, and a layer of mist
obscured the lower foothills, though the
heights beyond heaved their grey masses
in clear undulations miles above.  As they
stood, a sunbeam stole through the clouds,
and a rainbow flung its gay arch across the
plain directly ahead of them.

"There's rain over there," said Jackson,
at the top of his voice.

"Only mist!" Forrester cried in reply.

For a few moments they gazed mutely
upon a sight that never loses its interest
and wonder.  Then Mackenzie smote his
thigh, and cried like one in ecstasy:--

"Man--it's the Fall!"

The mist was rolling away as the sun
gathered strength, yet the rainbow did not
fade, but shone more brightly than ever over
a space of perhaps one-eighth of a mile.
And then the onlookers saw that what had
hitherto seemed to them a part of the bank
of mist was in reality a gigantic torrent of
water, mingled with spray thrown up
hundreds of feet from the unseen bottom.  They
watched it in silent awe.  The villagers had
described it as falling from the clouds into
the depths of the earth.  Their words
appeared to be literally true.  An eighth of a
mile in width, the torrent poured over the
edge of a tableland--a single huge step in the
ascent to the plateaux of Tibet.  Mist still
hung above it, the enormous screen of spray
concealed its lower part, and at the distance
they still were from it the spectators could
only just distinguish the movement of the
mighty volume of water.

It had been arranged with their guides that
they should remain on the spot where they
first caught sight of the fall until the men
had delivered their timber and returned.  The
delay gave them an opportunity of taking a
meal.  As they ate they amused themselves
by guessing at the height of the fall.
Forrester suggested that it was as high as
St. Paul's; Jackson thought this estimate too
low; and Mackenzie astonished the others
by declaring that he wouldna wonder but it
was fully as high as Ben Lomond.

It was three hours before the natives
returned, and the white men, setting forth
impatiently at length to skirt the lake and
reach the foot of the hills on the western side
of the fall, found to their amazement that
they had nearly two miles to go before they
came level with it.  Then they were struck
dumb by the full magnificence of the scene.
The spray itself, rising like steam from a
gigantic cauldron, attained to the height of
St. Paul's.  The two Englishmen were
prepared to admit that the top of the fall was
even higher than the summit of Ben-Lomond;
but Mackenzie's calculating eye gauged more
nearly to the truth.

"I would say it's two thousand feet, or
a wee bit more," he said, and his friends
laughed at the incongruous use of the word
"wee" in such a connection.

They found that the scarp over which the
torrent poured extended for miles on each
side.  It appeared to be almost perpendicular,
though away to the left it became more
broken.  On the right, except for one or two
steep and rugged spurs, it was one continuous
wall of rock.

The path they had followed round the
western shore of the lake brought them to a
small wooden bridge spanning an inflowing
stream.  It somewhat resembled the bridge
delineated in the well-known willow pattern.
To this the raft of timber was moored.
Evidently it was part of the plan for
maintaining the secrecy of the hill community
that purchasers and vendors should come
into contact as seldom as possible; or
perhaps the woodcutters' own fear of the Eye
kept them from approaching nearer to the
dwelling of the "little men."  No doubt the
timber would presently be fetched, and drawn
along the stream into the lake, and thence to
its destination.

The three men looked around for some
signs of human habitation, but discovered
none.  A rough roadway, however, led from
the bridge along the base of the precipice
towards the fall, which appeared to be about
half a mile distant.  After a brief
consultation they decided to make their way along
this road.  To be prepared for possible
danger they first laid down their
impedimenta and unslung their rifles.  Then they
set off, Forrester leading with the shikari.

After a while the path rose somewhat
steeply on the face of the cliff, and they soon
saw that it passed underneath the fall itself,
the torrent of water forming a gigantic arch.
When they arrived beneath this they found
themselves in a dim twilight, the glassy
sea-green surface of the watery arch reflecting a
pallid hue upon their faces.  They were
perfectly dry, except for some flecks of spray
dashed upon them from the base of the fall.
At this spot they were three or four hundred
feet above the surface of the lake, which
boiled and foamed like an angry sea
immensely magnified.  The din was terrific;
even the loudest shout would scarcely have
been audible.

At their first entrance into this segmental
tunnel Hamid Gul shrank back, appalled by
the noise, the falling water, and the immense,
tattered sheet of spray that rose from the
seething cauldron hundreds of feet below.
But seeing that his employers were pressing
forward he pulled himself together, and
hurried on close at Mackenzie's heels.  The
width of the path had diminished to a bare
three feet, and as the party crept along it
they instinctively clung to the wall of rock
on their left hand.  A strange attraction was
exercised by the smooth arch of falling water;
on their right, inducing the same kind of
vertigo which most people experience when
looking down from giddy heights.

So they passed through the furlong of
tunnel.  A hundred yards or so beyond the
eastern end the path began to slope
downwards as steeply as it had ascended on the
other side, and within a short space the party
found themselves once more almost on a level
with the lake.  Then the path came to an
abrupt end, disappearing into the water that
washed the base of the perpendicular cliff.
Here they halted; it seemed that they could
go no farther, that they must retrace their
steps and explore in the other direction.

They could not make themselves heard one
by another, but Mackenzie signed to the rest
to stand fast; he remembered that beyond
the bridge behind them there was no road
except that which skirted the lake, and drew
the reasonable inference that the path by
which they had come must, after all, lead
somewhere.  It occurred to him to test the
depth of the water.  Finding that it was no
more than two feet, he took off his boots,
rolled up his putties, and started to wade.
In a few seconds he turned and beckoned to
his companions.  They followed his example,
and on joining him found that he had come
to a sharp corner of the precipice, which was
cut at this point by an extraordinary rift.
At the entrance it was perhaps forty feet
wide.  The sides were straighter and even
nearer to the perpendicular than the face of
the cliff bordering the lake.  They gazed
upwards in astonishment at the immense
height.  The top was so far above them that
the sides seemed almost to touch, leaving
only a narrow slit.  Peering into the cleft,
they saw nothing beyond the first hundred
yards or so.  Little light filtered through the
opening at the top, and the floor of the rift
was illuminated more and more faintly as
the sides converged.

Our party stood there in mute amazement.
Mackenzie was the only one of them who
knew anything of geology: a Scot always
knows something of everything; and he
surmised that the rift was the result of some
Titanic disruption of the earth in an age long
past.  It was as though the mass of solid
rock had been rent asunder by a gigantic
wedge, impelled by a Cyclopean hammer--such
a hammer as Thor wields in the Norse myths.

It seemed of little use to enter the rift.  No
mortal men could make that their abode.
But on passing beyond the entrance they
soon found that further passage along the
edge of the lake was impossible.  The water
still came right up to the face of the cliff,
and the pathway--if it was a pathway--which
they were treading sank ever deeper beneath
the surface.  There was nothing for it but
to hark back, unless they were prepared to
swim.  Jackson suggested that possibly some
side path branched from the rift, leading by
a steep zigzag ascent to the summit of this
strange precipice.

Retracing their steps accordingly, they
turned into the rift, donned their boots, and
marched forward.  The floor sloped gently
upwards, the walls converged until the space
between them was barely half what it had
been at the entrance.  Pressing on, they
became aware that the rift was not straight,
as they had believed.  A sharp bend brought
them upon a sight that caused them to halt,
peer nervously upward and in front, and
tighten their grasp upon their rifles.  Three
canoes lay tandem against the right-hand side
of the rift--harmless objects in themselves,
but rather perturbing as indications that
men were somewhere in the neighbourhood.
They were obviously intended for
transporting persons across the lake without the
necessity of making the passage under the
fall.  In the dim light they would scarcely
have been visible from the entrance, even
had the rift been straight; the bend
effectually concealed them.

Once more the party halted.  Shut in as
they were by the high, close walls, the sound
of the waterfall came to them now only as
a dull rumble; but when they spoke it was
in whispers.  Apart from the risk of being
heard by an unseen enemy, there was an
atmosphere of mystery and awesomeness that
weighed oppressively on their minds.

"What are we to do?" asked Jackson.

"Go on!" Forrester replied, firmly.  "We
can hardly be seen.  The sides are so smooth
and straight that no one could perch
anywhere to molest us, except at the corners.
We must be on our guard there."

"But surely no one can live here!  Nothing
could grow; there doesn't even appear
to be moss on the rock, and the air's as stuffy
as in a cave."

"Man, don't argufy!" said Mackenzie.
"Straight ahead!"

They continued their course.  Every now
and again the rift turned sharply to one side
or the other, and the smooth floor, unimpeded
by loose rocks or boulders, always ascended,
more and more steeply as they advanced.
Strangely enough, the higher they went the
stuffier the air became, and the deeper their
sense of oppression, or rather, perhaps, of
nervous strain.  Mackenzie, who had once
been down a coal-mine in Lanarkshire,
suspected the presence of poisonous gases.

"There can't be fire-damp," he murmured,
"but it may be carbonic acid.  Bide
a wee while I strike a match."

But this fear was dispelled when the flame
burned brightly for a second or two.  He
extinguished it abruptly.

"Hoots!  I'm an ass!" he said.  "Someone
may have seen the light; and if there are
men about, I'd rather see them first than
they us."

"My skin is tingling just as if I'd got a
grip of the terminals of a battery," Jackson
remarked.

"It's uncanny, and that's a fact," said
Mackenzie.  "But look, man!  What's
that?" he added, in a startled whisper,
clutching Forrester by the arm with one
hand, and pointing ahead with the other.

His comrades closed upon him, and peered
into the semi-obscurity, their heads almost
touching.  A little to one side of them stood
Sher Jang, impassive as ever, though he held
his rifle with both hands, and his muscles
were as taut as a bent spring.  Behind,
Hamid Gul's one eye bulged from its socket
as he tiptoed to look over his master's
shoulder.

A few yards to their front the rift made
one of the sudden bends that formed such
strange features of its course.  It struck to
the right at a sharp angle, so that the wall
which had been on their left hand became
almost perpendicular to their line of march.
On its smooth rocky face, some eighteen or
twenty feet above the ground, an
extraordinary procession was moving across their
line of vision from right to left, like shadows
cast faintly upon a screen.  The leading
figure was that of a skeleton, clothed about
with a misty body shaped like a man in
tourist costume: a tall frame, the bones
standing out in black relief from the midst
of a faint penumbra.  Behind this trotted
the skeleton forms of a number of almost
naked dwarfs, no more than four feet in
height, each bearing a spear upon his
shoulder.  At the rear came a second
full-sized figure, taking long strides, like a
schoolmaster at the tail of a line of boys.  The
shadowy surround of his skeleton widened
towards the bottom like an academic gown.
The watchers held their breath, amazed at
the weirdness of the dim shapes, and still
more at the manner of their progress.  There
were no steps to be seen in the face of the
cliff, yet the gait of the procession was
unmistakably that of men descending a steep
stairway.  Foot by foot they moved
downwards on their diagonal path; one by one
they reached the floor of the rift; then,
instead of walking along it towards the
spectators, they seemed to descend into the
earth, and in a few moments disappeared
from view.  Not a sound had accompanied
them; no tramp of footsteps, no clash of
weapons.

Drawing a long breath, the white men,
tense and watchful, waited a little for some
sign of their reappearance, but nothing more
was seen.  If the strange people had
observed the group of onlookers, they had paid
no heed to them.  At last, Mackenzie hurried
forward to search for the steps and the
subterranean passage to which they gave
access.  The rest of the party followed him,
save Hamid Gul, who remained as one
transfixed, shivering with awe.

When they came to the wall they were
thrown into a state of utter consternation.
The surface of the rock was wholly unbroken;
there was neither stairway nor passage into
the ground--the cliff was as smooth as
polished granite.  They looked upwards, to
the right along the rift; they passed their
hands over the face of the rock, struck it
here and there, probed with their rifles the
floor--all was apparently solid.  An
uncomfortable feeling of creepiness stole over them.
What mysterious secret lurked in this gloomy
cleft in the mountain?

None of them had yet uttered a word.
When Forrester spoke, it was in a whisper.

"Were they shadows?" he asked.

They turned about and looked back along
the rift.  There was no light between the
walls.  Far above, the sunlight illumined
their summits, a bright streak in the gloom.
But no shadow could have been cast so low.

"Och!" exclaimed Mackenzie, shaking
himself.  "We cannot get to the bottom of
yon.  Come away!"

Every man of them, without confessing
it to the others, was thinking of the singular
things they had heard in the forest village.
Their minds were oppressed by the villagers'
superstitious dread; it required an effort to
proceed with the march, leaving this uncanny
incident unexplained.  But they braced
themselves at Mackenzie's words.  Whatever
the explanation of the procession might
be, it argued the presence of beings other
than themselves in the cleft or its neighbourhood;
and the remembrance of their errand
nerved them to go on.  If Captain Redfern's
unfortunate companion were indeed held
captive in this mysterious region, it appeared
that they must look forward to something
more than a straight fight; but they could
not allow themselves to be daunted by
apparitions, which, after all, might have a
simple explanation.

When they resumed their march it was
with more caution than before.  Despite
themselves, they had a sense of being
watched, of something impending, almost
of helplessness, strange though this
sensation was to their robust Western minds.
Almost unconsciously they kept closer
together, holding their rifles ready in one hand,
and unbuttoning their revolvers with the
other.  Only Hamid Gul walked alone.  He
followed with trembling knees some yards in
the rear, wishing that he had courage enough
to run back to the entrance, where there were
at least space and air.

They turned to the right with the rift.
Soon the walls began to converge, and the
twilight grew dimmer and dimmer.  At one
spot the passage was scarcely eight feet wide.
Beyond this it broadened again, and the
light improved.  Then, with startling
suddenness, the silence behind them was broken
by a harsh sound that caused them to jump
round in a tingle of apprehension.  It was
like the rattling of heavy chains, followed
by a loud grating squeak, and a second or
two later by a metallic clang that echoed
ominously in the narrow rift.  The echoes
died away; all was again silent.

Mackenzie had already started back, a
vague inkling of what had happened freezing
him to the marrow.  In the semi-darkness
he collided with Hamid Gul, who let out a
yell and dropped his rifle, which fell with
resounding crash on the ground.  The others
hurried close on Mackenzie's heels.  He
reached the narrow passage recently left,
and here, in the greater obscurity, he came
full tilt against an obstacle that barred the
way.  His rifle clashed against it, and when
his friends joined him they found that their
escape was cut off by a huge iron shutter
that filled the whole width of the passage.

Mackenzie struck a match, and held it
aloft.  To their dismay they saw that the
shutter was at least twenty feet high.  It
fitted into grooves on either side and in the
floor beneath, which the darkness had not
allowed them to see when they passed a
few minutes before.  Its surface was
decorated with an elaborate and fantastic design,
the prevailing note of which was a monstrous
eye, which glared with a singularly sinister
effect in several parts of the pattern.  The
upper part of the shutter was attached to
two heavy chain cables, one on each side of
the rift.  These cables seemed to disappear
into the walls another twenty feet or so
above; but from the position of the trapped
party, with the poor aid of match-light, it
was impossible to see beyond the points at
which the chains appeared to enter the rock.
Lighting several matches together, however,
Mackenzie held them high above his head,
and the flame glinted for a moment upon a
dark face peering down upon them over the
top of the shutter.  It was visible only for
an instant, then it was gone; but in that
instant the three men felt the culminating
shock of amazement.  In those features--the
high cheekbones, the slanting eyes, the
long, thin, grey moustache--they thought
they recognised the countenance of the elder
of the two Chinamen who had been the
companions of their march--the man whom the
bemused lad had called Wen Shih.

.. _`The flame glinted for a moment on a dark face peering down upon them over the top of the shutter`:

.. figure:: images/img-099.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: The flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering down at them from over the shutter. It was visible only for an instant, but the three recognized with amazement the face of the man called Wen Shih.

   The flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering down at them from over the shutter. It was visible only for an instant, but the three recognized with amazement the face of the man called Wen Shih.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`EUTHANASIA`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium

   EUTHANASIA

.. vspace:: 2

"Did you see yon?" cried Mackenzie,
turning to the others.

"The Chinky!" gasped Jackson, under
his breath.

"Och, man! there's no need to moderate
your voice.  We've no hobgoblins or
supernatural beings of any kind whatever to deal
with, but just that ruffian of a fellow I've had
my suspicions about all along.  That's an
established fact."

Mackenzie spoke loudly and emphatically;
he was indeed a little sore at the recollection
of his own uneasiness.  To his practical mind
the secret stairway and the mysterious
procession counted for nothing against the solid
fact that here was the Chinaman whom he
had mistrusted.

"He has shut us in," he added.  "Well,
he may be sorry for it yet.  We'll just gang
on, my laddies."

"But how about getting back?" asked Jackson.

"Eh, now!  That's not a practical question.
The shutter is a sort of portcullis, you
may say, defending a sort of castle.  Well,
we will assume that this Beresford man is a
prisoner in the castle.  To get him out, the
first thing was to get in ourselves.  That we
have done.  What's more, we can't get
out just at present, and, speaking for myself,
I'll not go out without Beresford, if he's alive."

"I'm with you, Mac," said Forrester.
"But, after all, we don't know that Beresford
is here."

"We don't *know*, but there's good warrant
for the suspicion.  D'ye ken what I've been
thinking?  Beresford and the other man
happened upon some secret here about, and
the inhabitants--Chinese, by the look of
it--collared them to prevent the secret getting
abroad.  That ruffian guessed from our line
of march that we were coming here, just
out of curiosity, maybe, for he couldn't have
known anything about Beresford----"

"Unless he was here at the time, and left
after Redfern's escape," Forrester suggested.

"Ah!  That didn't occur to me.  Anyway,
he gave us the slip in the scrub back
yonder just to prepare for our reception
if we came along, and I acknowledge that
the nature of our reception is a disagreeable
surprise."

"Whatever the motive for detaining Beresford
may be, it applies to us, too," said
Forrester.

"True, and therefore we'll have to watch
out.  It's a difficult situation."

"They might starve us, or murder us,
or anything," said Jackson, somewhat
nervously.

"There's just one thing against that,"
returned Mackenzie, "and that's the fact
that our carriers are not with us.  The
Chinky knows that; he'll guess, or discover,
that they're waiting for us in the village
away yonder, and fear that if we don't
return they'll hie back to Dibrugarh, and
give the alarm."

"What do you think he'll do, then?"
Forrester asked.

"Keep us here until we're starved or cowed
into submission, and then let us go under a
vow to say nothing at all.  But it's no good
speculating.  We're in the castle; the first
thing is to explore it.  Come away!"

There seemed nothing better to be done.
The party turned their backs on the shutter,
and once more marched along the rift.  The
events of the last half-hour had made
Mackenzie more uneasy than he cared to
admit; but as the most level-headed of the
party he felt the necessity of keeping up
the spirits of his companions, and resolutely
tried to conquer his misgivings.

They pushed on through the rift, searching
the wall on either side for signs of an outlet;
but the rock was still as smooth as heretofore.
At last a couple of unusually sharp
bends brought them to another constricted
passage, which, like the one behind them,
was closed by an iron shutter.  Checked by
this, they stood for a few moments in absolute
silence, looking at one another without any
attempt to disguise their alarm.  The
distance between the two shutters was, perhaps,
120 yards.  On each side rose an unscalable
wall.  They were prisoners, as it were, at
the bottom of a well.

The silence was broken by a wail from
Hamid Gul.  It served to brace up the white men.

"Whisht!" exclaimed Mackenzie.  "Wait
while I strike a light."

He kindled a match, and raised it above
his head.

"This shutter is not so high as the other,"
he said.  "We've just got to climb over it."

"How?" asked Forrester.  "It's twelve
or fourteen feet high, and as smooth as a
board.  There's nothing to stand on."

"Except our shoulders," Mackenzie
retorted.  "Here, Sher Jang, you're the
broadest of us.  Come and stand just here.
I'll mount you; then, Bob, you're the
slimmest, you swarm up.  On my shoulders
you'll be able to see over.  Take the matches.
Keep a look-out, Dick, and if you see anyone
above threaten mischief, just fire off your
revolver--not to hit him, you understand.
Diplomacy comes before war."

Sher Jang stooped while Mackenzie
mounted his back, then slowly rose to his
full height.  Mackenzie rested his hands
on the shutter, and Jackson clambered up
the human pedestal, and grasped the top
of the iron gate.

Next moment he fell back with a stifled
cry.  Mackenzie caught him in his arms;
but his weight was too much for the stability
of the column.  It tottered, and all three
men fell sprawling on the ground.

"The top was red hot!" cried Jackson,
lifting himself and rubbing his elbow.

"Hold up your hands, man!" cried
Mackenzie, picking up the fallen box of
matches.  He struck a light and examined
Jackson's palms.  "Your nerves are all
to pieces," he added.  "Yon's no red hot,
or your hands would be blistered and branded
red.  There's something in it, though.
Look here, Dick!"

They saw a faint purple streak about an
inch wide across the middle of the fingers
of each hand.

"Any pain now?" asked Forrester.

"No; only a sort of tingle," Jackson
replied, feeling a little ashamed of himself.
"I was taken by surprise, but it really is hot."

"I'll have a try," said Forrester.  "Get
up again, Mac."

Once more Mackenzie stood on the shikari's
shoulders, and Forrester clambered up as
Jackson had done.  Forewarned, he did
not start back and upset the balance when
he touched the top of the shutter; but he
removed his fingers from it quickly, and
called out that it was certainly very
hot--too hot to grasp while he hauled himself
over.  He slid down, Mackenzie leapt to the
ground, and they looked at one another in a
sort of despair.

"Can't we blow down the shutter with
our cartridges?" Forrester at length suggested.

"We might not succeed, and, anyway, it
would be a loss of ammunition we may badly
need before long," replied Mackenzie.

"What in the world are we to do?" muttered
Jackson, peering about him anxiously.

"The fact is----" Forrester was beginning;
but at this moment they were all
startled, and yet relieved, at hearing a
human cry from above them.

"Who's that?" Mackenzie called, lifting
a lighted match above his head.  For a
moment they searched the face of the rock
in vain; but then the light struck dimly
upon a head, projecting, as it were, out of
the solid wall thirty feet above them.  They
could distinguish neither shape nor feature,
but before the match went out they saw a
second head projecting, like a gargoyle from
a Gothic wall, close beside the first.

"Who's that?" Mackenzie called again.

"Gentlemen!"

The word floated down eerily; it was as
though a gargoyle were speaking; and the
voice was that of the younger Chinaman
whom they knew--high pitched, yet low
in tone, hardly more than a whisper.

"Gentlemen," he said, "the August and
Venerable welcomes you to his sanctuary.
Uninvited you come, but none the less are
you welcome.  The August and Venerable
will extend to you such hospitality as lies
within his means.  But it is not meet that
armed parties should enter the holy precincts.
Be content, therefore; withdraw to the
lower gate, and leave your weapons there.
When you return, this upper gate will be
opened to you, and I shall have the honour
and privilege of introducing you to the
Presence."

This speech was delivered in the dull,
dreamy, expressionless tone which had
characterised all the young man's utterances,
except in those few tense minutes succeeding
his rescue from the elephant--the monotonous
sing-song of a child nervously reciting
a lesson.

"The 'Presence' is that one-armed rascal
beside him, I suppose," whispered Forrester.
"The poor weed says what he is told to say.
What's our answer?"

"We're in an awkward fix," Jackson
began, but Mackenzie cut him short.

"Things aren't so hopeless as that," he
said, quickly.  "We'll not part with our
arms--our only protection.  We don't know
when we may need them.  I'll answer the
fellow."  Raising his voice, he said: "We
refuse to lay down our arms.  We have no
hostile intentions--we're as meek as lambs--but
the shutting of the gates is a dashed
unfriendly act, and makes us mighty doubtful
about our welcome.  Lift this gate, and
lead us to the presence of the August and
Venerable.  We demand an audience with him."

His comrades thought that a more
conciliatory manner and more formal phrases
might have served them better, but they said
nothing.  There was no reply from above;
they supposed that the young Chinaman was
translating to his master, though they heard
no sound.  It was too dark to see the heads
without artificial light; and after a minute
or two had passed in silence Mackenzie
struck a match, and held it so that its light
would fall on the spot where the shapes had
been seen.  But the wall was blank; the
gargoyles had disappeared.

"What's going on now?" Forrester murmured.

"Maybe they're sending someone to work
the machinery," answered Mackenzie.

They waited silently, expecting every
moment to hear the harsh grating of the
rising shutter, and the rattle of the chains.
But minutes passed, and there was no sound
except the hard panting breaths of Hamid
Gul.  Gradually, however, they became
conscious of a strange feeling of oppression.
The mustiness of the air, which they had
felt ever since they entered the rift, became
impregnated with a subtle new odour.  At
first they paid little attention to it, merely
remarking on it one to another.  But
presently Jackson began to sway on his feet.

"I feel funny," he said, slowly.  "Getting--awfully--sleepy."

"Hold up, man!" said Mackenzie,
sharply, as Jackson staggered against him.
"Dick, take him by the arm; we'll walk
him about."

"If I can," returned Forrester.  "I feel
uncommonly drowsy, too."

They took Jackson by the arms, and led
him down the rift in the direction of the
first shutter.  A few yards away they passed
Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the
ground.  With growing alarm Mackenzie
tried to hurry the pace, but his companions
became moment by moment heavier on
his hands.  After a minute or two he let
Jackson's arm go without knowing it.  In
a few seconds more his grip of Forrester
loosened, and he walked on two or three
paces alone.  Then he, too, fell a prey to
the overmastering influence of the atmosphere.

.. _`a few yards away, they came upon Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground`:

.. figure:: images/img-110.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Taking Jackson by the arms, they led him down the rift, and a few yards away, they came upon Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground.

   Taking Jackson by the arms, they led him down the rift, and a few yards away, they came upon Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground.

"Hold up, I'm telling you!" he muttered,
staggering and reaching out with his hands.

Next moment, without volition of his
own, he sat down on the ground, striving, like
a man half drunk, to keep himself erect,
and declaring to himself that he was "quite
all right."  But his hands fell limply to his
sides, his body swayed gently, his head
nodded, and in a few seconds he, like the
rest, was prone in unconsciousness.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LAW OF THE EYE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium

   THE LAW OF THE EYE

.. vspace:: 2

Some two hours later, Mackenzie awoke,
heaving a great sigh.

"Hech!  But I've a sore head the morn,"
he murmured, rubbing his eyes drowsily as
he looked around him.  The sight of bare
blank walls instead of the walls of his
bungalow, decorated with colour plates from
the illustrated papers, caused him to sit up
suddenly and rub his eyes again.  It was a
minute or two before full consciousness and
the recollection of recent incidents returned
to him.  Then he remembered that his last
waking moments had been spent in the rift;
but he had awaked in a stone-walled, stone-floored
cell, cubical in shape, and ten feet in
each dimension.

His comrades, still asleep, lay at full
stretch on the floor, on either side of him.

"Eh, Dick!  Bob! waken yourselves," he called.

There was no response.

He got up, moved, somewhat totteringly,
to Forrester, and prodded him in the ribs.

"Waken!" he called again.  "Man,
what's wrong with you?"

He gazed anxiously into his friend's face
as Forrester slowly opened his eyes.
Turning away, he hastened to Jackson, poked
him, bawled in his ear, felt his pulse; then,
assured that he was not dead, as he had
begun to fear, raised him in his arms and
shook him vigorously.

"Haven't got the ball, you ass!" Jackson
spluttered.

"This isn't rugger, old man," said
Forrester with a light laugh, coming to his
side.  "Wake up and see where the beggars
have carried us."

Jackson recovered his wits more tardily
than the others.

"His face is green," Forrester whispered
uneasily.

"So is yours," said Mackenzie.

"And yours too, by Jove!" cried
Forrester, after a good look at him.  "What
the mischief have they been doing to us?"

"I cannot say.  I know that my head is sore."

"I've a headache, if that's what you
mean," said Forrester.

"So have I, splitting," added Jackson,
sitting up, but still resting his hands on the
floor.  "By Jinks, the stone is warm!"

"It is that," said Mackenzie, feeling it.
"They're wishful we shan't take a chill, by
the look of it."

They gazed around their narrow chamber.
Walls and floor appeared to be of solid rock.
In the centre of one wall was a door of stout
timber, without lock or handle.  High in
another was an opening, like the arrow slits
in medieval castles, through which a white
light filtered.

"Get on my back, Dick, and keek out,"
said Mackenzie.

In a moment Forrester was mounted.

"I see nothing but a blank wall twenty
feet away," he called down.  "And not
much of that.  It looks like the wall of the
rift.  I tell you what: this room must be
cut out of the wall this side.  When you
called it a castle, you spoke better than you
knew, Mac."

"Ay, so it seems," Mackenzie replied, as
Forrester sprang down.  "But I'm fair
flummoxed.  The room's perfectly light,
though yon slit isn't more than twelve by
two.  Where does the light come from?
It's greenish, too, which accounts for our
delicate complexions.  And look! you see that?"

He pointed to the faint shadow of a fourth
human figure that passed across the wall
opposite to the window.  It flitted through
their own shadows, and disappeared.

A moment's glance assured them that it
had not been cast from without; yet the
wall appeared solid, in no degree transparent.

There was no furniture in the room.
Silently they sat upon the floor, watching
the wall nervously for a return of the
mysterious inexplicable shadow.  But it
did not reappear.  The strange light, the
stranger apparition, brought back upon them
redoubled the uneasiness they had felt ever
since they entered the rift, and especially
after seeing the ghostly procession on the
wall.  At that moment they could have
believed that they lay in the haunt of some
necromancer, whose magic art might
manifest itself in terrors unconceived.

"They must have hocussed us," murmured
Forrester at length, his thoughts
reverting to his last conscious moments in
the rift.

"Ay, put us to sleep with some narcotic
gas," said Mackenzie.  "What'll they do next?"

"What have they done with our men?"
said Jackson.

"Separated the goats from the sheep,"
replied Mackenzie sardonically.  "They are
evidently respecters of persons!"

"But----"

Forrester's voice ceased.  The door had
swung open, and there entered two small
black men, almost wholly naked, with the
uncouth bodies, hideous features, and coarse
woolly hair of the wild pigmy races.  Each
carried a large bowl, one containing water,
the other a sticky mess resembling porridge,
and three spoons.  Through the open
doorway, in a brighter greenish light, the
prisoners descried a group of similar negroes,
armed with short spears and knives, like the
dwarfs of the procession.  The two
food-bearers laid down the bowls and went out
silently, the door swung to, a bolt grated in
its sockets, and the prisoners were again
alone.

Forrester bent over the larger bowl,
smelling its contents.

"D'you think it's poisoned?" he asked.

"No, no," replied Mackenzie.  "They
wouldn't keep us alive to poison us out of
hand.  I'm for having a go.  We've had
nothing to eat since noon."

He spooned up a quantity of the stuff and
tasted it.

"Sticky but not bad: would be the better
of a pinch of salt.  Hunger is the best
condiment; dip your spoons."

By the time they had finished their meal
and emptied both the bowls the daylight
had faded, and the window slit was black.
Yet the greenish rays that pervaded the
room were as strong as ever.  They sat
discussing the strange phenomenon.  Mackenzie
advanced the theory that the rock was
phosphorescent, and Jackson claimed that he had
disproved it when, after rubbing his hand on
the warm floor, there was no emanation of
light from his fingers.  Presently, tired out,
and lulled by the warm close air, they fell
asleep.

They were awakened by finding themselves
gently shaken.  The door had been silently
opened, and two visitors were in the room.
The prisoners recognised them at once.
They were the two Chinamen with whom
they had unforgettable links.

"Arise!" said the lad in his hushed
faltering tone.  "Arise!  The August and
Venerable commands you to his presence."

"The August and Venerable isn't this one-armed
villain after all," whispered Forrester.
"We must go with them: there's no help
for it."

They noticed that the one-armed man had
changed his dress.  He wore now a long,
white, full-sleeved garment with a green
girdle about his waist.  He signed to them
to precede him through the open doorway.
On passing out into a vaulted corridor, which,
like their room, seemed to have been hewn
out of the solid rock, they found awaiting
them an escort of a dozen little black men
like those they had already seen, and similarly
armed.  They followed them through corridor
after corridor, the floors of which sloped
gradually upward, then into a kind of
ante-chamber, and finally into a huge rectangular
hall.  The greenish light had grown stronger
and stronger as they proceeded, and the
hall was brilliantly illuminated, though the
illumination had no visible source.  Like
diffused daylight, when the sun has gone
down, it came apparently from no definite
direction: it was everywhere.

At first the three white men took in no
details of the scene before them.  They were
dazzled by the brightness, oppressed with a
sense of mystery, an apprehension of they
knew not what, the dead silence that
prevailed.  But when their first sensations had
passed, they gazed about them with a tingling
curiosity.  The walls, glowing with the
all-pervading greenish light, were decorated with
Chinese designs.  The predominant feature
of the scheme was a figure which at first
sight might have been mistaken for the
conventional Chinese dragon; but, on closer
examination, it seemed to the spectators to
resemble more nearly the reconstruction of
some prehistoric sea-monster, such as
European zoologists have attempted on the basis
of fossil discoveries.  The figures were
arranged in a regular order.  Some were
large, some small, but all were of the same
type, and they were rendered more life-like,
and at the same time more hideous, by the
fact that their eyes glowed with a green
light much more intense than the light that
filled the hall itself.

Silent though it was, the hall was not
unpeopled.  Drawn up in two crescent ranks
stood, motionless as statues, perhaps two
hundred Chinamen, young and old.  The
cheeks of all alike were clean shaven, but
there were differences between the first two
ranks.  The heads of those in the first were
absolutely hairless: their scalps shone like
balls of old polished ivory.  They were clad
in long sleeveless robes resembling
ecclesiastical copes, white with an edging of gold,
and a large blue monster, like those on the
walls, ramping across the middle of the
back.  The men in the second row were
moustachioed, and had a topknot of hair.
Their principal garment was a full-sleeved
tunic, white also, but without embroidery
of any kind.  It was among these that
Wen Shih, the one-armed Chinaman, placed
himself after leaving his young compatriot
and the three Englishmen with their escort
just inside the doorway.

The silent assembly faced a huge dais
or throne at the farther end of the hall,
rising six or eight feet from the floor.  It
was of Chinese design; the material of which
it was made shone like gold; and its surface
was marked with images of the symbolic
monster, sculptured in high relief.

The Englishmen noticed that, immediately
opposite the throne, there was a gap in the
ranks of the company, eight or ten paces
wide.  Beyond this gap--that is, nearer to
the end of the hall at which they had
entered--stood a low pedestal, like the
pedestal of a statue.  But there was no
statue upon it.  Nor was the throne occupied.
The eyes of the silent throng, indeed,
appeared to be fixed on a doorway in the
wall behind and above the throne.  It was
covered with a cream-coloured hanging
of some rich material, ornamented with
monsters embroidered in gold.  From it to
the rear of the throne a broad stairway led.

The hush of expectancy which brooded
over the whole assembly seized upon the
three strangers.  Their fascinated eyes were
drawn as by some magnetic attraction to the
curtained doorway.  Not one of them was
tempted to speak: they were possessed by
awe the same in kind as that which holds
the worshippers in some vast cathedral.

Presently they became aware of a trembling
in the air immediately above the throne,
like that which is sometimes seen above the
funnel of a locomotive engine at rest.  By
degrees a screen of mist, delicate as muslin,
formed itself in front of the throne, the
outlines of which became blurred and were
finally blotted out altogether.  There was a
momentary rustle, like the breaking of surf
upon a long shore; then the same deathly
stillness; the Chinamen had bent forward
simultaneously with the precision of trained
soldiers, until their brows touched the floor.
Of all the men in the hall, only the three
Englishmen at the end stood upright upon
their feet.

They gazed in mute amazement, tensely
awaiting the explanation of this
extraordinary scene.  Presently they caught the
gleam of gold through the shimmering screen;
the mist slowly dispersed; the outlines of
the throne were once more clear and distinct;
and they thrilled as with an electric shock
when they beheld, seated motionless upon
the throne, a remarkable figure.

It was the figure of an old, old man, low
in stature, bent and frail, but indued with a
certain impressiveness and majesty.  A long
ivory-hued cope, stiff with gold, and
emblazoned with purple monsters, descended
to his feet, concealing a frame which the
three spectators divined to be spare and
emaciated.  His head was covered with a
towering head-dress like a bishop's mitre,
but loftier, fantastically shaped, and
gleaming with gold and jewels.

But the eyes of the beholders were drawn
away from his gorgeous trappings to his
countenance.  Ivory pale, lined and wizened
with great age, it was rendered strangely
impressive by the eyes, which beamed with
the lustre and brilliance of youth.  His
glance passed over the prostrate forms of
the assembly, and fastened for one brief
moment on the three straight figures at the
end of the hall.  Then in a clear bell-like
voice, surprising in so old a man, he uttered
one word.  The men prostrate below him
rose to their feet; there was a brief pause;
then for the space of several minutes a sort
of litany was chanted, the old man reciting
a sentence, the others making responses in
monotone.  There was no gesture, no
movement save the motions of their lips.

When the litany came to an end, at a
word from the old man Wen Shih left his
place in the second rank, and approached
the Englishmen.  He made them understand
by signs that they were to accompany
him to the foot of the throne.  Moving as
under a spell, they passed through the gap,
scarcely conscious of the eyes of the men
around, and halted a few paces from the
seated patriarch.  Wen Shih returned to his
place.  All was silent as the grave.

The old man gazed fixedly at them for a
moment, and his searching look, bright as
an eagle's, yet cold and paralysing, filled
them with a chill foreboding.  His lips
moved, and in spite of themselves they
started in amazement as they heard the first
words that fell.

"What brings you striplings here?"

.. _`His lips moved, and in spite of themselves they started as they heard his first words: "What brings you striplings here?"`:

.. figure:: images/img-123.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: His lips moved, and in spite of themselves they started as they heard his first words: "What brings you striplings here?"

   His lips moved, and in spite of themselves they started as they heard his first words: "What brings you striplings here?"

The face was Chinese, beyond possibility
of error; but the words were English,
slowly spoken, with only a faint trace of a
foreign accent.  The tone was authoritative,
compelling, that of one who would not be
gainsaid.  Forrester, always the readiest of
the three, felt instinctively that no
prevarication would avail, that the best chance
of coming safely through whatever ordeal
was before them lay in perfect frankness.
Steadying his voice, and looking up into
the old man's face, he explained, so rapidly
that his words as it were tumbled over one
another, that he had come with his comrades
for the purpose of liberating a fellow
countryman whom they believed to be held captive
in this region, and he begged that the prisoner
might be surrendered, and that all might be
suffered to depart in peace.

The old man's countenance was utterly
expressionless.  It gave as little sign as a
mask of what was passing through his mind.
Forrester having ended, somewhat breathlessly,
the low mellow voice spoke again.

"All are welcome to the Temple of the
Eye.  I repel none, I invite none.  Those
who come by their own choice, or are led
hither by the hand of Fate, must abide by
their choice, or by Fate's decree.  The rest
of their lives hereafter must they spend in
the service of the Temple, fulfilling such
offices as they may be best fitted to
undertake.  That is the Law of the Eye."

His utterance was slow and deliberate, like
that of a man searching for words at one
time familiar, but now half forgotten.  The
cold dispassionate tones struck a chill upon
the listeners' hearts.  They had in them the
ring of finality, of inexorableness: the old
man might have been the very mouthpiece
of Fate pronouncing doom.

The three men felt the utter hopelessness
of argument or protest.  Their spirits, under
the spell of that calm silvery voice, died
within them.  When Wen Shih came again
to them to lead them back to their former
station, they accompanied him with the
tranced meekness of men drugged for the
gallows.

A few moments after they reached the end
of the hall they were roused from their
stupor by the appearance of a small black
man, led between two bald white-clad
Chinamen like those in the first rank.  His limbs
were quivering, his teeth chattered; his
staring eyes regarded the awful Presence on
the throne with the same helpless terror as
a bird fascinated by the baleful eye of a
snake.  The priests of the Eye lifted him
on to the pedestal in a line with the gap, and
fastened his collapsing form upright to a
light framework which they slid up from the
base.  Then they placed themselves on either
side, and made three low obeisances to the
venerable figure on the throne.

The man on the left uttered a few sentences
in Chinese, and bowed again.  His fellow
followed with a word or two.  It seemed to
the Englishmen that they were giving
testimony against the quivering figure on the
pedestal above them.  The second man
ceased, and made his obeisance; then both
took places quietly at the ends of the front
row near the gap.

The Englishmen expected that the
criminal, if such he was, would be called on
for his answer to the charges made against
him.  But the old man said never a word.
Amid a breathless stillness he arose slowly
and majestically to his feet.  Was he about
to pronounce judgment?  The Englishmen
wondered what the punishment was to be.
Recollections of the horrors of Chinese
torture made them quake; but there was no
sign of instruments of torture, no movement
in the silent ranks, except that they turned
and faced the victim.  Their garments
rustled, then all was still as before.

The old man moved his head from side
to side, the movements being so slight that
they might have passed unnoticed by any
one observing him less closely than the three
Englishmen.  Presently all motion ceased.
The silence seemed even deeper than before.
Then, with startling suddenness, from a
point in the old man's head-dress,
immediately above the centre of his brow, a swift
thin beam of bright green light flashed along
the hall, over the gap, past the pedestal,
and on to the wall.  It was gone in a
moment.  A low sound like the indrawing of
breath ran through the assembly.  A flicker
of emotion stirred the stolid faces of the
Chinamen; a look of horror distorted the
more expressive faces of the negrito guards.
And the Englishmen were suddenly aware
that the pedestal was vacant.  The limp
shrinking form had vanished; only a little
dust hung in the air.

While the Englishmen were still in their
amazement, the ranks faced about again,
and the two priests who had led the victim
to the spot drew near to it with the solemn
gait of acolytes.  One carried a golden
trowel, the other a small gold-handled brush.
Standing on either side of the pedestal, the
one swept a quantity of dust on its surface
into the trowel held by the other.  The
latter, holding the trowel at arm's length in
front of him, bore it slowly towards the
throne, and after a profound obeisance
offered it to the old man, and withdrew.
Lifting his skinny right arm, the old man
extended the trowel towards the assembled
priests, moved it from side to side, lightly
sprinkling the dust on the floor, and in his
cold clear voice spoke with impressive
deliberateness a single sentence.  Once more
the assembly fell prostrate, the air above the
throne quivered, and the mist gradually rose
before it, blotting it and its motionless
occupant from sight.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MONSTER ON THE WALL`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium

   THE MONSTER ON THE WALL

.. vspace:: 2

The three friends scarcely noticed what
followed on the disappearance of the old
man.  The priests filed out quietly, each
rank by a separate door.  Only Wen Shih
remained.  He came slowly to the end of
the hall, threw a contemptuous glance on
the young lad his late companion, who had
fallen swooning to the floor, and signed to
the Englishmen to follow him.  Accompanied
by the negrito guards, they quitted
the hall, and marched back through the
vaulted corridors.  They were not,
however, taken to the room which they had
lately left.  Mackenzie was led off by
himself to a somewhat smaller cell, and locked
in there, Jackson and Forrester being left,
meanwhile, under charge of the guards.
They in their turn were separately
incarcerated.  None of them knew anything of
the fate of Sher Jang and Hamid Gul.
The scene which they had just witnessed,
the climax of the series of mysterious
happenings of the past few hours, had completely
overwhelmed them.  They were incapable
of resistance, of protest, even of thought:
everything was subdued to a shuddering horror.

Mackenzie found himself in a chamber
differing from that which all three had
previously occupied in two respects: its
size, and the ornamentation of one of its
walls.  At first he was hardly aware of
this; but recovering his composure by and
by in the quiet of his solitary cell, he noticed
that the wall opposite the window slit bore
a representation of the strange monster
which was depicted on the walls of the hall.
But here again there was a difference.  The
hideous creature had, in addition to two
eyes normally placed, a third, in the centre
of the forehead, in the same position as the
spot on the old man's head-dress from which
the annihilating beam of light had sped.
The cell was dimly illuminated by the
mysterious green light, but the monster's
third eye glowed brilliantly, a lozenge of
vivid green.

Here, at last, Mackenzie thought, was the
explanation, or rather the confirmation, of
the villagers' vague statements about the
Eye.  It was a symbol of the power
presiding over this mountain community.  He
remembered having noticed a lozenge-shaped
ornament on the head-dress of the Old Man
of the Mountain; it was from this
ornament that the beam of light had appeared
to shoot.  But what was the origin of this
mysterious light?  What was the secret of
its tremendous devastating force, which in
a single moment had shattered the little
black man into a few handfuls of dust?

Mackenzie shuddered as he recalled the
scene.  This wizened old man, who appeared
in a mist, and into a mist vanished, who was
revered as a deity, who was judge and
executioner in one--who was he?  The sound
of his clear silvery voice rang still in
Mackenzie's ears.  He remembered the cold
remorseless words of his speech.  All who
came to the Temple of the Eye were doomed
to spend the rest of their lives in its service!
What did that mean?  What service was
exacted of the hapless wretches enthralled
to such a master?

He remembered too that the Old Man had
wholly ignored Forrester's reference to the
Englishman who, it was suggested, had
fallen into his hands.  Had the dust of
Beresford's destroyed body been already
scattered on the floor of this horrible temple,
or had he too been preserved for a lifelong
servitude?  Was he perhaps at this moment
lying in a cell, alone, crushed in spirit, asking
himself the same unanswerable questions?

Agitated beyond endurance, Mackenzie
got up and paced the floor.  As he walked,
he found himself glancing more and more
frequently, and each time for a longer period,
at the monster's green eye.  It exercised a
basilisk attraction: by and by he was
unable to withdraw his gaze from it.  He tried
to look elsewhere, to think of other things;
but always his eyes wandered back to the
one spot.  It glowed upon him with a sort
of hypnotic fascination, leering, as it seemed,
mocking him, a mute unwinking witness of
his despair.  Unable to endure the torment,
he turned his back upon it, threw himself
on the floor, and buried his face in his folded
arms.  And there at last, worn out in body
and mind, he fell into a sleep broken by
frightful dreams.

When he awoke his hand moved by force
of habit to his pocket for his watch.  It was
gone.  He felt in all his pockets: they had
been emptied.  Nothing but his clothes was
left to him.  Looking up at the window slit,
he saw sunlight streaming in; the greenish
hue had almost disappeared.  He rose, and
with a strong effort of will forced himself to
turn towards the wall on which the monster
was painted.  He almost shouted with relief
when he discovered that the third eye,
though still aglow, was much dimmer than
it had been in the night.  The sun had
conquered; the eye's baleful attraction was gone.

Presently the negrito guards brought him
his breakfast of water and the same glutinous
porridge as on the previous day.  He spoke
to them, first in English, then in
Hindustani, but they answered nothing; if they
understood him, they gave no sign of it.
An hour or two later they returned,
accompanied by one of the shaven priests, who
indicated that he was to follow them.  To
refuse, he knew, would be vain; but he
shivered with dread lest he were summoned
to witness another scene like that of the
night.  He found, however, that his fears
were not justified.  His guards took him
through miles, as it seemed, of narrow
corridors hewn in the rock, always ascending,
and brought him presently to an arch through
which the sunlight poured.  Passing out
into the open air, he saw with surprise that
he was at the foot of a steep stairway cut in
the face of the rift.  The steps, about a foot
wide, led to the summit, perhaps a hundred
feet above.  A rope, carried down a kind of
handrail, intervened between the passenger
and the abyss yawning more than a thousand
feet below.

The guards signified that he was at liberty
to ascend the stairs, and left him.  At first
he shrank from attempting the climb; his
experiences, and his restless night, ill fitted
him for any task that demanded steady
nerves.  But Mackenzie was a man of grit;
freedom, the fresh air, the pure sunshine
braced him; his curiosity was keen; and at
length, steadfastly averting his eyes from
the dizzy depth below, and clinging firmly
to the rope, he began to mount the stairway.

He gained the top, and an unexpected sight
met his wondering eyes.  Before him, and
on either side, stretched a broad plateau,
rising in the far distance to the mountains
of the snowy range, whose peaks, miles high,
glistened dazzlingly in the sunlight.  That
which surprised him most of all was that the
plateau was cultivated.  It was divided into
many rectangular fields, on which crops of
all kinds were growing, and herds of cattle
grazing.  The fresh green of the vegetation
was refreshing to his eyes after the greyness
of the barren rock on which they had rested
of late.  He saw now why the community
required supplies of wood from the outside.
There were no timber trees.  At his right
hand lay an extensive orchard, but nowhere
were to be seen trees that could be felled for
fuel or building.

In three directions there were groups of
huts, and people were moving about in the
fields.  They were evidently of many races.
There were dwarfish negritos like the Temple
guards, Chinese, Tibetans, Nagas and other
hillmen.  There were women and children,
but these seemed to be all negritos or
hill-folk: no Chinese women were among them.

Mackenzie remained for several minutes
at the top of the rock stairway, scanning the
whole prospect.  He was quite alone, apparently
free to move in any direction he pleased.
No one took notice of him.  When he moved
a few paces towards the nearest group of
huts, he looked around, expecting to find
that someone had been told off to watch
him.  The fact that such was not the case
induced a sense of utter hopelessness.  If he
was not guarded, the reason must be that
escape was impossible.  But he promised
himself that, granted his liberty thus, he
would not rest until he had thoroughly
explored the plateau, and assured himself
that there was not in one direction or
another an outlet into the larger world.

The sight of Sher Jang approaching him,
spade in hand, recalled him to the present,
and he hurried to meet the shikari, whose
usually expressionless countenance lit up at
sight of him.

"It is good to see that you are alive," he
said.  "What did they do with you?"

"They locked me up, sahib, in a warm
room, and this morning brought me here.
A shorn-pate put this spade into my hand,
and bade me dig.  I have lost caste; it were
better to die: but he told me I am a slave,
and shall remain a slave while life lasts."

"And Hamid Gul?"

"I know nothing of him, sahib.  I have
not seen him since we left the pit below.
There are many of my countrymen here;
they are all in bondage; and they quake
and shiver when they speak of the Eye."

"I don't wonder," Mackenzie murmured.
"What do they say of the Eye?"

"They speak of it as of some unknown
horror, sahib.  No one has seen it: they
say that no man sees it and lives.  They
declare that the one-armed stranger had
both his arms, like you and me; one day he
had two, the next, when he came up, he had
but one.  They tell also that men have gone
from this place down into the depths yonder,
and have never been seen again.  It is Fate:
who can stand against it?"

At this moment a Chinaman dressed like
those who had formed the second rank in
the Temple came up to Mackenzie, held
out a spade, and signed that he was to join
a group of men who were digging in a
neighbouring field.  Mackenzie thrust his
hands into his pockets and turned his back
upon the man.  To his surprise there was no
insistence, no attempt at compulsion: the
priest, as he supposed him to be, went away
without a word.  And then he saw Forrester
hurrying towards him from the head of the
stairway.

"Where's Bob?" were Forrester's first words.

"I was going to ask you that," Mackenzie
replied.  "I haven't seen him."

"They locked me up alone," Forrester
went on, "and I never passed a more awful
night.  That eye!"

"The monster's on the wall?"

"Yes.  Had you one too?  I couldn't
look away from it: try as I might, the
frightful thing seemed to draw my eyes to
it against my will.  What unnameable
devilry are they playing on us?"

"Making good!" Mackenzie replied with
a grim tightening of his mouth.  "The Old
Man of the Mountain said we were to stay
here for the rest of our lives: he means to
terrify us into knuckling under.  But I
vow----"

"For any sake say nothing," Forrester
implored earnestly.  "I feel as if the very
air were spying on us; and who knows, if we
say anything against him, he won't burn us
to powder as he did that poor trembling
wretch!"

"An easy death: better than lifelong
slavery.  All these folk you see about are
slaves."

"But why have they let us come up here?"

"To prove we can't escape, no doubt.
But I'll not----"

"Hush!  Look at that fellow slinking
by!" Forrester cried in an urgent whisper.

It was one of the shaven priests walking
towards the orchard.

"Let's follow him," said Mackenzie.
"There's no check upon us; we are free
men still."

Sher Jang had returned to his digging.
The two friends set off pace for pace after the
priest.  He did not enter the orchard, which
was in no way railed off, but skirting its
upper end, he drew near to a long low
building of stone, with open doorways a few
feet apart.  It reminded Mackenzie of the
rank of connected cottages often seen near
engineering works in his own country, except
that it was characteristically Chinese in form
and decoration.  The priest entered one of
the doorways and disappeared.  As they
passed, they heard a dull incessant
hammering from within the building.

"Sounds like a smithy," said Forrester.
"I wonder what goes on there?"

A little beyond the building, rose a sort
of pagoda, three stories high, but not so
truly pyramidal in shape as the memorials
frequently seen in China.  It was surrounded
by a walled enclosure, the wall being too
high for them to see over.

"It's not big enough to be the Temple,"
Mackenzie remarked.  "I guess it's the
residence of the August and Venerable.
We'll go on; maybe we'll see the Temple
later."

"I don't want to see it," Forrester said
with a shudder.  "I never want to see it
again."

"Eh, but I do," Mackenzie returned.  "I
wish to know all I can about this place.
The look of the outside can't do us any harm."

But no such building came in sight.  The
only thing that attracted their attention
was a stream flowing from north to south
across the plateau.  It passed through the
walled enclosure of the pagoda, and flowed
away between embankments in what they
supposed to be the direction of the falls.
They were thinking of following its course,
when a horn sounded stridently in the
distance.  At the signal the priests emerged
from their dwellings, and marched in file
towards the stairway.  Mackenzie and
Forrester followed them, out of curiosity.
They descended the stairway one by one.
Soon afterwards another file, the
moustachioed priests, came up from the opposite
direction.  None of them so much as glanced
at the two young men standing aside to
watch them.  When all had gone down,
Sher Jang came up to his masters, and told
them that the horn blast was the signal for
the midday meal.  If they wished to eat,
they must descend, for no food was given
on the plateau to the men from below.

"I'll not go down till I must," said
Mackenzie firmly.  "To exchange this fresh
air and sunshine for the close atmosphere
below--no, I'll fast for the day rather."

The two remained foodless for the rest of
the day.  No one interfered with them.
They rambled where they pleased.  Every
now and then they spoke to one or other of
the Indians in the community, asking them
how they had come to the place and what
their experiences had been.  A few had
stumbled upon the rift by accident; most
had been entrapped, kidnapped, or inveigled
by the priests.  All were utterly broken in
spirit, and lived in hourly terror of the Eye,
the mysterious and dreadful something of
which rumour spoke, but which none had seen.

Among those whom the Englishmen
addressed was an old Indian, who told them
that he had been captured with his little
daughter several years before on the
outskirts of his village.  He was a zamindar, a
man of substance and of some education.
He invited the two men into his hut.

"Lilavanti!" he called as they entered.

From behind a curtain that divided the
apartment a tall beautiful girl of sixteen or
seventeen years came forth.  She wore no
veil.  A white dhoti was wound about her
body.  Her raven-black hair was bound
with a fillet of pearls, and a string of pearls
depended from her neck.  She bowed deeply
as her father introduced the visitors as
English sahibs, placed cushions for them,
and then seated herself modestly in a corner.

"I have no hope for myself, but I still
dream that my daughter may even yet be
released from bondage," said the zamindar,
looking with pride at the girl.  "We are not
ill-treated, you perceive; we make no
complaints on that score.  So long as the slaves
fulfil their appointed tasks they suffer nothing
at the hands of the priests.  But our life is
overshadowed by a cloud of uncertainty as
to what the future may bring forth."

"What is the meaning of it all?" Forrester asked.

"No man knows, but I will tell you,
sahibs, some conclusions I have come to.
The negritos, the original inhabitants of this
plateau, are a dwindling race.  Fresh blood
is required in order to maintain a sufficient
population for the cultivation of the soil.
Prisoners are brought here for that purpose,
and for another which I know not.  At
irregular intervals men are taken down the
steps yonder: we never see them again.
The strange thing is that no Indians are
thus removed, but only Chinese and
negritos.  And there is another strange
thing: the Chinese prisoners of humble rank
are set to work on the fields and are never
taken underground; but at intervals,
sometimes long, sometimes short, young men of
noble birth and high education are brought
here.  At first they spend their days here
above, as you are doing to-day, and descend
at sunset; but a time comes, sooner or later,
when they descend for the last time and are
no more seen.  And from the first they are
listless, dazed, scarcely sane.  If they speak,
it is as though they were the mouthpiece of
others.  Some of them have conversed with
me in my own tongue; but I have never
been able to learn from them any particulars
of their past life, or of the nature of the place
underground where they pass the nights.
Always they speak with the utmost reverence
of the priests, whom they profess to be their
kind friends."

"Like our young Chinaman," Forrester
remarked to Mackenzie.

"Ay; he is the latest victim, it seems.
Have you ever seen one of our countrymen
here?" Mackenzie asked.

"One only.  I shrank from telling you.
He came up daily for eight or ten days: I
had many conversations with him.  It is
four days since I saw him: I shall never see
him again."

"Do you know his name?"

"It was never mentioned: he was simply
the Sahib to us."

"Beresford, there's hardly a doubt,"
Forrester said to his friend.  "And is there
no means of escape from this plateau?"

"None.  If you think of attempting it,
you may spare your labour.  I have traversed
the plateau from corner to corner.  Behind
are the mountains; if you could climb them
you would only die of cold and hunger.  In
the centre is a mighty river, that pours over
the edge of the precipice.  To cross it is
impossible.  In the other direction the
plateau ends in a sheer precipice thousands
of feet deep.  The rift you have seen.  That
is the only entrance and exit.  How its
floor is reached from above I know not: I
was made insensible there below, and when
I revived I was here."

"And has no one, absolutely no one, at
any time escaped from the regions below
and returned here?" Mackenzie asked.

The zamindar looked round apprehensively,
as if he feared that the walls might
hear him.  When he spoke it was in little
more than a whisper.

"You are an Englishman," he said.  "I
can trust you.  One man escaped; one only:
a negrito: it was five days ago.  He came
to my hut one night for shelter.  I knew
him.  When he left here a year before he
was young, plump and bright-eyed; when
he returned he was like an old man.  He
was mad.  I had learnt something of his
language, but I understood little of what
he said, so wild and broken were his words.
It was clear that he had lived among
unspeakable horrors."

"What became of him?" asked Forrester.

"When my daughter and I were absent
in the fields the priests came and took him.
He is gone: we shall never see him again,
and I am in constant fear that I shall suffer
for harbouring him.  In his ravings he spoke
of the Eye, and shook like a man in ague."

The two Englishmen looked at each other.
The same thought had occurred to them
both: this was the negrito whom they had
seen suffer the punishment of the Eye.

"Shall we tell him?" Forrester asked.

"No, no: don't let us terrify the old
chap," his friend answered.  "His dread of
the unknown is depressing enough as it is:
if we told him about the Eye, every moment
of his life would be an agony."

They were still conversing when a horn
sounded thrice.  The zamindar rose from his
seat.

"That is the signal for returning below,"
he said.  "The sun is setting.  I hope that
I may see you to-morrow, sahibs."

His visitors rose to leave the hut, and
bowed to the young girl.  The zamindar
politely escorted them to the doorway.
Forrester was a pace or two in the rear.  He
felt a touch on his arm, a small object was
slipped into his hand, and the Indian girl
whispered in Hindustani:--

"It saves from the Eye, sahib.  The little
black man gave it to me."

.. _`"It saves from the Eye, sahib"`:

.. figure:: images/img-147.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "It saves from the Eye, sahib."

   "It saves from the Eye, sahib."

She stole away behind the curtain, and
Forrester, after a momentary pause, put the
gift into his pocket and followed his friend
into the open air.

"Shall we refuse to go down?" he said.

"We shall get no food if we do.  Besides,
we must find out what has become of Bob
and Hamid.  At present my brain is in a
whirl; everything is so bewildering; maybe
light will dawn by and by."

At the head of the stairway two priests
were awaiting them.  One signed to
Mackenzie to descend, and followed him.  When
they were out of sight, the other indicated
that Forrester was to go down.  Singly they
passed through the silent corridors, and were
locked in their cells, each alone.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE UNDERWORLD`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium

   THE UNDERWORLD

.. vspace:: 2

Meanwhile, what of Jackson and Hamid Gul?

The former, more nervous and highly-strung
than either of his friends, had suffered
still more poignantly the malignant
influence of the monster's eye.  Like them,
he had been taken that morning to the foot
of the stairway, but the sight of the dizzy
ascent had proved too much for him.  He
could not bring himself to face it, and
returned to his cell, where he had remained
all day in miserable solitude, his meals being
brought to him at intervals.

Hamid Gul, the first to fall into
unconsciousness, was also the first to revive.  He
came to himself as he was being carried along
the corridor to the cell allotted him, and
immediately began to plead for mercy on
the ground that he was only a servant, only
the humble cook.  One of the priests, who
understood Hindustani, had reasons of his
own for testing the man's skill.  Accordingly
Hamid, after a night of solitude, was
conducted to the kitchen attached to the
priestly buildings on the plateau, and
ordered to prepare one of his most appetising
dishes.  The man was as quick-witted as
he was timorous.  Like many native
servants, he cherished a dog-like devotion for
his master, and instantly made up his mind
to employ his utmost art in the hope of
ingratiating himself with his captors to the
advantage of the whole party.  He
concocted one of Forrester's favourite dishes,
under the eye of the priest, who, having made
him eat a portion, as a precaution against
poison, carried the rest away.  Returning
presently, he said "It is well," and
informed Hamid that he was to consider
himself attached, at any rate temporarily, to
the kitchen staff.  Hamid was delighted
with his success, and would have been
wondrously elated if he could have foreseen
the remarkable events that were to spring
from his clever cooking.

Forrester had dreaded the approach of
night, when he would again have to
encounter the unwinking glare of the eye.  As
soon as he had finished the meal brought
to him by two negritos, as before, and was
locked in, he took from his pocket the small
article given him by the Indian girl.  It
looked like a tightly folded sheet of paper,
greyish in colour.  It crackled slightly in
his hand.  Opening it, he found it to be a
thin sheet of some unfamiliar substance,
about eighteen inches square.  The only
material to which he could compare it was
mica; but on holding it between his eyes
and the window, through which came the
reflected glow of the setting sun, he
discovered that it was more transparent than
mica, but less than glass.  From the first
he had felt little confidence in the statement
of the Indian girl.  If this strange substance
was a defence against the Eye, why had
not the little negrito kept it for himself?
Now that its transparency was proved, he
lost even the slight hope which the girl's
words had inspired.  If pervious to daylight,
how could this flimsy sheet give any
protection against the incalculable force that
must emanate from the Eye?

When darkness fell, and the green glow
from the eye of the monster on the wall
dominated the little apartment, Forrester,
rather from curiosity than with any belief
in the efficacy of the screen, held it before
his eyes.  To his amazement, it was
absolutely effective.  The glow diminished to a
faint luminosity.  All its searching brilliance,
its compelling power, was gone.  He moved
the screen aside to make sure that the light
was still there, that it was not eclipsed by
some other agency.  He was immediately
undeceived, and again held the screen
between his eyes and the monster.  What
appeared to him still more remarkable was
that, protected as he was now from the
light, he felt little of that terrible depression
of spirits which had tortured him on the
previous night.

Mackenzie's suggestion recurred to his
mind.  The monster's eye was part of the
fell machinery employed by the Old Man of
the Mountain to crush the spirits of his
victims.  He relied upon its influence sooner
or later to terrorise their minds into utter
subjection to his own.  From his one night's
experience, Forrester felt that the desired
effect would supervene soon rather than late:
no mortal man could long withstand the
mysterious force which the glaring eye
exercised upon him.  He instantly resolved
to divide the screen next day into three
portions, if that were practicable, and give
one secretly to each of his comrades,
supposing that Jackson appeared on the plateau.
The fragments might avail to arrest the
gradual breaking down of their will-power.

Early next morning, before he could
attempt to carry out his design, the door was
opened, and the guards made signs that he
was to follow them.  Expecting to be led
again to the stairway, he rose with alacrity.
But his guides soon turned off into a passage
branching from the corridor he had traversed
on the previous day, and his heart sank
with misgiving as he recognised presently
the ante-chamber giving access to the Temple.

He was detained there for a few minutes
until joined by Mackenzie and Jackson.
The aspect of the latter struck him with
anxious foreboding.  Jackson was deathly
pale: his features were pinched, his eyes dull
and ringed with dark shadows.

"The Eye!" he murmured, and a shudder shook him.

There was no time for speech between
them.  They were led into the Temple,
where the priests were already assembled,
ranged in two rows as before.  There was
the same period of silent waiting; the same
prostration to the floor when the mist
ascended before the throne; the same gradual
revelation of the August and Venerable.
Again they chanted the solemn litany, and
during the performance the Englishmen
grew faint with apprehension lest it were
to be followed by a ghastly scene like that
which they had formerly witnessed.

The last response was uttered; an ominous
silence brooded over the place; then
Mackenzie and Forrester saw with a shiver of
horror, between two priests advancing, the
shrinking form of Lilavanti.  She was lifted
on to the pedestal, and silently bound to the
framework; then the shaven figure on her
left made his genuflexions and began to
declare her crime.  The Englishmen, of
course, understood not a word of his recital;
they were indeed as though frozen stiff to
the floor.  But when the first accuser had
come to an end, and his colleague had bowed
thrice to the awful figure on the throne
before taking up the tale, the girl turned her
head slightly and threw upon Forrester a
glance in which he read a last anguished
plea for help.  A hot thrill surged through
him; he felt his cheeks flush; and, clenching
his fists, he sprang forward, into the gap
between the ranks of the priests, and strode
swiftly up the floor towards the throne.

.. _`154`:

"Stop!  Stop!" he cried, raising his
hands aloft.

There was not a movement among the
priests.  So well disciplined were they, or
so terrified at what might ensue upon any
infraction of the customary order, that each
man remained steadfast in his place.  If
any looked at the profane audacious stranger,
it must have been from the corners of his eyes.

At Forrester's impulsive movement Mackenzie
took a step or two forward, under the
instinctive prompting to support his friend.
But reflection brought him to a standstill.
He could do nothing at present: the prudent
part was to await the issue of Forrester's
intervention: perhaps his aid would be
more valuable later on.

Forrester had started almost at a run,
looking straight at the immobile countenance
of the Old Man on the throne.  But the
nearer he drew to it, the slower he went.
Under the steady gaze of those piercing eyes
he felt his courage oozing away; he almost
forgot his purpose.  He struggled against
the paralysis that seemed to be creeping
over him; but when, standing immediately
beneath the throne, he tried to raise his arms,
they fell limp to his sides; when he tried to
utter the burning words of entreaty on his
lips, he could only mutter and mumble.  And
when the August and Venerable rose slowly
in his place, and Forrester saw more clearly
than before the lozenge-shaped ornament
on his head-dress, from which the destructive
beam had appeared to flash forth, he felt
within his soul that he was about to share
with the Indian girl the same annihilating doom.

A breathless stillness filled the Temple.
Then the Old Man spoke, and his words
seemed to Forrester like drops of ice-cold
water falling on his head.

"You offer yourself to judgment in place
of the girl?"

Unknown to Forrester, such substitution
was frequently practised in China.  He
scarcely understood the meaning of what he
had heard.  Commanding his voice with
an effort, he whispered:--

"Spare her!  Do her no harm!"

The blazing eyes pierced him through and
through; but the Old Man's voice, when he
spoke again, was cold and emotionless as
ever.  Mackenzie, at the end of the Temple,
wondered whether the wizened figure on the
throne retained the least drop of warm
blood in his veins, the least remnant of
humanity.

"You oppose your puny strength to the
Law of the Eye?"

"No, no," Forrester whispered.  "She
is a young girl; have mercy upon her!"

"The Law of the Eye knows no mercy,"
the calm voice went on.  "Whoso transgresses,
shall he not be cut off, even in the
flower of his youth?  In ignorance you have
profaned this holy place: the Law ordains
that the ignorant shall be chastised until
he becomes wise.  Its ordinances shall be
fulfilled from generation to generation, even
until the world dissolves.  You shall be
made wise, and when wisdom is yours, you
shall once more, and once only, behold the
Power of the Eye.  You shall see that fair
flower of maidenhood wither and become
dust; then shall you yourself suffer the
selfsame penalty, and your dust shall mingle
with hers."

Speechless, fascinated, Forrester stood as
though transfixed, scarcely conscious that
Lilavanti was reprieved.  The quivering
screen rose before his eyes; the figure of
the Old Man seemed to flicker and dissolve
into it.  He was unaware of what went on
behind him--that the girl had been released
from the pedestal and taken out; that
Mackenzie, his joy at his friend's respite
swallowed up by dismay and dread of the future,
was led away to his cell; that Jackson had
been carried out in a swoon; that the priests
had passed out in silent procession--all but
one.

Presently he rose at the touch of a hand.
Staggering to his feet, he saw that the vast
chamber was empty save for the priest at
his side.  Unresisting he allowed himself to
be led through the hall into the ante-chamber,
where the negrito guards, trembling in
every limb, were awaiting him.  They filed
out before him into the corridor, and he
followed them, supposing that they were
leading him back to his cell.  Unheeding,
he did not know that they passed his bolted
door.  Only when they stood back, and he
saw, in the dim green light, a stairway
descending in the rock before him, did he
become aware that he was in a part strange
to him.  Turning round, he asked the
priest where he was.  The mute immobile
figure merely raised an arm and pointed
downwards at the stairway.

.. _`The mute immobile figure merely raised an arm and pointed downwards at the stairway`:

.. figure:: images/img-159.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: The mute immobile figure merely raised an arm and pointed downwards at the stairway.

   The mute immobile figure merely raised an arm and pointed downwards at the stairway.

Forrester was incapable of resistance,
protest, expostulation.  He felt helpless as
a child, compelled to obey the behest of a
stronger will.  Slowly he began to descend
the stairs.  The negritos followed in a line,
their spears slanted on their shoulders, and
the priest in his wide flowing robes brought
up the rear.  Forrester, if he had been able
to think, might have remembered that he had
seen just such a procession passing like
shades across the wall of the rift.

Down, always down, they went, until,
after treading perhaps a hundred steps, they
came to a long smooth stairless slope, steep
enough to demand an effort lest the walking
pace became an involuntary run.  Presently
there were more steps.  At the foot of this
second stairway the narrow, shallow tunnel--for
it was no more--turned sharply to the
left, and the floor again sloped, but this
time upwards.  Another series of stairs
appeared.  On ascending this Forrester, at
length becoming awake to his surroundings,
noticed that the greenish light was growing
perceptibly brighter.  He went on, up
another incline, the floor of which was covered
with a yielding deposit, apparently of dust
that had fallen from the roof.  Yet another
flight of steps had to be mounted.  Then
the tunnel broke abruptly to the right, and
a few paces more brought Forrester, more
and more bewildered as he more completely
recovered his wits, to the opening of a large
cave on his left.

He glanced into the entrance, and was
amazed to see a sheet of water, rippling a
little in the greenish glow, and extending
beyond eyeshot.  The water washed the
walls; but there was a narrow ledge of rock
that lay uncovered, skirting the wall on the
left.  Forrester turned about to enquire
whether he was to proceed along this ledge,
and discovered that the negritos had halted
some twenty paces in his rear, blocking up
the tunnel.  Behind them the taller figure
of the priest stood with arm outstretched
towards the cave.

Taking this as a command to go on,
Forrester wheeled round, and walked towards
the ledge, wondering with sickly apprehension
what lay in the dim greenish mist
beyond, and why his escort had not
accompanied him.  Glancing to the right as he
reached the ledge, he saw, in a recess
commanding the entrance to the cavern, a
group of armed negritos and a priest standing
behind them.  There could be no doubt
that they were placed there as a guard: the
recess was a sort of wardroom.

He proceeded along the ledge, and came in
about twenty yards to a gap, bridged by a
broad plank with a handrail on the side
towards the lake.  He crossed this, went
along the continuation of the ledge on the
farther side, and arrived suddenly at the
entrance of another cave, larger and more
lofty than the first, rising to a vaulted roof
like the nave of a cathedral.  Its floor of
rock was a foot or two above the level of
the lake.  Entering it, he saw a number of
human figures, seated at the further end.
One of them rose on seeing a stranger, and
after a brief hesitation, stepped hastily
forward to meet him.  With a gulp and a
half articulate cry, Forrester quickened his
step, and in a few moments was grasping
a firm hand, and looking amazedly into an
English face.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ALCHEMY`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium

   ALCHEMY

.. vspace:: 2

"Redfern got through?"

The eager question was like a knife in
Forrester's heart.

"Yes, Redfern got through," he repeated
wearily.  "Your name is Beresford?"

"It is.  Where is Redfern?  Have you
disposed of that ancient scarecrow above?"

"I am a prisoner like yourself."

The elder man gasped.

"Has he cast his spell over all of you?"
he cried.  "A British force conquered by a
conjuring trick?  For heaven's sake explain
yourself."

"There is no British force.  It is a long
story I have to tell you."

"Come along over here, then.  There's
only one poor idiot who *can* understand you
besides myself, and he's so desperately cowed
that I doubt whether he *will*.  Now, sit
here: you won't catch cold: the whole
place is warm, as I daresay you have
discovered."

Beresford's brusque manner, quick speech,
and robust personality acted as a tonic upon
Forrester.  Already he felt invigorated.  The
mystery of the place evidently had no terror
for this sturdy Englishman.  Forrester had
vaguely expected that the archaeologist
would be old, dry, bent, and spectacled: the
actual man was of middle height, athletic
in build, under forty years of age, with a
heavy brown beard and moustache, and the
large deep eyes that are the index to a mind
at once eager and reflective.

They squatted side by side on the rocky
floor.  Beyond them, Forrester caught sight
of the drooping figure of the young
Chinaman, Wen Shih's companion, and several
older Chinamen, clearly prisoners.  Near
the entrance to the cave were two negritos
with spears, and, in a pagoda-shaped
sentry-box, a priest of the second order.

"I didn't choose my company," said
Beresford with a laugh.  "Now, forge ahead;
I won't interrupt you if I can help it."

It was soon evident that to listen long
without interrupting was impossible to this
impetuous spirit.  He was patient enough
while Forrester related the strange manner of
his meeting Redfern, only ejaculating "Poor
dear old chap!" when he heard of the
captain's illness.  But as Forrester was
recounting the preliminary stages of the
expedition, he broke in:--

"Cut that, if you don't mind.  Hitch on
again at your discovery of the rift."

"Yes; there's a good deal in between,
but--well, the people here were warned of our
coming by Wen Shih, who----"

"Wen Shih!  Who is he?  I suppose he
comes into the part you've skipped.  Wait
though: I know the name.  Of course;
that broken-hearted young fellow over there
mentioned him; seemed in two minds
whether to hate or love him.  But he has
only been here since yesterday: he's young,
and I hope to make a man of him yet.  But
I'm interrupting: do go on."

Forrester was too much pleased with this
cheery being to resent being hustled.  He
went on to relate the closing scenes of the
party's journey through the rift, their
awaking in the rock chamber above, and the
dreadful ceremony in the Temple.  His voice
faltered as he spoke of the beam of light
and its effect.

"Ah!  That's new to me," said Beresford
more gravely than he had yet spoken.
"That's dashed bad.  You're sure it wasn't
a Maskelyne and Devant trick?"

"Quite sure.  There could be no possible
doubt about it."

"That's what they really mean by the
Eye, then.  I took it to be the eye of that
ridiculous creature on the wall.  That old
villain above is more ingenious than I
fancied him.  I regarded him as a mere
clever bag-of-bones togged up--a sort of
music-hall comedian with a straight face.
But please go on."

The rest of Forrester's story was soon told.

"Well, don't be downhearted," Beresford
cried, gripping his shoulder with the rough
vigour of a friendly bear.  "The August and
Venerable sent me here too, to learn wisdom:
we'll learn it together.  I have been here
three days----"

"Did you come down a staircase, with
negritos and a priest behind?" asked
Forrester, remembering the strange procession
across the rift wall.

"I did.  There's no other way.  But why
did you ask?"

"Because we saw you--what looked like
half-dressed skeletons, slanting down the
wall.  When we found that the wall was
solid, without steps, we were flabbergasted."

"I daresay," Beresford rejoined with a
smile.  "You will learn more wisdom here
than our ancient friend upstairs reckons for!"

"But why didn't you feel the same ghastly
creepiness as we did?"

"I'll tell you.  It was *because I knew what
the old villain was up to*.  That knowledge
was a wonderful talisman against his tricks.
And what's more, *he didn't know that I knew*,
or, after what you have told me about his
murderous Eye, I should without doubt
have been resolved into molecules before
this.  Like you, I was allowed to go up daily
to the plateau--by the way, they employ a
marvellously effective system of intensive
cultivation there--like you, I refused to dig.
Unluckily one day I lost my temper with
one of his bald-headed priests: it doesn't
matter why; and I knocked the fellow down.
They hauled me into the Temple, and tried
to lift me on to that pedestal you spoke of,
supposing no doubt that the green-eyed
monster and the surroundings generally had
crumpled me up--that mist, for instance,
a magnificent bit of stage management.
But I sent one of the fellows spinning with
my right and the other with my left, and
marched straight up to the throne--it's
pure gold, by the way--and shook my fist in
the August and Venerable face, telling him
what I thought of him and his crew.  I am
bound to say he stood it well.  He didn't
blink an eyelid; there wasn't a tremor in
his silvery old voice when he reeled off, in
surprisingly good English, a rigmarole about
the Law of the Eye.  I told him I didn't
care a tinker's curse for the Law of the Eye.
That was enough to rouse him, but the
wonderful old creature wouldn't be roused.
He simply yarned on about learning wisdom,
and the Power of the Eye, shrouded himself
in his vapour and disappeared like a dissolving
view.  Then I was brought here."

"I wonder you came!" Forrester exclaimed,
envying the speaker's boldness, and
burning to hear the secret of it.

"Well, I wanted to see all there was to be
seen," Beresford replied simply.  "I didn't
know, of course, that I couldn't get back;
and I might have acted differently if he had
given an exhibition of the Power of the Eye
for my benefit: I suppose there was no
criminal on hand at the moment.  As soon
as I got here I saw that his intention was to
give me a stronger dose of his horrors; he
is a perfect epicure in punishments.  But
there was no occasion for panic.  I've known
Redfern for twenty odd years: he was my
fag at school: and I would have given long
odds that he would worry through somehow,
send up a relief party and give the old
reprobate what-for.  I've every confidence
even now that he will--if he lives.  We may
be here longer than I expected; but we can
stand two years of it, perhaps three."

"You mean that, even if we are not
taken above and pulverised, we are in mortal
danger here?" Forrester asked.

"Certainly; but not of instant death
unless we make fools of ourselves.  The
length of the process depends on your
constitution.  Not one of those poor wretches
yonder has been here more than four years,
and that's exceptional.  That young fellow,
the last-comer--his name is Wing Wu, by
the way: did you ever hear such a name?--he
will hardly last out a year: he hasn't the
stamina for it."

"But what is the mystery, then?" asked
Forrester, astonished at the calmness with
which this intrepid fellow seemed to envisage
a certain death.  "People have lived much
longer than four years underground."

"Never in such a dungeon as this.  Come
with me."

He led Forrester across the cave until they
came to a spot whence the floor shelved
down steeply to the wall.  That part of the
wall which was below the general level of the
floor was brightly luminous, and on its
green surface Forrester saw, as on a screen,
the shadowy forms of fishes and aquatic
reptiles flitting hither and thither.
Watching them curiously, he was astonished when,
at one and the same moment, they dispersed
with a rapidity betokening terror, some to the
right, some to the left.  For an instant the
screen was left blank; then there appeared
upon it a monstrous skeletonised form,
somewhat resembling the fantastic creatures
depicted on the walls of the Temple, and on the
wall of his own cell.  It combined in one
shape all the most hideous features of the
alligator, the rhinoceros, and the dog-fish
immensely magnified.  Involuntarily
Forrester started back as the figure came close
up to the wall, and seemed to be looking
through it, as the fish in an aquarium look
through the glass of their tank.  But it was
a shape only; its eyes could not be seen.

"What is it?" Forrester asked in a whisper.

"I don't know," his companion responded.
"It is not one of any of the species of
ichthyosaurus that I have ever seen; but
it is liker that reptile than to any other
known creature."

"But isn't that extinct?  Don't they
find merely the fossil remains of it?"

"Who is to say that any creature is
extinct?  Scarcely a year passes but some
explorer finds, in some remote neglected
region, what is to him a new type, but in
reality, no doubt, dates back to an antiquity
beyond computation.  This hideous creature
seems to be the last of his kind; I have seen
no sign of a mate; and his extinction would
not be much of a loss."

"How can we see him at all, through the
wall--just as we saw you coming down here
three days ago?"

"Does no explanation occur to you?"

"Well, of course I have heard of X-rays,
and things of that kind; but----"

"Exactly.  Excuse my interruption, but
I know what you were going to say.  You
were going to speak of cathodes, and vacuum
tubes, and phosphorescent screens, and----"

"I wasn't," said Forrester: "I never
heard of them."

"It comes to the same thing," Beresford
went on imperturbably; and Forrester felt
a little sorry that the man of cheery good
fellowship was for the time sunk in the man
of science.  "Here there is none of the
elaborate apparatus of the experimenter;
but Nature has been experimenting through
ages beyond count.  What do our men of
science know of the real nature of the
X-rays?  Next to nothing.  They can produce
them, that is all.  And here, before our eyes,
we have phenomena produced, not by man,
but by the Great Artificer of the universe.
Those creatures are swimming in the lake
which you skirted just now.  Their images
are cast in some marvellous way upon this
particular portion of the wall.  I know no
more than you the explanation, but....
My dear fellow, pardon me: this is not a
lecture room.  Come, I have something
more to show you."

They recrossed the cavern, which was as
broad as it was high, and turning a corner,
were confronted by the arch-like opening
of a passage.  It was much more brightly
illuminated by green light than the cavern
out of which it led.  Passing under the arch,
the two men walked quickly up the passage,
which twisted to right and left at every few
yards, and inclined gradually upward.

"I feel very rummy," said Forrester
after a while: "the sort of tingling you
have before a severe thunderstorm."

"I feel it too," his companion responded:
"not so intensely as you, perhaps.  The
thing is to keep as tight a hold on yourself
as you can--as you ought to have done
when that old sinner above hypnotised you."

"But----"

"Now don't talk.  We shall have plenty
of opportunities of discussing him, and
hypnotism, and a thousand and one things.
Take a grip of yourself, and *will* that the
mephitic influence shall not affect you.
You won't thoroughly succeed, but the
effort will be good."

The feeling of tenseness increased as they
advanced.  To Forrester it seemed as though
a hot band were tightening round his
temples; but he kept silence.  Glancing at
Beresford, he perceived on his face an
expression of grim, almost savage, determination.
They went on, the passage becoming lighter
moment by moment, until, after they had
walked a few hundred yards, it widened out
into a cavern, much less spacious than that
which they had left, but almost as light as
open ground at noonday.  At the edge of it
Beresford halted.

"Stand here, and watch," he said.

In the centre of the floor there was a large
square slab of some greyish substance--the
only spot in the cavern through which the
green rays did not, as it were, percolate.  It
was about three feet each way, and stood
a few inches above the floor.  Upon it lay
a coil of thin yellow-green chain, like an
immense brass watch-guard tinged with
verdigris, and an oblong lump about a foot
in length, and of the same colour.  A few
feet above, a stout bar of yellow metal
projected from the wall of the cavern, having
at its free end, exactly over the centre of the
slab, a wheel over which another chain hung.

These objects first caught Forrester's
attention, no doubt because they formed a group
in the centre of an otherwise bare floor; but
they held it only for a moment or two.  His
eyes were diverted to a living figure.  From
a hitherto unnoticed recess on his left hand
came a bent, decrepit, cadaverous Chinaman,
to all appearance very old, carrying a
thin square plate, in colour a dirty greenish-grey.
He toddled slowly towards the slab,
looking neither to right nor left, laid the
plate upon it, and passed through a hole in
the centre of the plate what seemed to be
a small catch in the aforesaid lump of metal.
This latter he attached to the chain hanging
over the wheel.

This done, he moved to one side, and
standing at a distance of about ten feet from
the slab, pulled at the chain which lay upon
it, and which, as Forrester now saw, was
fastened to a stout ring in its upper edge.
The slab moved on hinges slowly towards the
Chinaman, and as it rose from the floor, a
shaft of pale green light, blinding in its
brilliance, shot up to the roof, fourteen or
fifteen feet above, causing the two Englishmen
to start back and retreat some paces
into the passage.  Forrester was conscious
of an intensification of his nervous
excitement.  His ears buzzed; his skin tingled as
if he were in an electric bath; his impulse
was to cover his eyes and rush headlong
to escape the terrible glare and its psychical
accompaniment.  But seeing Beresford
venturing back by degrees, he exerted his
will to the utmost, and followed him.

.. _`A shaft of pale green light, blinding in its brilliance, shot up to the roof`:

.. figure:: images/img-175.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: A shaft of pale green light, blinding in its brilliance, shot up to the roof.

   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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`EXPLANATIONS AND DISCOVERIES`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium

   EXPLANATIONS AND DISCOVERIES

.. vspace:: 2

"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 be *some* things
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!"





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.. _`A DRY BONE`:

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   CHAPTER XIII


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   A DRY BONE

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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
I *shouldn't* come 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.

.. _`Forrester met him at the entrance of the cave`:

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   :alt: Forrester met him at the entrance of the cave.

   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.

.. _`He shook it: some of the powdery contents fell to the floor`:

.. figure:: images/img-211.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: He shook it: some of the powdery contents fell to the floor.

   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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HEAD COOK`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium

   HEAD COOK

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. _`Mackenzie met Hamid in the enclosure where he was digging truffles`:

.. figure:: images/img-222.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Mackenzie met Hamid in the enclosure where he was digging truffles.

   Mackenzie met Hamid in the enclosure where he was digging truffles.

"Well?" he asked eagerly.

"I have got a rise, sahib," the man
replied.  "Purely honorary; no pay!"

"What do you mean?"

"Rich food sometimes is cause of colic
and inward qualms, sahib.  After tiffin
yesterday, bald-head comes to me;--he has a
face, sahib!--and says 'Hai! come along!'  Off
I trot, knees playing castanets, blue funk,
because of his face.  Along passage, into
room, another room, much to flabbergastation
of humble self; for what do I see but
gold everywhere: table of gold, seats of gold,
cups of gold!

"On couch of gold was very old man,
very like monkey, bald as egg.  Two
bald-heads on knees to him: hai! what faces!
Had to go down on knees; old man he stared
at me with eyes like burning coals.  I
shivered like jelly.  'You poison me!' he
said.  I swore by Siva I was innocent as
new-born babe.  I talked a lot, told him
I was absolutely ignorant he was so old,
too old to eat things that would upset
ostrich digestion of piggish little sons of
English sahibs.  I declared with great gusto
if I had known I would not have made
things so bilious.  'Send for doctor,' he said.
Another bald-head came.  Kicked me away,
knelt in my place.  I crawled away, pricked
in manhood's dignity, but calm in innocency
of heart, and while doctor did his job, I took
squint round.  Great snakes, sahib!  At
one end of room, in recess behind screen of
gold wire, I spotted gorgeous robe hanging
on gold peg, and on small gold table most
splendiferous head-dress.  My stars! old
Chinky could give socks to American
millionaire."

"Did you see the Eye?" Jackson asked eagerly.

"What eye, sahib?  Old man's eyes
enough for me.  They lugged me back;
down I drop again; his eyes made me
frizzle.  He said 'Go!'  Nothing wrong
with him but liver off colour.  But this
morning bald-head told me to carry in dish
myself: in future I must taste all grub in
presence of old man.  That is my rise, sahib."

"Eh, man, you're lucky," said Mackenzie.
"But now tell me: the grating in the
passage--what is it like?"

"It is thin bars of gold, sahib."

"How far apart?"

"Width of two fingers, sahib."

"And how large is the hole?"

"As long as my outstretched arms, and
a little wider than my spread fingers."

"Big enough to crawl through?"

"If you were flat as a flounder, sahib."

"Can you see to the bottom of the hole?"

"No, sahib: it is dark, and goes deep."

"Next time you come, bring me a small
marrowbone, not wider than your two
fingers.  Fill it with dried marrow, closely
pressed together.  Can you get any paper?"

"There is rice paper in kitchen, sahib."

"Bring me a piece, and something I can
write with--a blackened stick, or a bit of
charcoal.  You will remember?"

"Like a book, sahib."

Fingering his beard meditatively, he walked away.

"What do you mean to do?" Jackson
asked, when Mackenzie had repeated what
Hamid had told him, and the instructions
he had given.

"Put a wee note inside the bone, and get
Hamid to fling it down the grating."

"But if it falls into the wrong hands, and
is taken to the Old Man?  He speaks
English: he may read it too."

"What I write will only puzzle him."

"In any case, what's the good?  Suppose
Dick is there.  How can he send an answer?"

"I've my notion about that, Bob.  All
depends on Hamid; but, as I said, he is no
fool; he will do what we tell him, and take
every care.  I wish it were to-morrow!"

"What puzzles me is the Eye.  What on
earth can it be?"

"That beats me.  Clearly it is harmless
at times; Hamid didn't notice it.  I think it's
a kind of box, containing some destructive
substance in a concentrated form.  The Old
Man evidently has some device for opening
it without harm to himself.  One thing is
very clear."

"What's that?"

"Och, man, that the old wretch must be
very human after all, or he couldn't have
the stomach ache."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MOLES`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium

   THE MOLES

.. vspace:: 2

"Give me my bone!"

Forrester puzzled over the words.  They
seemed merely absurd.  What could their
meaning be?  It was a joy to know that
Mackenzie or Jackson was above, and had
discovered the place of imprisonment; but
they must know little about it, after all, or
they would be aware that it was impossible
to send them an answer.  Yet they must
expect an answer; they would not have
sent a message, mysterious as it was, unless
they looked for at least an acknowledgment
that it had been received.  It occurred to
him that the cleft might be used as a speaking
tube: but a moment's consideration told
him that it would be unwise to put this to
the test.  His voice might be heard by an
enemy!

Beresford was so much exhausted after
the day's work that Forrester did not
mention the strange discovery to him that
night.  But the next day was an off day
for him, and in the afternoon, after he was
somewhat restored by rest and food,
Forrester showed him the bone and the paper.
The effect was electric.  A look of eager
hope dawned in the tired eyes.  A murmur
of thankfulness broke from his lips, and he
lay for a while thinking.

"We have nothing we can write with,"
he said at length.

"Nothing at all.  My pockets are empty,"
replied Forrester.

"Not even a pin?"

"No.  Wait, though!"  He felt along
the edge of his waistcoat.  "Yes, by Jove!
I've one solitary pin.  They would naturally
overlook that."

"Prick the words through the paper."

"But what words?"

"Something that won't give anything
away if the paper falls into the wrong hands.
'Give me my bone!'  Answer, 'Take it!'  Put
the paper in the bone, fill up with dust,
and replace it in the cleft when you get a
chance.  Leave the rest to our friends above."

The guard kept by the priest and the
negritos was little more than a form.  The
abject condition of the Chinese prisoners
precluded any likelihood of revolt.
Consequently no real watch was kept at night,
and the only risk was that an unusual
sound might awaken one of the three
somnolent figures at the entrance.  Forrester
was careful to move very quietly when he
returned to the cleft that night, though
after all there was little chance of a slight
sound from the inner cavern reaching the
priest's ears.

On reaching the cleft he looked in eagerly
for the string which he half expected to find
there.  He was not disappointed.  A few
feet from the opening, but within easy
reach, lay another bone, with a string
attached.  He replaced this by the bone
containing the paper, and stole back to his
friend.  The second bone held no message.

"We shall hear from them again
to-morrow," said Beresford hopefully.

Next night, when Forrester visited the
cleft, he found the bone on the end of the
string, untied it, and hurried back with it
to Beresford.  Shaking out its contents, he
found a somewhat larger screw of paper,
enwrapping a sharpened stick of charcoal.
On it, when opened out, he read: "String
65': hole 3' x 10": grated: where are you?
Reply at once.  M."

"He evidently thinks communication
safe at night," said Beresford.  "We can't
tell him everything.  Just write: 'Cavern.
Boring chimney through roof.  More to-morrow.'"

Forrester wrote the message, adding 'B. is
here,' replaced the paper, and returning
to the cleft, tied the bone again to the string.
It occurred to him to give a slight tug.  The
string gave slightly, then stretched taut.  It
was evidently fastened to something above.

It was long before the Englishmen fell
asleep that night.  They discussed in
whispers the information they had gained, and
their future course of action.  They could
not but conclude that the cleft, narrow as
it was, was the avenue by which the negrito
had escaped; but what was possible to his
diminutive frame was impossible to them.
The grating had probably been placed over
the hole after his escape was discovered, to
prevent a second attempt.  It was clear
that the cleft was not perpendicular, or the
little man could hardly have climbed up it.
If they could ascertain the angle of its slope,
they might calculate the vertical distance,
and learn how long their chimney through
the roof of the inner cavern must be made.
They had no means of discovering this fact,
which would have been so useful to them;
but it seemed probable that, allowing for
the steepest practicable slope, the chimney
must be pierced for at least forty feet before
it reached the surface.

By gradually lengthening the bamboo
pole, and clearing the dust from the sides
of the chimney, they had already extended
the range of the rays nearly twenty feet
above the roof, and more than thirty feet
above the floor of the cavern.  They had
now no more bamboo rods; the pole could
not be lengthened further; it was impossible
to remove the dust at a greater height
without a ladder to stand on.  But, with
communications open, a ladder might no
longer be an impossibility.  With a knife
and some stout string they might form one
of bamboo, and still leave enough for a pole
wherewith to continue their work of removing
the dust.  Forrester resolved to ask for these
articles at the first opportunity.

Beresford pointed out the importance of
letting Mackenzie know the spot at which
the chimney, when completed, would reach
the upper air.  It might prove to be in the
very quarters of the enemy.  In that case
the chances of escape would seem to be
remote indeed.  But Mackenzie was cautious
as well as shrewd, and with this necessary
information in his possession he would know
how to direct his own course, and what
advice to give his friends below.

Accordingly, next day Forrester carefully
paced the distance between the cleft and
the pit in the inner cavern.  Allowing as
accurately as he could for the windings of
the passage, he gauged the length to be
approximately fifty yards in a straight line.
At night, he found on opening the paper
secreted in the bone that Mackenzie had
anticipated him.  "Cleft--?--> chimney."
he read.  He crossed out the query and
wrote "50 yds.: cleft on right," adding:
"Send knife + stout string."  He returned
to the cleft several times during the night
in the hope of finding the things asked for;
but it was not until the next night that they
came: a large kitchen knife such as is used
in boning meat, and about a dozen yards of
thin hempen cord.

The work on the chimney had been perforce
interrupted for several days, much to
Beresford's benefit.  The less prolonged
exposure to the noxious atmosphere of the
inner cave, and the new hope engendered
in his heart by the knowledge that
something was in progress above, effected a
decided improvement in his physical and
mental condition.  His fear now was that
he would be summoned again to the Old
Man, and condemned without reprieve,
before the chimney was complete.  He
resolved, if he were sent for, to persist in
his refusal to translate the tablet, in the
hope that the Old Man would spare him
for yet further coercion.

Forrester set to work on the ladder as
soon as possible after the knife came to
hand.  At night, in the passage, he cut
short lengths of bamboo as rungs, and
knotted them firmly to the two uprights
with the cord.  It was a crazy structure at
the best, and he had a nervous dread lest,
if he fell, he should break through or displace
the slab over the pit, and be turned instantly
to dust.  But an experimental ascent against
the wall and the cavern somewhat reassured
him as to the ladder's stability, and setting
its top in the cavity above the pit, he
mounted and resumed the work of scouring
away the dust overhead.

From that moment they applied themselves
to the task with unremitting energy.
As soon as their fellow prisoners were torpid
in the heavy sleep that was the only alleviation
of their lot, the Englishmen stole from
their place, and laboured until their
endurance gave out.  Forrester spared Beresford
as much as possible, and often undertook
the double work, alternately lifting the slab
to release the rays, and, when it was lowered,
climbing to remove the dust.  Each knew
he carried his life in his hands, for the
ladder could not be entirely hidden.  If any
priest should chance to visit by day the
passage in which they laid it, he could not
fail to observe it, and then their fate was
sealed.  But, judging by past experience,
that risk was slight; and to disregard it was
the only way to success.

Every now and then Forrester reported
progress to his friends above.  The length
of the chimney increased about eighteen
inches a day on the average; if, as they
had calculated, there remained--before they
constructed the ladder--twenty feet of rock
to pierce, in a fortnight they should arrive
at or very near the surface.  Meanwhile
they received no news of what was happening
above ground.  Mackenzie did not reveal
his plans; perhaps, they thought, he had
formed none, but was biding his time until
the chimney was nearly completed.  His
messages were brief words of encouragement,
assurances that all was well, and the news
that he was in touch daily with Jackson,
Sher Jang, and Hamid Gul.

Rather more than a week after the first
use of the ladder, Forrester made the
alarming discovery that he could no longer
reach the top of the cavity with the
outstretched pole.  This threatened the
stoppage of the work, for neither pole nor ladder
could be lengthened.  He did not mention
the matter to Beresford, who by this time
had ceased to work on the chimney.  When
he had transmuted the due number of plates,
he was too much fatigued to endure the
strain any longer, and Forrester persuaded
him that he must conserve his strength for
what might ensue when the chimney was
completely pierced.  Anything that might
throw him back was to be avoided.

Forrester puzzled over the baffling problem
that now confronted him.  Time and again
he stood looking up into the cavity, trying
to conceive of a means by which the top
might be reached.  It was two days before
he hit upon a possible solution.  If he could
cut notches in the walls of the chimney,
and insert in them cross-bars of bamboo,
he would be able to raise himself successively
to heights from which the rock above would
be within reach of the pole.  To obtain
material for the cross-bars he would have to
shorten the pole; the difficulty was the
notches: how could they be cut with no
tool but a knife?  Standing on the ladder,
he tried the point of the blade on the rock,
and found that this, while not very hard,
was not friable enough to be excavated by
so pliant a tool.

His thoughts turned at once to Mackenzie:
perhaps he could find a more serviceable
instrument.  That night he placed in the
bone the following note: "Work stopped:
send a chisel."  Next night he found in the
bottom of the cleft, not a chisel, but a bar
of iron slightly pointed at one end.
Accompanying it was a note: "Hope this will
serve.  Let me know when near surface."

This implement he found to answer his
purpose sufficiently well.  From his perch
on the top rung of the ladder he worked out
two holes in the rock on opposite sides of
the chimney; then with the knife he cut
the proper length of bamboo, and thus
fashioned a cross-bar on which he could
stand to repeat the same operation higher
up.  In this way he made a series of steps
enabling him to brush the dust, as before,
from the top of the cavity after each
employment of the rays.  Only then did he
acquaint Beresford with the difficulty and
the manner in which it had been overcome.

The progress of the work was necessarily
slower now.  The cross-bars had to be
removed after each ascent; otherwise at the
next opening of the pit they would have
been instantly destroyed.  But the piercing
went on steadily, and Forrester felt sure
that, unless his calculations were very much
out, his pole would in a few more days
penetrate the roof of the chimney, and
emerge through a hole in the floor of whatever
room was immediately above him.

"Be very cautious," Beresford urged,
when he learnt this good news.  "To break
through prematurely might be fatal to us
all.  Tell Mackenzie how things are, and
ask for instructions."

"Yes.  We shall have done our part.
The rest will lie with him.  I wonder what
old Mac has been doing all this time?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HOLE IN THE WALL`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium

   THE HOLE IN THE WALL

.. vspace:: 2

Mackenzie, meanwhile, had been playing
a very busy and at the same time a very
discreet part above ground, with timorous
but efficient assistance from Hamid Gul.
It was the latter who, at night, when all was
quiet, stole from the kitchen into the
passage, and tied the string to a bar of
the golden grating, so cleverly that only
the closest scrutiny could have detected it.
Having ascertained by means of this device
the whereabouts of Forrester, and the
burrowing in which he and Beresford were engaged,
Mackenzie, in his calm sagacious way, set
himself to think out a plan for turning that
work to account.

At first he decided to employ Hamid Gul
only as postman.  It was of vital importance
that the Old Man should entertain no
suspicion of his cook.  There seemed little
risk of Hamid's night-work at the grating
being detected.  An Indian servant moves
more silently than a cat.  On the other
hand, if he pried and prowled in the pagoda
or its precincts, for the purpose of
discovering the means of access to the rift, or the
other particulars about which Mackenzie
was curious, he would almost certainly
attract the notice of the Chinese, and ruin
everything.  For the same reason Mackenzie
took care that his necessary meetings with
Hamid should take place at different times
of the day, at different spots, and in the
utmost secrecy.

His own actions were dictated by shrewd
policy.  To begin with, he told Jackson
no more, not that he distrusted him, but
that he feared the possibility of his disclosing
something if for any reason the priests
should again practise their hypnotic powers
on him.  Then, he assumed in public the
mien of a slave, utterly cowed, bereft of will
power, who lived only to get through his
appointed task, and had no other aim than
to merit his masters' approval.  So well did
he act his part that after a few days'
observation, the priests concluded that their taming
process had been thoroughly effective, and
paid no more attention to him than to any
other of the men who toiled and sighed on
the plateau.  That the dejection which
Mackenzie feigned was in Jackson's case real
confirmed them in their delusion.  Sher
Jang, meanwhile, went about his tasks with
philosophic submissiveness; but in his heart
of hearts he believed that the sahibs, whose
movements he watched unobtrusively, would
some day get the better of the Chinese dogs,
and he was ready instantly to obey the call
which he felt would surely come.

When Mackenzie was satisfied that he
was accounted well broken in, he took to
roaming at night about the precincts of the
pagoda.  He had already settled in his mind
that the way to the rift could lie only
through the pagoda or one of the
neighbouring buildings, and his chief aim must
be to discover that.  It was also of vital
importance to find as nearly as possible
the spot where the chimney would cut
through the earth; one step towards that
discovery was the knowledge that its base
was fifty yards from the cleft, and therefore
presumably from the grating in the passage.
He had been much puzzled by the almost
incessant knocking that proceeded in
day-time from the low building behind the
orchard, but dismissed that matter as of no
account so far as he and his friends were
concerned.

The wall enclosing the pagoda and its
appurtenances was twelve feet in height:
too high to look over, too smooth to scale.
The gate by which Hamid issued to the
fields was unlocked for him by a priest, and
locked after him.  Mackenzie meant to get
inside the wall.  It would not be difficult,
perhaps, to make a ladder, but before taking
this in hand he might as well see if there was
a less ostentatious mode of entry.

Strolling at the rear of the orchard late
one dark night, he was guided by the sound
of running water to the stream which he and
Forrester had observed on their first day upon
the plateau.  He followed the course of this,
and discovered that it entered the enclosure
on the north side by a culvert beneath the
wall.  The darkness rendered it impossible
to measure with the eye the width and depth
of the arch, but on stooping and feeling
along the stonework, he found that the
stream poured through an iron grating.
Since the water was perfectly clear, the
grating must have been designed, not as a
strainer, but as a defence against intrusion.
The Old Man was obviously a stickler for
privacy.

Mackenzie pushed and shook the grating,
to ascertain whether it was firmly fixed.  It
held fast, but slipping his hand under the
water, he discovered that the submerged
part was worn thin with long corrosion, and
that there were several gaps in it where the
iron had been completely rusted away.
With a little exertion he managed to break
off a considerable portion of the grating
below water, leaving a space large enough
for a man to crawl through.  It had occurred
to him at once that this was a safer means of
getting inside than by a ladder, which would
always make him a conspicuous object to
anyone who chanced to be looking that way
from the buildings.

There was no time like the present.  Without
removing his clothes, Mackenzie slipped
into the stream, spread himself flat, and,
taking a long breath, wriggled under water
through the arch.  When he stood up, he
found that the top of the grating was
considerably higher than his head, but that
his head was higher than the earthen
embankments of the stream on either side.
The depth of the water was no more than
three feet; but the embankments were no
doubt intended to protect the buildings
from flood in those seasons when the stream,
swollen by the melting snow on the
mountains, became a torrent.

Standing in the running water, he peered
over the embankment on his right.  The
pagoda loomed up black against the sky
some distance away.  Between it and him
were much lower buildings.  No light was
to be seen.  All was quiet.  He would have
liked to push his exploration further, but
felt that in his ignorance of the place the
risk of mistake and detection was too great.
Hamid's co-operation would be necessary
if he was to profit by his secret entrance, and
he resolved to come to an arrangement with
the cook for the following night.

Returning to his hut by the same route,
he stripped off his drenched clothes, spread
them on the ground at the back, out of
sight, to dry, rolled himself in his blanket,
and was soon asleep.

"How far are your quarters from the
wall?" he asked Hamid next day, meeting
him among the raspberry canes.

"Thirty good paces, sahib," replied the man.

"I wish you to meet me to-night at the
wall, where the stream flows under.  Have
you a clock?"

"An hour-glass, sahib."

"Then let the time be two hours after
lock-up.  And bring a blanket with you."

"I am your servant, sahib, but if I may
humbly ask----"

"Ask nothing.  You can get out quietly?"

"Truly, sahib, but if bald-head nabbed me----"

"Hech!  Are you afraid?  Have you
ever seen any of them about after nightfall?"

"Answer to both questions in negative, sahib."

"Where do they sleep?"

"Other side of Old Man's house, sahib;
also across garden on left."

"Very well then.  You can slip out of
your quarters at any time--that's so?"

"Quite O.K., sahib."

"Very well.  Be at yon arch two hours
after lock-up, with a dark blanket, you mind."

"I am your servant, sahib."

But Hamid asked himself with much
trouble of mind what notion the Mac Sahib
had in his noddle.

Jackson's curiosity had been awakened
by Mackenzie's prolonged absence on the
previous night.

"Where are you off to, Mac?" he asked,
seeing his companion prepare to go out
again into the dark.

"I'll bide a wee before I answer you, Bob.
You can't help, and if I come a mucker the
less you know about it the better."

On reaching the culvert, he stripped off
all his clothes and laid them beneath a bush.
Too many wettings would so alter their
appearance, he thought, as to draw the
attention of the priests.  Naked he slipped
into the water, crawled through the arch,
and on lifting himself slightly, saw Hamid
crouching beneath the shelter of the
embankment.  He quitted the stream, flung about
him the dark-blue blanket which the Bengali
had brought, and putting his fingers to his
lips, motioned to Hamid to lead him along
the watercourse.

.. _`On lifting himself, he saw Hamid crouching beneath the shelter of the embankment`:

.. figure:: images/img-245.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: On lifting himself, he saw Hamid crouching beneath the shelter of the embankment.

   On lifting himself, he saw Hamid crouching beneath the shelter of the embankment.

Hamid was shivering with amazement
and nervousness, but he obeyed in utter
silence.  They waded slowly through the
stream, whose gurgling drowned the sound
of their own movements.  Presently they
ducked to avoid a low bridge that led from
one part of the grounds to the other.  The
dull thud of footsteps brought them to a
sudden halt, and they crouched under the
bridge, listening anxiously as the walker
passed over their heads.  They caught a
glimmer of light, and as the footsteps receded,
Mackenzie peeped out, and saw a priest,
swinging a small lantern, moving towards
a building a good distance on their left.  He
entered it, and disappeared.

"Last man out!" whispered Hamid.

After waiting a few minutes, they continued
their way along the stream.  It flowed
through a wide inner enclosure, in which
were scattered a number of small structures
like summer-houses.  Two slight bridges
spanned the stream, and here and there
were irregular masses which in the darkness
could not be clearly distinguished, but which
appeared to be rockeries.  Quaintly shaped
bushes outlined their dark forms against the
walls of the distant buildings.  Mackenzie
concluded that this was either the Old Man's
private garden, or the garden of the priests.
Hamid could not tell him; he had been
strictly forbidden to stray in this direction,
or even to look over the low wall that
surrounded the enclosure.

The watercourse was not straight.  It
turned now to the right, now to the left;
its general course carried it obliquely across
the garden, towards the angle of the wall.
Thus the buildings on the right were not
parallel with it.  Mackenzie stopped, to
take his bearings.  Hamid pointed out his
own quarters, the kitchen adjoining, and
the wall of the passage connecting with the
dwelling of the Old Man.  The pagoda reared
itself high above the other buildings.
Beyond it lay the barrack-like lodgings of the
first order of priests; those of the second
order were on the opposite side of the
enclosure, and were approached by means of
the bridges.

"How far along the passage is the
grating?" Mackenzie asked in a whisper.

"About half-way, sahib."

"And on which side?"

"Side nearest us, to be sure, sahib."

"Wait here for me, and hold this."

He placed in Hamid's hands the end of a
coil of string, climbed over the embankment,
and made his way with stealthy speed
towards the middle point of the passage wall,
as nearly as he could judge it, paying out
the string as he went.  On reaching the
wall, he turned swiftly back, coiling the
string round his finger.  When he regained
Hamid's side, he knew that the distance
between the wall and this point of the
embankment was a little more than sixty
yards.  The chimney which his friends were
cutting would reach the surface somewhere
on the circumference of a circle of which the
middle of the wall was the centre, and which
would come within about ten yards of his
present position.  He followed that imaginary
line with his eye.  It passed close to one
of the summer-houses, ran across a bed of
plants, then over the grass on which he
had walked, touched the embankment some
yards to the right, owing to the oblique
course of this, and finally reached a point
near the door of the cook's lean-to.  To
gauge the position of the chimney more
precisely was impossible, because, though
he knew that it was on the near side of the
passage, he knew no more than that it was
fifty yards from the grating.

Making a mental note of the course of
the circumference on which lay the locus
of the hole sometime to be pierced, he
considered for a few moments whether to steal
towards the door of the pagoda, and try to
discover whether it was guarded.  But by
this time he was shivering with cold.  His
reconnaissance had not been unfruitful, and
he decided to return at once to his hut.  He
parted from Hamid at the culvert, handed
him the blanket, again entered his cold bath,
and picking up his clothes, ran lightly over
the ground to his lodging.  Only on those
two night expeditions had he taken off his
clothes since his departure from the village
in the forest.

Next morning Hamid handed him a note
which he had drawn up in the bone.  It was
the longest he had yet received: Forrester
had grown bolder, more reckless, perhaps,
with the lapse of time.  It read: "Always
light below.  Can't tell when it becomes
dark outside.  Give us a sign."

"Things are moving," he thought.  "They
are afraid of cutting through in the
daylight.  How in the world can I give them a
sign?  Hamid lets down the bone at all
hours.  Ah, well, I must think it out."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CARNIVORE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium

   THE CARNIVORE

.. vspace:: 2

As Forrester mounted higher into the
chimney, he worked with ever increasing
caution.  To allow the rays to break a
passage through before everything was ready
for joint action with his friends above would
be disastrous.  Another possible mischance
was even more alarming.  The ground
might cave in prematurely by its own weight,
or the weight of somebody passing over it.
The result might be to hurl him on to the
frail screen below, and through it into the pit.

To guard against such accidents he listened
intently at each ascent, before he brushed
away the protective dust.  Once he thought
he heard distant footfalls; another time the
sound of running water.  He wished that
Mackenzie had been more communicative
about what he was doing, and what he had
discovered; but reflected that if his friend
was silent, it was because, with Scotch
canniness, he was determined to risk as little as
possible, for the sake of all.

He waited patiently for the sign by which
he would know when darkness fell in the
open.  The bone, no doubt, could be dropped
only at uncertain intervals, as opportunity
offered.  Even if he knew that it would be
let down precisely at the hour of sunset, he
could not be sure of being then on the watch
at the cleft, for it was not his duty to enter
the inner cavern at all; his secret work there
had been done only when guards and
prisoners were asleep, and that was probably
much later than sunset.

One day, Beresford, just before he had
finished his task at the pit, and while
Forrester was awaiting him in the outer cavern,
noticed a trickle of water running from the
inner passage towards him.  While he was
still looking at it in surprise, wondering
where it came from, it was reinforced by a
sudden swell, which carried the tiny stream
across the floor of the cavern in a direct
course for the open pit.  By the time it
reached the brink it had almost exhausted
its energy; but some of it flowed slowly on,
and poured over.  Instantly there was a
terrific explosion, like the bursting of an
immense inflated bag, accompanied by a
flash of white light which for the moment
wholly conquered the green.  Beresford was
hurled against the wall of the cavern, and
when he picked himself up, he saw that the
force of the concussion had shut the screen
down upon the pit, gripping the gold chain
to which was suspended the plate in process
of transmutation.

It was all over in a moment; but Beresford
had hardly recovered his senses when
Forrester came hurrying into the cavern, through
the cloud of dust which had followed the
explosion, with Wing Wu and the priest in
charge hard on his heels.

Forrester had just time to give a word of
warning.  When the priest arrived,
Beresford had sufficient presence of mind to
explain in Chinese that while the cover was
lifted from the mouth of the pit there had
been a loud bang.  He did not mention the
stream of water; it had now ceased to flow,
and though its appearance had amazed him,
and in his half-dazed condition he attached
no definite meaning to it, he felt instinctively
that it had a meaning for himself and his
fellow prisoners.

The priest looked puzzled.  The dust had
set him coughing.  He peered through it
round the walls, remaining at a discreet
distance from the pit, and thus failing to
notice the dwindling trickle on the farther
side.  The atmosphere of the cavern, at
all times unpleasant and oppressive, was
stifling now.  In a few moments everybody
was retreating along the passage to the
outer cavern, Beresford remaining only to
release the chain, draw up the plate, and
lower the apparently uninjured screen firmly
into its place.  The negritos were just
bringing in the evening meal.

"Are you hurt?" Forrester asked anxiously.

"Slightly bruised, perhaps; nothing serious."

"What on earth caused the explosion?"

"A trickle of water into the pit.  Where
it came from----"

"That was the sign!" exclaimed
Forrester aloud, knowing that the priest could
not understand him.  But Wing Wu understood.

"What sign, sir?" he asked eagerly.

"Shall we tell him?" said Beresford.

Forrester hesitated for a moment.

"Not yet," he answered.

Wing Wu sighed, and turned away.

The priest at the entrance was joined by
a second, drawn by the noise from the
guard-room beyond the lake.  They talked
together for a few minutes, then the second
man departed.

"He will tell the Old Man, no doubt," said
Forrester to his companion.

"Yes; things are coming to a crisis.  The
water was our sign, no doubt.  It could
hardly have been accidental.  Mackenzie
must have thrown a bucketful or two through
the grating.  It is dark outside at about the
time of our last meal."

"Do you think the priests suspect us?"

"Who can say what goes on in their
Chinese minds?  The fellow didn't see the
water: that is pretty certain.  But I am
troubled.  In the chimney you heard running
water above you, you said?"

"I am almost sure of it--perhaps the
stream that runs across the plateau."

"If our chimney pierces its bed, we are
doomed.  There is not the ghost of a chance
for us.  The explosion you heard will be
as a popgun to a whole Dreadnought
armament in comparison with the result if
the cavern is flooded.  I take it that the
water which fell into the pit was instantly
decomposed by the rays.  Only a little
trickled over the brink; yet the explosion
was powerful enough to hurl me against the
wall.  If water pours down in any volume,
the whole place will be shattered, and we
shall be cremated instantly in one enormous flame."

"Will you go up the chimney yourself
presently, and see if I was right?" asked
Forrester, aghast at the thought of this
cataclysm.

"I will try.  Thanks to you I am not
nearly so much crocked as I was a few days
ago.  But we will wait a little longer than
usual, to give the priest time to settle down
if he is at all suspicious....  You were quite
right, by the way, not to let me explain
things to Wing Wu.  He is so easily
hypnotised that he might betray us at the first
question.  It will be time enough to tell him
when our work is done."

Several hours later, they stole into the
inner cavern, and when Forrester had placed
the cross-bars in position, Beresford mounted
the ladder, and climbed laboriously into the
chimney from bar to bar.  He carried the
piece of pointed iron, with which he
carefully probed the roof.  Withdrawing the
implement, he passed his fingers along it
from the pointed end downwards.

"We are very near the surface," he called
down softly.  "You have destroyed all the
rock.  The iron has gone through two or
three inches of clay, and then into loose
earth.  We can't risk employing the rays
again.  If the earth above collapsed en
masse, it would smash through the screen
and carry us with it into the pit.  We must
bore a hole gradually with the iron."

"What about the water?" Forrester asked.

Beresford listened intently, Forrester
standing below with his hand on the ladder.

"Yes," said Beresford at length, "you
are right.  But it appears to be at one side,
not directly overhead.  Ah! there are
footsteps.  Listen!"

They kept absolute silence.  The dull
thud of footsteps overhead was clearly
audible.  Forrester looked up at his friend,
dimly visible high above him.  His attention
was so fully concentrated that a slight sound
behind caused him to jump round with a
sudden start.  And there, in the entrance
to the cavern, he saw the priest, peering
up towards the hole in which the ladder rested.

.. _`There he saw the priest, peering up towards the hole in which the ladder rested`:

.. figure:: images/img-259.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: There he saw the priest, peering up towards the hole in which the ladder rested.

   There he saw the priest, peering up towards the hole in which the ladder rested.

In after years Forrester often felt a
quickening of the pulse as he tried to piece
together the confused sequence of events
in the next crowded minute.  Whether he
shouted to warn his companion before the
Chinaman swung round and dashed back
along the passage, or whether the Chinaman
fled first and his cry followed, he could never
distinctly recollect.  All that he could
remember was that, impelled by an instinctive
feeling that the priest must be caught and
silenced, he sprang like a tiger towards the
intruder.  Probably the fact was that the
priest, being on the alert, had already turned
before Forrester dashed after him, for he
had a lead of several yards up the narrow
passage.

Forrester was the younger and the fleeter
of the two.  Weeks of life in the mephitic
atmosphere of the underworld, indeed, had
slackened his muscles and lowered his
nervous energy; his wind came short; but
at this perilous crisis he seemed to regain
all the athletic vigour which had served him
so well on the football field in years gone by.
When the priest dashed into the outer cavern,
Forrester was only a few yards in the rear.

The former, feeling no doubt that he had
now desperate men to deal with, rushed
straight across to the entrance, where he
might expect to find the negrito guards
ready to support him.  The little men,
however, startled out of their wits by a
sight which never, in all their years of
servitude, had they beheld before, stood
like stockfish, gazing amazedly at the two
figures swiftly approaching them.  When
he reached them, the Chinaman appeared
to realise instantly that he could place
no reliance on men so palsied.  He darted
between them, turned to the right, and ran
as fast as his long robe would allow along the
ledge leading to the ward-room on the other
side of the lake.

Crossing the cavern Forrester had gained
on him.  At the entrance he was barely two
yards behind.  He flashed past the
astounded negritos, swung round on to the
ledge, came up with his quarry just as he
reached the plank bridge, and making a
spring forward, caught him round the waist,
as he had tackled many a man in pursuit
of the oval ball.  The Chinaman, however,
although less agile, was of heavier build,
and by sheer strength and weight he began
to haul Forrester along the bridge towards
the further ledge, at the end of which his
colleague and the negrito guards were
already massing.

Forrester clung to him desperately, tried
to drag upon him by digging ineffectual
heels into the plank; but with the cavern
wall on his right, and only two feet of
planking to manoeuvre on, he found that
inch by inch he was being pulled into the
jaws of danger.  The Chinaman was clutching
at the crazy handrail for purchase in
hauling his tenacious grappler along.  In
a few seconds Forrester must either release
him, or fall a captive into remorseless hands.
Despair struck a spark in his darkening
mind.  There was one chance--one, and no more!

Bracing his right leg, he threw the whole
weight of the Chinaman and himself against
the balustrade.  It creaked; there was the
snap of breaking timber.  Forrester
released his man and drew quickly back.  The
priest fell with a great splash into the green
oily waters of the lake.

By this time the startled company at the
remote end of the ledge were beginning to
advance.  A spear whizzed past Forrester's
ear.  To protect himself, he wrenched away
a piece of the broken handrail.  With this
club he could ward off a missile or crack a
skull.  Facing the enemy, he retreated with
wary footsteps along the bridge.  The
priest, leading on his negritos, came striding
along the ledge, his parchmenty features
grimacing with rage.

Forrester was trembling in every limb.
The sudden spurt, the muscular strain, had
told heavily upon his debilitated body.  And
again despair seized upon his soul as he
realised that his efforts after all had been
made in vain.  Before long the priest now
menacing him would hurry to acquaint the
Old Man with this revolt of the prisoners.
They would be taken aloft, and then--the Eye!

But all speculation was suddenly shocked
out of his mind by a tragic sequel,
unlooked-for, terrible.

The Chinaman was still floundering
beneath the bridge.

Swift and silent, from out the sombre
spaces of the lake there slid a something
huge and hideous--a Shape.  A glint of
greenish light in cruel eyes; a flash of
gleaming teeth in jaws like those of a
mammoth dog-fish; a shriek of terror and
despair; then silence, and a slow heaving
of the waters.  The Monster had claimed his
ancient right!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`UNDER THE STARS`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium

   UNDER THE STARS

.. vspace:: 2

Forrester and his enemies alike were for
the moment paralysed by the horror of the
tragic scene.  Before they had recovered
their wits, Beresford dashed up behind his
friend, and cried to him to tear up the plank.
Only one who had not seen the actual
occurrence could have intervened at such a moment.

"Quick, man!" cried Beresford, amazed
at the other's sluggishness.

Pulling himself together, Forrester stooped
and helped Beresford to haul the plank to
their own side of the ledge, leaving an
impassable gap between them and their enemies.
Only by swimming could they now be
reached, and Forrester felt, with a return
of his nausea, that the priest, after the object
lesson he had just had, would recoil from so
terrible a risk.

"Bring the plank back into the cavern,"
said Beresford.  "There's no time to lose."

They hurried back.  On hearing Forrester's
shout, Beresford had descended the shaft
with reckless speed, and hurried through the
passage after him.  When he gained the
cavern pursuer and pursued had disappeared
through the entrance.  Dashing after them,
he levelled the two negritos, now at last
awaking from their torpor, with blows left
and right.  He said afterwards that it was
monstrously unfair--like hitting children.
Too late to witness the fate of the priest, he
perceived what had escaped Forrester's
over-wrought mind--that only the destruction of
the bridge could save them from the Old
Man's immediate vengeance.  Whether it
would result in their complete and final
salvation was on the knees of the gods.

Returning to the cavern, they caught up
the spears of the negritos, and carried them
and the plank to their customary quarters
at the further end.  Of the Chinese prisoners,
only Wing Wu and his cousin had enough
spirit left to interest themselves in the
extraordinary incidents of the past few
minutes: the others had scarcely stirred in
their sleep.

"Lie down, my lad," said Beresford kindly,
as Wing Wu came to meet him, his eyes
gleaming with a light not seen in them for
many a day.  "You will want all your
strength.  You shall know all about it, presently."

As he spoke, he reeled against Forrester,
who caught him in his arms and lowered him
gently to the floor.

"Decidedly groggy," he murmured with a
haggard smile.  "I'm sorry to be such a
nuisance to you, old man.  Give me a minute
or two: then--by George!  I shall talk!"

He closed his eyes, and lay for a while
silent on his back, his panting nostrils telling
how great had been the tax upon his
weakened frame.  By and by he looked up at
Forrester, reclining near him.

"Thank Heaven, my brain is clear!" he
began.  "What an absurd thing one's body
is! ... Now, they'll either rebuild the
bridge and storm us, or do nothing, and
starve us out.  It depends on whether the
Old Man can bear the thought of extinguishing
us without using the Eye!  Either way,
we are doomed--unless we get out.  That's
as much as to say that we must get out at
once.  We must!  And we must let our
friends above know when to expect us
Scribble a note to Mackenzie, then: we pop
out of the chimney to-morrow night."

"Is it possible?" Forrester asked.

"You will manage it.  If I am not
mistaken, a few hours' work with the iron will
pierce through to the surface.  Only take
the greatest care."

"And what then?"

"There you have me!  I haven't an idea.
But I am inclined to think that your canny,
close Scot is ready for us, has his plan of
campaign thoroughly mapped out.  I trust
him the more because he has told us nothing.
Well, you mount first--I'm afraid that's
inevitable----"

"Of course----"

"I follow when you give the word, and I
think our two young Chinese friends here
will be men enough to join us.  We make
four: Mackenzie will have Jackson and your
shikari, I suppose; your cook is useless as a
fighting man?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so.  He is rather a
timorous creature."

"And my plucky little Tibetan--I'd be
glad to think he might make one of us.  But
this is all guess-work: we can only be sure
of six or seven.  Obviously six or seven can't
tackle two or three hundred well-fed
Chinamen and some scores of negritos.  Mackenzie
has perhaps discovered the way down into
the rift, and means us to slip off in the dark.
Guess-work again!  Let us leave all that.
Take a good sleep; then tighten your belt,
and ply that bit of iron to bore our passage.
Please the Powers, we'll worm our way into
God's air before twenty-four hours are up."

With no means of telling the time,
Forrester slept brokenly, and was at work long
before day had dawned above.  To guard
against danger from the falling earth, he
got Wing Wu to demolish the sentry-box,
and lay the material in gridiron pattern
across the covering of the pit.  Then,
mounting into the chimney, he prised out the clay
bit by bit, and afterwards the crumbling
earth above it, cutting the hole to the shape
of a narrow cone.

As the work progressed, the sound of
running water grew more and more distinct.
Forrester knew that if the bed of the stream
were pierced, there would be a swift end to
their tribulations.  He could only hope for
the best, and persevere.  How long he worked
he never knew; so much engrossed was he
that he did not remember he had had no food.
There was no sign of interruption.  Beresford
remained on guard in the outer cavern,
listening for the footsteps of the Old Man's
minions, the ministers of the Law of the Eye.
But not a sound was heard from the direction
of the lake.  It seemed that the Old Man was
content to bide his time.

It was a blissful moment when Forrester,
thrusting the iron upwards into the earth,
felt suddenly that there was no resistance.
When he withdrew it, a thin slit of white
light appeared at the apex of the cone.  He
had pierced the surface, and a great joy
thrilled him, for he knew that he had not
touched the stream.  But he was instantly
aware of a double danger.  The hole, small
as it was, might be seen.  Even if it were
not seen, a chance passer-by might tread
upon it and break through.  Would Fortune,
he wondered, stand their friend?  Nothing
more, at any rate, could be risked while
daylight lasted.

He descended, and hurried to give Beresford
the great news.  Beresford pressed his hand.

"To-night!" he said.  "Now for these lads here."

Quietly, as though telling a tale, he
informed the two young Chinamen of the bare
fact that a way had been opened for them
to the upper world.

"Will you join us?" he asked.  "There
are friends above.  What may lie before us
we cannot tell: we may have to fight for
our lives.  Will you take the risks?"

Wing Wu assented eagerly; free from the
domination of the priests he was a different
being.  His cousin was less ready; on being
shown the ladder, and the cross-bars rising
one above another until they almost
disappeared, he shook his head, declaring that
he had no strength for the feat demanded.
The others forbore to urge him.

"He will try when he sees the rest of us
go up," Beresford remarked confidently.
"Our plan is fixed?  You mount first; at
your signal we follow.  You and I will take
the negritos' spears.  The only other
weapons are the iron bar and the knife.
Wing Wu can take the bar; the other man
the knife.  We wait only for darkness."

The period of waiting was trying to them
all.  Time after time Forrester went into
the inner cavern, and peered up the
perpendicular tunnel at the tiny streak of light.
The elder Chinamen, dull-eyed and listless,
merely wailed for food.  The two negritos
paced restlessly about the larger cavern,
looking again and again through the entrance
towards the farther end of the ledge, now
silent and deserted.  More than once
Forrester went to the cleft to see whether his
last message had been drawn up; but the
bone remained where he had laid it.  This
added tenfold to their anxiety, for without
the co-operation of their friends they would be
like men lost in a wilderness.  The chimney,
indeed, penetrated to the open air, not to a
roofed chamber; but at what spot, whether
in an unenclosed field, or in a walled garden
or courtyard, they had no means of telling.
Without a guide, they might as well be in
Minos' labyrinth.  One consideration,
however, prevailed over all others: to remain
below was to starve; above ground, they
could at least die fighting.

At last it seemed to Forrester that the
streak above was becoming fainter.  He
stared upwards, until convinced beyond
doubt that the shades of evening were falling.
Quickly the light faded.  All was dark.

He rushed to the cavern to tell Beresford,
then hurried back, mounted the scaffolding,
and with his spear slightly enlarged the hole
at the top.  The gurgle of water struck more
loudly upon his ear.  A footfall startled him,
and he held his hand in sickening dread
that the fatal discovery was made.  The
sound passed and died away, but the scare
made him defer further work until later,
when he might suppose the enemy were
sound asleep.

When every minute seemed an hour, it
was impossible to gauge the flight of time.
But, all allowances being made for their
impatience, Beresford judged that three or
four hours had passed before he suggested
that it was now safe to resume operations.
Once more Forrester scraped away at the
hole.  The glimmer of stars lent him
encouragement and hope.  Inch by inch the
earth fell away; he pushed his hand through;
at last, in quivering suspense, his head.  He
drew in great gulps of the sweet air, that
was like champagne to him after the noisome
atmosphere below.  And with eager eyes,
little above the level of the ground, he looked
about him.

It was very dark; only a faint shine from
the stars thinned the blackness.  Almost at
once he became aware that while the view
before him was unobstructed, it was shut
out behind by a mound of earth.  From
beyond this he heard the slow wash of the
stream, and he gasped with thankfulness that
the iron had escaped the channel, apparently
by inches.

Nothing was in sight but the dark shapes
of bushes, arbours, and the pile of buildings
beyond.  He was holding himself rigid,
listening for sounds, wondering what he must do,
when a slight, slow hiss struck upon his
ear.  Was it merely the rustle of the breeze?
It came again.  His message had not been
received; no friend, it seemed, could be
awaiting him; if the sound were human,
could it proceed from anyone but an enemy?

He waited, tense, watchful, scarcely
breathing.  Then he started, for a few yards away,
at the base of the embankment, a dark shape
was stirring.  Instinctively he tightened his
clutch upon the spear, though he knew that
with only his head above ground he could
do nothing to defend himself.  His one
precaution was to sink down until only his
eyes and scalp were above the surface.

He could not yet distinguish whether the
form was that of an animal or of a man.  It
lifted itself, became gradually erect, and
moved very slowly, almost imperceptibly,
towards him.  Then he began to recognise
something familiar and friendly in the shape;
he raised his head a little; a rush of hot
blood made him dizzy; and he almost
swooned with unspeakable joy and thankfulness
when he heard a whisper in old Mac's
well-known voice.

.. _`A rush of hot blood made him dizzy, and he almost swooned when he heard a whisper in old Mac's well-known voice`:

.. figure:: images/img-273.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: A rush of hot blood made him dizzy, and he almost swooned when he heard a whisper in old Mac's well-known voice.

   A rush of hot blood made him dizzy, and he almost swooned when he heard a whisper in old Mac's well-known voice.

"Dick!"

"Be careful!" Forrester murmured anxiously.
"Don't come too near.  Your weight
may break through."

"Now, quick!  How many do you muster?"

"Beresford and two Chinamen.  There
are others--helpless."

"So!  Bring up the able-bodied, and
make for yon summer-house; you see!--a
yard or two away.  Wait for me there."

Mackenzie crept silently away: he never
wasted words.  Not till afterwards did
Forrester learn how the patient Scotsman
had prowled about the grounds nightly in
order to guard against the contingency that
had actually happened--the sudden
appearance of the prisoners above ground.  Hamid
Gul had accidentally dropped the string
down the grating when trying to tie it to a
bar, and having no more to spare, could
neither send nor receive a message.

Forrester withdrew his head, and set to
work to enlarge the hole for the passage of
his shoulders.  It was an unexpectedly slow
process.  He dared not hack vigorously for
fear of bringing a mass of earth tumbling in
upon him, or of piercing the embankment
and letting down a deluge.  But he picked
away patiently until the gap was large
enough to scramble through.

Then he gave the long-awaited word, and
heaved himself to the surface.  In spite of
his care, a chunk of earth broke from the
edge and fell down the chimney, breaking and
scattering on the bamboos laid across the
slab.  Beresford waited a moment or two;
then he mounted, without accident, and
after him Wing Wu.  The three men crouched
near the hole, waiting for Chung Tong to
appear.  It seemed that he would never
come.  Time was flying; the dawn could
not be far off.  Presently they heard an
ascending scale of sighs as the Chinaman,
pricked by fear of loneliness to follow them,
climbed the bars one by one, each upward
move accompanied with a sigh.  When
his head emerged, Forrester and Beresford
caught his shoulders, and heaved him through,
not without disturbing clods that fell with
ominous thuds, just audible, on the screen.

Forrester lead the way stealthily to the
summer-house indicated by Mackenzie.  There
Mackenzie and Jackson, with Hamid Gul,
were awaiting them.  For a few moments
speechless greetings passed between the
reunited friends; their hearts were full; feeling
was too intense to find expression in word.
When Mackenzie at last spoke, there was an
unusual huskiness in his tones.

"Come now, listen, all of you.  We are
in a garden; there's a seven-foot wall around
it.  Beyond the wall is a larger enclosure.
That's where the buildings are.  Dick, you
and I are going through Hamid's quarters
and the kitchen into the pagoda.  We are
going to collar the Eye!"

A thrill shook them all.

"Hamid knows where it is.  If we canna
do it, we capture the Old Man, and hold him
as a hostage.  There's a sentry in the
antechamber leading to his apartments.  There's
another at the principal outer door, which
opens to the enclosure yonder.  They're
likely fast asleep.  We'll no meddle with
the man at the principal door.  The
other--we'll have to deal with him.  If there's an
alarm, the rest of ye just bolt for yon door,
and do your best to hold it against the
priests.  If the sentry has gone inside, one
or two of ye follow him up.  You've got
arms of a sort: you can change 'em for the
two-three things we've brought if you like
'em better.  It's touch and go, ye ken.
We must be swift and sure.  We canna fight
hundreds; but with yon old de'il's Eye in
our possession, we can defy him and his
priests too.  Bob, you'll be in charge here,
and this gentleman--Mr. Beresford, I
presume--will likely give you every assistance."

"You may be sure of that," said Beresford.

"Well, that's all.  We'll shed our boots.
Then, Hamid, lead the way."

Mackenzie took a hoe from a bench;
Hamid was armed with a kitchen chopper.
They went out, followed by Forrester with
his spear.  Stealthily crossing the garden,
they scaled the wall, dropped lightly on to
the grass, and crept across to the door of
Hamid's quarters.  From this they passed
into the kitchen, and thence into the passage.

At the further end was a door on which
was a huge lock.  But, as Hamid had noticed
on his daily visits to the inner apartments,
the lock had long since fallen into disrepair,
and been replaced by a single latch worked
from the inside--eloquent testimony to the
fear inspired by the Eye.  The point of
Forrester's spear, passed through the space
between the door and the side-post, sufficed
to raise the latch.  Mackenzie cautiously
pushed the door open, not without a slight
creaking, and signed to Hamid to pass
through before him.

The cook, nerved by the presence of the
sahibs, led them into a corridor dimly lit
by small oriental lamps.  On bare feet they
stole along by the wall, towards the door at
the further end.  A priest was squatting
there, with knees up, and head down bent.
Mackenzie drew from his pocket a woollen
pad--it had been borrowed from his
blanket--and two or three short pieces of cord.
These he handed to Forrester with a
significant look.  Then, stealing forward in
advance of Hamid, he crept up to the dozing
sentry, and with a sudden swoop clutched
him round the throat before he had time
to utter a sound.  Forrester, just behind,
stooped and thrust the gag into his gaping
jaws.  They turned him face downwards,
and a few rapid twists of the cord left him
trussed like a fowl at the doorway.

Stepping over him, they pushed the
door gently.  Mackenzie peeped round its
edge.  The ante-chamber within was empty.
Through this they tiptoed.  The door at the
further end yielded to their touch, and they
passed into a second ante-chamber, lit by
more lamps than the first.  A slight but
prolonged creak as the door opened came
near to being their undoing, for thirty feet
ahead, at the entrance to the Old Man's
apartment, sat a second sentry, whom
Mackenzie had not allowed for; and the
sound roused him from his slumber.  He
rose lazily, without any sign of alarm,
expecting vaguely, perhaps, that his colleague
without was coming to pass an hour with
him.  But Mackenzie realised that nothing
but extreme quickness could save the situation,
and even as he darted forward to tackle
the man, the latter let out a loud shout of
alarm.  It was his first and last cry.
Mackenzie drove at him with the full strength
of muscles hardened by weeks of spade work,
and he fell like a log.

Meanwhile Hamid, with Forrester close at
heel, had run on into the inner chamber--the
sanctum in which the Old Man of the
Mountain slept, ate, and meditated on the
Law of the Eye.  Like all old men, he was
a light sleeper.  His functionary's cry had
awakened him, and as the two men burst
in, they saw his thin, wizened, almost
ghoulish frame half risen from his golden
couch.  The lamplight fell upon his blazing
eyes, wide with wonder, resentment and,
when he caught sight of Forrester, fury.
Hamid shrank before his paralysing glare,
retaining enough presence of mind, however,
to lift his trembling arm and point to the
golden lattice behind which the fantastic
head-dress reposed in its recess, illuminated
by its own special lamp.

The Old Man observed the movement.
His expression changed; it might have been
said that terror spoke for the nonce from
that cold, mask-like countenance.  With
agility amazing in so decrepit a figure he
leapt from his couch, and darted towards
the sacred recess.  But Forrester was too
quick for him.  He sprang to the wall,
turned his back so as to cover the lattice
completely, and raised his spear to meet the
expected attack.

.. _`He sprang to the wall, and raised his spear to meet the expected attack`:

.. figure:: images/img-280.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: He sprang to the wall, and raised his spear to meet the expected attack.

   He sprang to the wall, and raised his spear to meet the expected attack.

For one moment the Old Man glared upon
him with eyes that cut like knives.  Then,
with a sudden swift movement that took
Forrester utterly by surprise, he sprang
towards a richly gilded hanging that covered
the adjacent wall.  Forrester wrenched open
the lattice, seized the head-dress to make sure
of it, and, oblivious for the moment that his
incautious handling of it might shiver him
to dust, darted after the retreating figure.
The hanging swung aside, closing immediately
behind the Chinaman.  Forrester heard
a slight click, and when he drew the curtain
aside, was confronted with nothing but a
bare wainscoting of panelled wood.  The
Old Man was gone.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FIGHT IN THE PAGODA`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium

   THE FIGHT IN THE PAGODA

.. vspace:: 2

"Put the thing down!  Put it down!"
cried Mackenzie, rushing in and seeing the
head-dress in Forrester's hands.

"But----"

"Yes, I know; but put it down!  Any
moment the Eye may open!  Be careful,
now!  Ah!"

He heaved a sigh of relief as Forrester set
the head-dress down on the golden table.

"Where is the Old Man?" he continued.

"He went through there," Forrester
answered, indicating the spot.

"A secret door!  Well, we'll waste no
time seeking that.  Let him bide.  We must
discover how he works the Eye."

"What did you do with the priest?"

"Tied him up with his own girdle.  I
don't think we made noise enough to waken
anybody else.  Hamid, just run along to the
kitchen and block up the door."

"And bring me something to eat, if you
can," Forrester added.  "I'm famished:
have had nothing for more than twenty-four
hours: none of us has."

"Och, that's bad.  You can't work on an
empty stomach.  Fetch here all you can,
Hamid, and be quick about it....  Now,
man, for the Eye!  If we can only find out
how the thing works, we have the whole
caboodle at our mercy."

"Turn it towards the golden lattice; it
won't destroy gold, I know that," said
Forrester.  "And keep behind it, in case of
accident."

Standing over the head-dress, they began
to examine it, at first with their eyes alone.
Then Mackenzie ventured to pass his fingers
round its base, feeling gently for the spring
or secret button by which he supposed the
shutter or eyelid of the Eye was opened.
Gradually working upwards, in the course of
a few minutes he had left no portion of it
untouched except the Eye itself, which he
was careful always to avoid.

"How the dickens does the thing work?"
he said at length, thrusting his hands into
his pockets and contemplating it with a
puzzled frown.  "We'll not find out without
taking it to pieces, to my thinking."

"Does it matter?" asked Forrester.
"The main thing is that we've got it, and
the Old Man hasn't.  Besides, those fellows
outside will be getting anxious.  Where is
Sher Jang, by the bye?"

"In his hut.  I wished I could bring him,
but he shares the hut with three others, and
I didn't dare fetch him out by night in case
they smelt a rat and followed him.  The
fewer the better, to begin with."

"I say, it's nearly morning.  Look!"

A faint light was creeping in at the windows
high in the wall.  Time had passed more
quickly than they had been aware.  Soon
the Old Man's menials would come to
extinguish the lamps, and the priests would
issue from their dwellings and go about the
work of the day.

"What now?" Forrester asked.

"We must get our men inside, fasten the
door, and hunt about for the way below.
If we once get away with the Eye, we can
come back any time and release all the
prisoners."

"We can't leave those poor wretches in
the cavern to starve.  Ah!  Listen!"

From somewhere outside came the harsh
clangour of a gong.

"The signal to get up!" said Mackenzie.
"There's no time to lose.  With or without
the Eye, we must act.  Yon little door leads
to the entrance, no doubt.  You had better
bide here and watch over the head-dress.
You might also try to discover how the
Old Man gets from here to the judgment seat
below.  There must be a stairway somewhere.
I'll go along to the front, and bring
in the others."

"What if the Old Man comes back, or any
of his priests?"

"Och, show them the Eye!  That'll be
enough, I doubt.  You've got your spear,
too.  I'll bring our men here as quickly as
possible, and we'll barricade ourselves and
get a breathing space to find the way out.
Send Hamid after me."

He hurried through the door at the end
of the room opposite to that by which he had
entered.  It opened into a vast central hall.
Ranged along the sides were a number of
curiously carved chairs, richly ornamented
with gold.  The walls were decorated--or
rather, perhaps, disfigured--with inlaid
figures of the Monster.  Half-way down the
hall, on the left, was an immense golden
throne, like that in the underground Temple.

Nobody was in sight.  An arch at the
further end led to a broad aisle and the great
central door.  A priest was in the act of
throwing the door open.  In the half
darkness, with his eye fixed on the priest,
Mackenzie failed to notice a couple of steps
between the central hall and the entrance
lobby.  He slipped, and though he recovered
himself instantly, the noise was sufficient to
attract the priest's attention, and he turned
round.  The sight of a white man rushing
towards him hoe in hand from the direction
of the inner sanctum seemed to paralyse him
for a moment.  Then he wheeled about, and
fled with flying skirts through the open
door, shouting as he went.

Mackenzie sprinted hard in pursuit, not
from any particular wish to catch him, but
anxious about the little party waiting in the
summer-house.  When he issued from the
door, he saw the priest running towards a
wicket gate in the garden wall.  Before he
reached it, it was opened from the inner side
by a priest of the second order.  The running
man dashed through, shouting to his colleague
as he passed.  The latter looked up, saw
Mackenzie within a few yards, and turning
on his heel, fled away at full speed, leaving
the door open and the key in the lock.  In
a few moments both the priests had rushed
across the bridge and disappeared through
the open wicket on the further side.

Mackenzie made straight for the summer-house.

"Come!" he cried, seeing Jackson
peering round the door.  "The whole lot of
you!  Through yon gate!"

The four dashed out, Jackson leading.
Chung Tong moved more slowly than the
rest.  Mackenzie caught him by the neck,
and shoved him along.  He paused to shut
and lock the gate, then herded the party
across the courtyard into the main entrance
of the pagoda.  When all were inside he
flung the door to, locked and barred it, and
said:--

"Now, Mr. Beresford, I'll ask you to
keep guard here.  You're hungry, I know;
I'll send you something to eat.  The rest of
us are just going to find the way to the rift.
You don't object?"

"I'm at your orders," answered Beresford.
"Forrester is safe?"

"He was three minutes ago.  I'm away!"

The thought of Forrester inadvertently
opening the Eye urged him through the hall
at the speed of a greyhound.  Jackson and
Wing Wu followed him: Chung Tong
dropped heavily into one of the golden seats
that lined the entrance lobby, and groaned.

In the Old Man's apartment Forrester was
eating a kind of patty which Hamid had just
brought on a well-laden tray from the kitchen.

"Take some food to Mr. Beresford at the
door--some water too," cried Mackenzie.
"All quiet, Dick?"

"Yes.  I can't find out how----"

"Dinna fash yersel' with it, man,"
Mackenzie interposed.  At moments of
excitement he was apt to relapse into his
native idiom.  "Bob, and you, mister, take
a keek all round for the way below stairs.
I'm away to the kitchen.  Eat as you go."

He rushed off, anxious to see whether
Hamid had secured the back entrance.

"Hech! the fathead!" he exclaimed,
when he saw that the cook had merely barred
the door; and looked around for material for
an effective barricade.  In a recess near the
stove lay a number of logs of wood.  Dragging
these out, he jammed them between the
door and the opposite wall of the narrow
passage.

"That will give them some work," he thought.

Then he rushed back to his friends.
Forrester was still feverishly trying to
discover how the Eye worked.  Jackson was
absent.  Wing Wu, munching a patty, had
just returned from a rapid run through the
building.

"Well?" cried Mackenzie.

"Sir, I cannot find either doors or staircases,"
said the Chinaman.

"Any men?"

"None but the two priests on the floor."

"That's well.  Hullo, Bob!"

Jackson was staggering in under a load of
arms.  The call to action had made a very
different man of him.

"By Jinks!" cried Mackenzie.  "Where
did you find 'em?"

"In a little room beyond.  There's a
crowd of things of all sorts--pikes, swords, a
small armoury."

"A jolly good find!" cried Mackenzie,
"But you haven't got our rifles!"

"No; I didn't see them.  There's no
ammunition for these ancient muskets, but
they'll come in useful, perhaps, as clubs."

"No doubt about that," said Forrester,
looking up from the head-dress.  "It sounds
like coming to a fight, Mac."

From without came the dull hubbub of
distant voices.  It was clear that the whole
community was roused.  The windows were
too high in the wall for any of the party
to see what was going on outside, but the
increasing noise told that the priests had left
their lodgings, and Mackenzie guessed that
they were massed in the garden beyond the
locked gate.  They could know nothing of
what had happened within the pagoda.  No
doubt they were bewildered and alarmed,
wondering why the foreigners who had
dared to profane the sacred floors of the
August and Venerable had not instantly
been shattered to dust by the omnipotent Eye.

"Will they scale the wall and attack
us?" asked Jackson.

"Maybe, when they discover that we're
in possession," said Mackenzie.  "But at
present you may be sure they're just
wandered.  They don't know what to do
until they get word of the Old Man.  What's
happened to him?"

At this moment a fierce howl of fury
penetrated the walls.

"What's up?" exclaimed Forrester.
"Get on my back, Mac, and look out of the window."

Mackenzie mounted.  The noise had
swelled to a pandemoniac babel.

"The whole gang of them are in the garden
yonder," he said.  "They're looking up
towards the roof, yelling like fiends; I never
saw such rage on such ugly faces.  I'll run
to the door and see what maddens them."

A minute later he emerged quietly into the
courtyard, hidden from the priests by the
intervening garden wall.  Hastening to a
spot where the whole upper portion of the
pagoda was in view, he gazed up.  The roof
was built in three great tiers, one above
another.  From the second to the third a
winding stair led to the summit, upon which
there was a small square platform, fenced
with a balustrade of ornamental gold work.
The bent form of a frail old man was
painfully climbing the last few steps.  Mackenzie
watched him.  He gained the top, leant for
a moment on the balustrade to rest, then
stood with hands uplifted, looking in the
distance like a quaint figure carved in ivory.
His bald scalp had no protection; his
wizened features were twisted in agony and
despair.  And there the Old Man remained,
mute and motionless, gazing down upon the
upturned faces of his two hundred priests.

Mackenzie slipped back.  As he was
relocking the door, Beresford said quietly:--

"I'm not a panic-monger; but do you
know that if those yelling shavelings out
yonder break through our hole, in a couple
of seconds we shall all be blown sky-high?"

"Good heavens above!" ejaculated
Mackenzie, aghast.  "And we can't prevent 'em!"

"Only by warning them.  I speak Chinese:
I will go out and tell them."

"You'd never get the chance.  They'd
tear you limb from limb before you'd got a
word out.  But I tell you, now.  There's a
fellow here.  Come away!"

He hurried Beresford through the hall and
the Old Man's room to the door, outside
which the bound priest still lay.

"Tell yon Chinky," he said: "then I'll
kick him out."

Beresford very gravely explained to the
shuddering Chinaman what the result of an
incautious step would be, and advised him
to set a guard over the hole.  Then the man
was bundled out, and the door again made fast.

Mackenzie told what he had seen.

"Was the Old Man urging them to fight?"
asked Forrester.

"No; he's done!  Not a kick in him,
seemingly.  Without the Eye he's just a
poor wee body.  What they'll do I cannot
tell; but we'll have another look for the
stairway in the meantime."

Leaving Forrester still wrestling with the
problem of the Eye, Mackenzie and Jackson
ranged through the building from end to end
in search of doors in the walls or trapdoors
in the floors.  After several fruitless minutes
they were returning to the sanctum, and
suddenly became aware that the noise outside
had subsided.

"What's that mean?" cried Jackson.

The words had scarcely left his lips when
the great door at the end of the aisle
resounded under a loud and violent knocking.

"It means war, I doubt," Mackenzie
answered.  "Go and join Mr. Beresford,
Bob.  I'll bring the others with some of
those arms you discovered.  We must keep
the Chinkies out at all costs."

He raced back to the inner room.  Forrester
had already left the head-dress, and
seized an ancient pike.

"No, no, Dick!" cried Mackenzie.
"Stick to your job, man.  I'm no good at
puzzles myself.  We will need that Eye!
Hamid, you and your chopper, away to the
kitchen door.  I doubt they won't come
that way because the passage is narrow.
If they do, make a bit use o' your chopper,
then run and tell me.  Awa' wi' ye!  You,
mister" (addressing Wing Wu), "lift yon
musket, or a scimitar, or whatever ye like
best, and come.  Forget all about the priests
and their conjuring tricks; you've got an
arm; then fight like the de'il."

While speaking he had clutched an armful
of weapons, and led the way back to the
great door, with Wing Wu close at heel.
Like Jackson, the young Chinaman was a
new man now that he was no longer subject
to the baneful influence of the priests.

"Here, take your pick," Mackenzie cried on
reaching the others, displaying the weapons.
"By good luck the door's thick; it will
stand a fair amount of battering.  Mister,
can't you get yon friend of yours to take a hand?"

He pointed to Chung Tong, who had
roused himself to work steadily through the
eatables brought by Hamid Gul.  Wing Wu
spoke to him, urging, imploring him to choose
his weapon; but he turned a dull eye, and
munched on.

"Give me a lift, Mac," said Jackson.
"I'll see what they're doing."

On Mackenzie's shoulders he looked
through a window.

"The garden is swarming with them,"
he said.  "They're hoisting one another
over the wall.  They're armed with all sorts
of things--picks, rakes, hammers, swords,
knives; some seem to have bars of gold!
They're all making for the door."

"Are they avoiding our hole?" Beresford
asked anxiously.

"Yes; there are two men standing over
it, warning off the others as they run by."

"What did you mean about an explosion,
sir?" Mackenzie asked of Beresford.

"There's a pit in the cavern.  Out of it
come rays like those from the Eye.  They
decompose water: what you sent down
nearly made an end of us.  A greater
quantity would have shivered the whole
place to atoms."

Mackenzie drew a long breath.

"They know it, thank goodness!" he
said.  "Anything new, Bob?"

"No: they're still running this way.
There must be some near the door I can't
see.  They all look as if they're expecting
something to happen."

The last words were drowned by an
explosion that shook the building.

"Gunpowder!  The door!" cried Mackenzie.

Jackson sprang down.  They were all
far enough from the door to be out of danger.
There were cracks in the timber, but it still
held together.  A howl of wrath and bafflement
rose from hundreds of throats outside.

"They'll try to burst in," said Mackenzie.
"I'll take the left: you the centre, Bob:
Mr. Beresford the right.  Mister Chinaman,"
he added with a grim smile, "will act as reserve."

They placed themselves, awaiting the
assault.  Some minutes passed.  Outside
there was confused and fitful shouting.  Then
all at once the door creaked under a heavy blow.

"A battering ram!" cried Jackson.

"Ay!  Stand clear!"

The blow was repeated again and again.
Splinters and slabs of wood fell inward;
and at each successive breach a yell of
triumph broke from the mob outside.
Without firearms the defenders could do
nothing to check the destruction.  At last
the remnants of the door crashed in, and
the assailants in a serried mass crowded the
entrance.

The full light of morning was behind
them: the defenders had some slight
advantage in the dimness of the aisle, lit only
by a few narrow windows high up in the
outer wall.  It soon became clear, too, that
the priests were not accustomed to the use
of weapons.  For generations, no doubt,
the servants of the Eye had relied on it as
their sufficient defence.  But they were
Chinamen, infuriate, reckless; their ferocity
made up their lack of skill, and as they
came on with strident yells, wielding
whatever weapons they had been able to snatch
up, the Englishmen recognised that they
had need of all their strength, experience,
and resource to stem the human torrent.

Mackenzie had a heavy musket, Jackson
an antique sword, Beresford a pike--unfamiliar
weapons, all of them.  But there
was no space for the display of science, even
if they had had it.  The Chinamen dealt in
smashing blows and sweeping cuts.  In grim
silence the white men parried, thrust, jabbed,
smote, to such purpose that in a few minutes
a barrier of prone figures was heaped up
between them and their howling foes.  And
all the time, unknown to them, their reserve
was strengthened.  At the first sight of the
invading priests all listlessness fell from
Chung Tong.  He sprang up, seized a sword,
and stood beside his cousin, glaring at his
oppressors, and only waiting an opportunity
to wreak on them the vengeance long stored
in his brooding soul.

For the first few minutes the defenders
held their own.  There was a slackening in
the attack; the bolder spirits in the van
had fallen, and barred the way against their
comrades behind.  But as the ranks thinned
slightly, two or three carrying muskets
pushed their way from the rear, and thrusting
the barrels between the men before them,
fired haphazard into the aisle.  Mackenzie
let out a cry, reeled, and had not recovered
himself when one of the priests with a yell
of fiendish joy lunged at him with a pike.
In the nick of time Jackson threw himself
forward, struck the weapon up with his
sword, and gave the Chinaman the point.

Wing Wu seized the chance.  He leapt
to the spot Jackson had vacated, and brought
the butt of his musket down on the skulls
of the enemy with a vigour that Mackenzie
himself might have envied.  Chung Tong
could no longer remain idle.  Slipping in
between his cousin and Beresford he laid
about him, with more fury than lustiness.
The assailants fell back; the men who had
fired withdrew to reload; and the defenders,
thankful for a breathing space, tried to
gather their flagging energies to meet an
assault which they felt would tax them to
the uttermost, and in all probability would
overwhelm them.

Meanwhile, in the inner sanctum, Forrester
had been trying with feverish impatience
to discover the secret of the Eye.  At the
sound of the explosion he could scarcely
refrain from rushing to the door; the din
and clash of fighting made him tingle; he
almost snatched up the weapon nearest to
hand and hurried to share the risk and the
strife.  But he knew how much depended,
in the last resort, on the Eye; his sense of
discipline was strong; and having tacitly
accepted Mackenzie's leadership he checked
his impulse and bent all his energies again
upon the baffling problem.

When, however, he heard the shots his
endurance gave out.  Smothering a cry, he
placed the head-dress on the table, seized a
sword, and was on the point of rushing out
towards the scene of action.  But in a flash
of thought he remembered the Old Man,
who might have descended from his perch
and be lurking within the panelled wall,
ready to spring out and seize his precious
instrument.  To leave it unguarded would
be madness.  There was a moment's hesitation;
then Forrester lifted the head-dress,
rammed it carefully but firmly down upon
his head, and thus covered, sped towards
the great door sword in hand.

He dashed through the arch into the aisle
at the moment when the priests were
swarming again to the attack.  As he reached the
upper step, to encourage his hard-pressed
friends he let forth a great shout, that
rose shrilly above the cries of the enemy.
Placed somewhat higher than they, he was
in full view.  The leading priests glanced
towards him.  They recoiled, stared for an
instant in silent stupefaction, then with
one consent cast down their weapons, and
flung themselves prostrate on the floor.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BURSTING THE BONDS`:

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   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium

   BURSTING THE BONDS

.. vspace:: 2

It was Beresford that was quickest to
profit by the instinctive act of veneration
inspired by the sight of the head-dress which
use and superstition had made a symbol of
awful authority and power.  Stepping
forward, he spoke in slow, grave tones over the
heads of the grovelling multitude.

"The Law of the Eye must be obeyed," he
said in Chinese.  "It changes not from age
to age.  As its minister, I bid you withdraw
on your faces from the portal which you
have polluted.  You shall not stand upon
your feet until you reach the wall yonder.
Then you shall hear the judgment of the
Master of the Eye."

The priests began in silence to crawl back
towards the garden wall.  Mackenzie and
Jackson, after a few moments of breathless
suspense, smiled wanly at each other.
Forrester, meanwhile, realising with
amazement the wonderful effect produced on the
crowd by the mere sight of the head-dress,
had at once checked his pace, and now
moved down the aisle with all the dignity
he could muster, and stood motionless in
the doorway, in full view of the priests.
When they rose to their feet and saw him
there, a shiver shot through them.

.. _`Forrester stood in the doorway, in full view of the priests`:

.. figure:: images/img-303.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Forrester stood in the doorway, in full view of the priests.

   Forrester stood in the doorway, in full view of the priests.

"We must carry it through," Beresford
murmured hurriedly.  "Say two or three
words slowly and in a loud tone, and extend
your hand towards them.  Keep up your
dignity as Master of the Eye."

"Arma virumque cano," recited Forrester,
reflecting rapidly that while some of the
priests might understand English, Latin
would probably be unknown to them.

Beresford bowed to the ground.  Then
lifting himself, he spoke in Chinese.

"Hear the decree of the Master of the
Eye.  The slaves shall depart from this
place, with provisions, arms and gold,
sufficient to carry them to their homes.  The
Master of the Eye, and we his servants, will
accompany them.  If any man of you molests
our party, or seeks to stay our progress, he
shall suffer the last punishment."

The priests heard his words in silence.
Their eyes were fastened immovably on the
august head-dress.

"I must go down to the cavern and
bring up the wretches there," said Beresford
in a rapid undertone.

"Wait, wait, it's not safe," cried Mackenzie,
wincing with the pain in his wounded
arm.  "Send them all back to their houses first."

"He's right," said Forrester.  "Who
knows but some of them will go for you in
a frenzy!"

Beresford calmly gave the order;
Mackenzie flung to the priests the key of the
wicket gate, and they slowly passed through
it, crossed the garden and the bridges, and
retired into their dwellings on the farther side.

Forrester heaved a great sigh of relief.
"The blessed thing won't work," he said.
"If they only knew it!"

"They don't!  Your appearance was a
stroke of genius," said Beresford.

"Not even a lucky fluke!" said Forrester.
"I put the thing on to keep it safe.  It's
plaguey heavy: may I take it off now, d'you
think?"

"Surely, for a few minutes at any rate--out
of their sight.  We must decide rapidly
on the next step."

They withdrew a few paces into the aisle,
leaving the two Chinamen to keep watch on
the priests.  Jackson meanwhile did his best
to bind up Mackenzie's wounded shoulder.
Forrester put the head-dress on the ledge
of the golden throne, and linking arms
with Beresford, walked slowly towards the
doorway.

"Have you found the way down?" asked
Beresford.

"No.  There's no sign of doorway or
staircase, is there, Mac?"

"None whatever."

"Then we must make the priests tell us,"
Beresford went on.  "When I have got the
prisoners from below, we must tell the
slaves--I fancy by the noise that they are already
in a great state of excitement beyond the
wall.  We'll send them down first into the
rift and ourselves bring up the rear.  One of
the priests will have to guide us, of course."

"And the negritos?"

"They can go too if they choose.  But I
fancy that as the aboriginal inhabitants of
the plateau they won't care to migrate."

"The Old Man?"

"Ah!  What shall we do with him?
We might fetch him down, I suppose, if we
can find his secret door, and take him with
us, though I don't know in the least what
country would have the right and privilege
to punish him as he deserves.  On the whole
I think we had better let him alone, report
the whole matter when we get back, and
leave the governments to squabble among
themselves about the ownership of this
valuable region....  But what on earth's
the matter?"

They heard frenzied shouts from the
direction of the sanctum.  In a few
moments Hamid Gul came into view, running
like a deer, and screaming "Hai! hai!"
at the top of his voice.  The Englishmen
turned to meet him.

"By Jinks!  He's got our rifles!" cried
Forrester, in delight.

"But his cries sound more like fright than
jubilation," said Beresford, puzzled.

"Well?" Forrester asked, as the Bengali
rushed up panting, and thrust a rifle into his
hand.

"One-armed bald-head, sahib!" he
gasped.  "Hai! my lungs and liver!  With
rifles in arms, lucky find in cupboard, I
come through old gentleman's bedroom.
Sight I saw knocked me silly, sahib.  One-armed
josser lost all his hair: bald as basin;
went slap bang into wall, sahib."

"Wen Shih?"

"Identical and no mistake, sahib, though
hardly knew him without wig.  And he had
in hands old gentleman's funny old----"

"What!" broke in Forrester with a
shout, glancing towards the spot where he
had laid the head-dress.  It was gone!
Behind the throne a panel stood open in the
wall.

"He's got it!  He's taken it to the Old
Man!  We're dished!" cried Forrester.

Instinctively he took a few rapid paces
towards the sanctum.  But he remembered
in a flash that he had been unable to find the
door in the wall.  He started back, in his
agitation not knowing for the moment what
to do for the best.  Then suddenly his eyes
fell on the rifle Hamid Gul had thrust into
his hands.  With a rapid jerk he threw open
the chamber.  It was full of cartridges, just
as when he last had it in the rift.

His friends stared in amazement as he ran
to the door, leapt over the fallen priests, and
rushed into the courtyard.  They followed
him to the entrance.  He was looking up
into the air.  On the far side of the
enclosure the priests had emerged from their
houses, and were standing in silence, gazing
intently, eagerly upwards.  When Forrester
reached the wall he turned about, set the
rifle to his shoulder, took steady aim, and
fired.  A dead silence followed the reverberations
of the shot; then a yell of rage burst
from the throng of priests, and they came
leaping in one tumultuous mob towards the
garden.  At the same time, far to the left,
a dark, bearded figure jumped down from
the top of the outer wall, and rushed straight
towards Forrester, spade in hand.

Forrester stood for a few seconds steadily
gazing up, and the spectators in the portal
saw his face pale, and a strange look come
into his staring eyes.  Then he shivered as
though a blast of icy wind had struck upon
him, and ran staggeringly back to the
doorway.  A moment behind him Sher Jang
dashed into the pagoda.

"I hit him!" Forrester said under his
breath, in the hushed tone of one who has
witnessed a tragedy.  "He was carrying
the head-dress up the stairway to the Old
Man.  He rolled from roof to roof, and
plunged down, down, he and the head-dress,
into the rift."

He sank into one of the seats, and stared
dully at the floor.

"Quick, you men!" cried Beresford,
taking instant grip of the situation.  "The
rifles!  The Chinamen are at us!"

"Have you got our revolvers, Hamid?"
asked Mackenzie.

"They are there, sahib.  I could not carry----"

"Away with you!  Don't stand blethering
there!  Fetch them, and run like the wind."

The priests were swarming across the
garden, jostling one another in the narrow
gate, leaping towards the pagoda.  Infuriated
at the loss of their colleague, just
promoted to the higher rank, and at the trick
played upon them, they knew that the
"foreign devils" no longer had the Eye
at their command, and already gloated over
their slaughtered bodies.  Venting shrill cries
of frenzy, they made straight for the
entrance, reckless and without order.

But their vision of an orgy of carnage
was rudely dispelled.  Within the doorway
Beresford, Jackson, and Sher Jang stood
calmly awaiting them, rifle at shoulder.  At
twenty paces the rifles flashed; three men fell
upon their faces; their comrades reeled back.
Another volley crashed into the crowd
surging on, and as the survivors staggered,
the bark of the revolvers placed by Hamid
in the hands of Forrester and Mackenzie
mingled with the groans and shrieks of the
frantic mob.  They turned about, flung
away their futile weapons, and fled, a wild
rout, through the gate and over the garden
towards their dwellings.

"After them!" cried Mackenzie.  "No more firing!"

The little garrison stepped out into the
open.  And there Sher Jang put his fingers
to his lips and blew a shrill blast.  Instantly
the long wall to the left was thick with men,
who scrambled over, dropped to the ground,
and pursued the panting priests, brandishing
the implements of their servitude, and filling
the air with fierce triumphant yells.  The
shikari, at the first sounds of commotion,
had collected his fellow slaves and led them to
the wall to await his signal.

They swarmed after their oppressors.  The
passion for freedom throbbed in their veins.
The pent-up fury of years of abject captivity
burst the fetters that had chained their
souls.  No hireling valour could withstand
them.  The priests, their rage become terror,
fled like stags before the hounds, across the
bridges, through the stream, towards the
further gate and their barracks beyond.
The huddled mass choked the gate; a few
turned at bay; some fell on their knees
and prayed for mercy; they had shown
no mercy, none they received.  The slaves
smote and spared not.  They forced their
way through the gate, hunted the priests
to their doors, dashed in after them like
terriers into a warren, drove them out at
the rear, and chased them pell-mell across
the plateau in all directions.  And the Old
Man still stood like a graven image on his
gold-fenced platform aloft.

The white men withdrew into the pagoda.
They had neither the power nor maybe the
will to interfere between the priests and
their late victims.

"We may be thankful we are not all
blown up," said Beresford, as they threw
themselves wearily upon the golden chairs.
"I was in terror lest they should break
through into the cavern.  One priest put
his foot into the hole and fell sprawling over
the embankment into the stream.  But now
our way is clear."

They all turned and looked at the opening
in the wall behind the throne.

"Wen Shih has opened the door for us,"
said Forrester.  "He must have come up
from below and run off with the head-dress
when our backs were turned."

"The irony of Fate!" said Beresford.
"Now we will bring up the poor creatures still
below, and make preparations to depart."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DOOM`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center medium

   DOOM

.. vspace:: 2

It was a strange procession that filed some
hours later through the rift towards the
thundering falls.  Sher Jang led the way,
rifle on shoulder; the position suited his
dignity, and Forrester, in giving it him, had
been moved by a desire to separate him as
far as possible from Hamid Gul.  That
worthy had again "sung his own praises
quite a lot," and boasted so much of the part
he had played in recent events that the
shikari found him more offensive than ever.

Behind the leader marched the old
zamindar with his daughter, and the whole body
of slaves, Chinese, Tibetans, Indians of all
castes and none.  They were light-hearted,
even merry; the reaction from black despair
was extreme.  Every man bore his load.
Many had stinted their supply of food, to
cumber themselves the more heavily with
gold; for in the final sack of the pagoda they
had seized upon every golden article that
was portable.

At the rear came the Englishmen with
Hamid Gul and Beresford's sturdy little
Tibetan, whom they had found in one of
the underground cells, despairing about his
master, but wholly uncowed by the green
eye.  The two servants carried their masters'
possessions, found in one of the cupboards
behind the armoury, among them three
articles on which Beresford set much store.
One was the tablet that had led him and
Redfern to the spot.  The second was a
roll of parchment giving the Old Man's
pedigree; apparently he was the last of a
line which had held unbroken sway for many
centuries.  The third was a similar roll, less
ancient, inscribed with the names of the
Chinese prisoners who had been employed,
during a period of fifty years, in transmuting
the lead into gold.  At the head of the list
was a short statement which Beresford could
not fully decipher, but from which he inferred
that, fifty years before, a certain mandarin
of Yunnan, having scented out a secret in
those wilds, had organised an expedition to
discover it, and coming into conflict with the
father and predecessor of the present owner,
had slain him in fight.  The attack had been
beaten off, and the Old Man had taken
implacable revenge by kidnapping or
otherwise impressing young members of every
branch of the mandarin's family.

The white men had decided in consultation
to take the whole crowd back to Dibrugarh,
lay all the facts before the Government, and
leave it to determine the future.  Hitherto
the district had been a No Man's Land;
when it became known that it concealed a
manufactory of gold, no doubt there would
be eager competition for its ownership.
The breaking-up of the remnant community
of priests was only a question of time.

Towards the close of the day the procession
reached the forest village in which Forrester's
party had left their carriers.  One of the
liberated prisoners acting as interpreter, it
was learnt that the Nagas, tired of waiting
for their employers, and convinced that they
had fallen victims to the mysterious Eye,
had gone away about a week before.

"I wonder if they ventured into Dibrugarh?"
said Forrester.

"It's not likely," Mackenzie answered.
"They've no interest in us, and as they've
taken our baggage, they'll appropriate that
in lieu of pay."

"I hope Redfern recovered," said Jackson.

"I've grave fears about that," said
Beresford.  "It is more than a month since we
parted, and if he were well he would have
sent up a relief force long before this.  Poor
old Runnymede!"

"He didn't know we came, of course,"
said Mackenzie.  "Maybe we were asses
not to tell somebody.  They all think we
are holiday making!"

"By Jinks!  I'm ready for a holiday
now," cried Jackson.

"A bath and a change of togs would be
enough for the moment," said Forrester.
"I've never been tempted to compare
Dibrugarh to heaven before!  We can't leave
these people to wander without guidance,
or I'd vote for pushing on faster to-morrow.
I long to smell soap again."

By dint of hard marching they made more
rapid progress next day.  In the afternoon,
emerging from a tract of forest land, they
recognised at some distance the well-remembered
contours of the hill which Redfern had
named Monkey-face.  They had set their
course towards its base when a glint of light
on the hill-top attracted their attention.

"Nobody heliographing, surely!" exclaimed Forrester.

"There's somebody up there, though,"
cried Jackson.  "Don't you see figures moving?"

They halted, and gazing ahead, made
out several small moving objects on the
skyline.  Every now and then there was a
flash, reflected from the rays of the declining sun.

"Would you not say that's a tent?"
asked Mackenzie presently, when they had
moved a little nearer.  He indicated an object
of conical shape on the skyline.

"A tent it is!" answered Forrester.
"And by Jinks! they've seen us!
They're mounting horses!  They're galloping down!"

The distance was still too great for the
forms of the riders to be clearly distinguished,
and as a measure of precaution the
Englishmen called a general halt, and placed
themselves, with those of their followers who had
firearms, in the van.  They watched the
horsemen steadily, and in growing
excitement.  Pith helmets, the khaki dress, the
very manner of their riding, bred conviction.

"The Assam Light Horse!" Jackson declared.

He waved his arms and cheered frantically.
His companions took up the cry, and a faint
response came from the galloping horsemen.

"There's old Jenkins!" cried Forrester
presently, recognising a comrade.

"And McIlwaine!" Mackenzie chimed in.

"And Paddy!" from Jackson.

"And, on my life, dear old Runnymede
himself!" shouted Beresford.  "I knew he
wouldn't fail us!"

He started forward impetuously, the others
following.  The horsemen dashed down,
reined up their steeds, and sprang to the
ground.  There was laughing and
hand-shaking, a confused and deafening exchange
of welcomes, protests, demands for explanation.

"You old frauds!"

"Dashed unfair!"

"You've had all the fun!"

"Why didn't ye give us all a chance, then?"

"What's kept you, you set of blighters?"

"A pretty set of scarecrows, by Jove!"

Redfern and Beresford clasped hands in
silence awhile.

"You're thinner, Harry," said Redfern
at length.

"You're not looking very fit yourself,"
answered Beresford.  "Had a shake, old man?"

"Rotten!  You're quite sound, eh?"

"Yes, thank God!  There's a heap to
tell you.  What were you doing on the hill?"

"Camping for the night.  We've done
fifty miles since morning.  Were coming on
to-morrow.  Glad we're too late, old chump!"

Presently, when all had cooled down, they
fell to talking practically.  It was near sunset,
and they decided that Forrester and his
party should mount the hill and share the
planters' tents for the night, the mingled
mass of Orientals camping at the foot.

An hour later, gathered about the camp
fire, the band of bronzed and stalwart young
Englishmen listened raptly to the story told
by Beresford.  He related all the incidents
of the weeks since Redfern was parted from
him by the iron shutter.  The silence of the
audience was broken now and again by
ejaculations of horror, rage, sheer
amazement.  When Beresford had finished, there
were cries for Forrester, Mackenzie, Jackson
in turn.  Each added some detail of his own
experience.

"And the villainous Old Man?" cried one.

"We left him standing like an ivory
statue on his platform, surveying the wreck
of his little empire," said Beresford.

"And the Eye--what became of it?"
asked another.

"We don't know," Forrester answered.
"None of us had the heart to look for the
body of the poor wretch.  I suppose the
Eye opened; if it did, it is boring a hole
somewhere in the rift."

"That one-eyed freak of yours is a
trump, Dick," said a third.  "We've always
wondered why you kept the chap."

"Yes; I shan't forget him.  The only
grudge I have against Mac is that he didn't
tell us in the cavern that Hamid was his
postman above."

"Och!  I'm not a bletherskite," grunted
Mackenzie.

"I vote we go on to-morrow and wipe
out the whole rascally crew," cried another.

"And chuck the Old Man into his pit."

"He's too tough and skinny to please the
Monster."

"But I say, what about that gold-making
concern?  Why shouldn't we make ourselves
millionaires?"

"I wouldn't go down there again if I came
out Rockefeller and Vanderbilt rolled into
one," said Forrester emphatically.  "Looking
back on it, I can't imagine now how I climbed
that chimney.  When I was near the top,
and heard the water gurgling overhead----"

"Well, what of that?"

Before Forrester could reply, the
darkening sky was lit up northward by a sudden
blaze of light that brought everyone to his
feet in consternation.  As one of them
afterwards remarked, it was like the blinding
glare of ten thousand flashlights.  It was
gone in an instant, and the universe seemed
plunged into utter blackness.

The men stood at gaze.  Perhaps a minute
after the flash, a roar like the gunfire of
all the world's fleets rolled and thundered
dully about them.  The earth trembled
beneath their feet.  Presently the air became
hot, and a shower of fine dust mingled with
stones bespattered them.

"A volcano!" cried one.

"No; that is the answer to your question,"
said Beresford quietly.

"What do you mean, sir?"

"What we feared might happen, has
happened.  I haven't a doubt of it.  Our
mining must have weakened the embankment,
the stream broke through and plunged
into the pit, tons of water were decomposed
by the mysterious rays, and the explosion has
shattered everything with volcanic force."

"Ay, and there's the end of the Old Man
of the Mountain," Mackenzie said gravely.


The workers in the Laibach observatory
recorded a seismic disturbance, locating it
somewhere in the steppes of Central Asia.
No authentic information, accredited by
responsible men of science, ever reached
them.  But in course of time fantastic
stories came to this country in private
correspondence, and found their way into
the newspapers.  They were pooh-poohed,
laughed at, pronounced incredible.  Certain
adventurous spirits did indeed slip off with
more or less secrecy and hurry by the
quickest route to the unknown country
watered by the middle Brahmaputra.  A
company was even formed in London for
exploiting gold in that region; but it lived
feverishly and died forlorn.  Persistent
explorers ranged over mile upon mile of
desolate country in quest of a gigantic waterfall,
a marvellous cañon, and a fertile plateau
that was said to be inhabited by an
aboriginal race of pigmies.  Of the canon
they found no trace; only a number of
scattered bones, large and small, announced
that human beings and strange monsters had
once inhabited what was now a rocky waste.
A hitherto unknown river was discovered,
broken for miles of its course by foaming
rapids; but rapids are not waterfalls, as
everybody knows.

In his rooms at Cambridge Henry
Beresford sometimes shows his visitors a painted
tablet from Khotan, and some strangely
inscribed rolls of parchment.  If pressed,
he will tell a singular story, which they listen
to politely, and with murmurs of "How
very interesting!" totally disbelieve.  The
fact is that neither he, nor his friend Captain
Redfern, nor certain young planters in Assam,
care very much to talk about the events of
those few weeks when the currents of their
lives were mingled, and danger welded them
into a comradeship which nothing will sever.




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   HERBERT STRANG'S STORIES

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   *STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR*

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   FIGHTING WITH FRENCH: A Tale of the New Army.
   FRANK FORESTER: A Story of the Dardanelles.
   A HERO OF LIÉGE: A British Scout in Belgium.


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.. class:: center medium

   *ROMANCES*

.. vspace:: 2

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   PALM TREE ISLAND: A Story of Adventure in the South Seas.
   THE ADVENTURES OF DICK TREVANION: A Story of the Smuggling Days.
   JACK HARDY: A Story of 1805.


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.. class:: center medium

   *TALES OF EMPIRE AND FOREIGN ADVENTURE*

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left medium white-space-pre-line

   THE AIR SCOUT: A Story of National Defence.
   THE AIR PATROL: A Story of the North-West Frontier.
   TOM BURNABY: A Story of the Congo Forest.
   SAMBA: A Story of the Congo.
   SETTLERS AND SCOUTS: A Story of Adventure in East Africa.
   SULTAN JIM: A Story of Adventure in Central Africa.


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center medium

   *ROMANCES OF MODERN INVENTION*

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left medium white-space-pre-line

   KING OF THE AIR; or, To Morocco in an Aeroplane.
   ROUND THE WORLD IN SEVEN DAYS: The Story of an Aeroplane.
   THE MOTOR SCOUT: The Story of a Motor Bicycle.
   LORD OF THE SEAS: The Story of a Submarine.
   SWIFT AND SURE: The Story of a Hydroplane.
   THE FLYING BOAT: The Story of a Hydro-Aeroplane.
   THE CRUISE OF THE GYRO-CAR: The Story of a Two-Wheeled Motor Car.

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