John Ames, Native Commissioner Part 29

Dreamily Nidia continued--

"I feel so tired. Where am I, did you say?" Then pa.s.sing her hands over her eyes, "How dark it seems" (it was mid forenoon). "I think-- I'll--rest." And she sank down in a deathly swoon.

"Jee-hoshaphat, Jack!" a trooper in the background was saying. "That was _her_ n.i.g.g.e.r you chaps bowled over. And now she's asking for him."

"What did the fool run up against our guns for, in that cast-iron hurry?" sullenly grumbled the other, who was really sorry for the mistake. "It wasn't our faults, was it?"

"Of course not, old man," rejoined the other. "It was n.o.body's fault-- only the n.i.g.g.e.r's misfortune. Accidents will happen."

Such the epitaph on the faithful, loyal savage, who having watched over the helpless refugee for days and nights that he might restore her to friends and safety, had found his reward. Shot on sight, by those very friends, when in the act of consummating his loyalty, such was his epitaph. "Accidents will happen!"

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

ENTOMBED.

When John Ames at last returned to consciousness, the first thought to take definite shape was that he was dead. There was a rock ceiling overhead. He had been dragged into a cave, he decided, a favourite place of sepulture for natives of rank. His enemies had accorded him that distinction. He could not move his limbs. They had been bound round him.

Then there returned in dim confused fashion the events of the day; the surprise; the visit to Madula's camp; the crafty pursuit; the sudden ending of the ground beneath his feet; the plunge through empty air; then--starry void; and remembering it all, the supposed funeral ligatures took the form of a blanket, which, wrapped tightly round him, impeded the use of his limbs. He was not dead, only dreaming, suffering from a bad nightmare. The blanket--the rock overhead! What a blessed relief! All the events, terrible and tragic, he had just gone through, were parts of a dream. Nidia was not left alone in that savage wilderness, but here, within a few yards of him. He was lying across the entrance of her retreat, as usual, that none might imperil her save by pa.s.sing over him. Filled with an intense thankfulness, he lay and revelled in the realisation that it had all been a dream. Still it should act as a warning one. Never would he be so confiding in their security again.

The light grew and spread. The grey rock above him became less shadowy, more distinct. Whence the languor that seemed to attend his waking hours, the drowsy disinclination to move? Yet there it was. Well, he must combat it; and with this idea he suddenly sat up, only to fall back with a cry of acute anguish. His head was splitting.

For some time he lay, unable to move, thinking the while whether his cry had disturbed Nidia. No; she had not moved. At last an idea took hold of his confused brain. Their camping-ground this time was not a cave.

It was in the open. Whence, then, this rock--this rock which somehow seemed to weigh upon him like a tombstone? And--Heavens! What was that over there? A table?

A table! Why, a railway engine would have been no more phenomenal at that moment. A table! Was he dreaming? No. There it stood; a st.u.r.dy, if unpretentious four-legged table, right up against a tolerably perpendicular rock-wall.

He stared at it--stared wildly. Surely no such homely and commonplace object had ever been the motive power for such consternation, such despairing, sickening disappointment before. For it conveyed to him that the events of the previous day had been no dream, but dire reality.

Where he now was he had no idea, but wherever it might be, it was certainly not in the place where he had parted from Nidia and she would still be undergoing all the horrors of utter solitude. Again he tried to leap up; but this time an invisible hand seemed to press him down, an unseen force to calm and hypnotise him, and in the result everything faded into far-away dimness. Nothing seemed to matter. Once more he dropped off into a soothing, dreamless slumber.

How long this lasted he could not have told. On awakening, the frightful brain agony had left him. He could now raise his head without falling back again sick with pain. The first thing he noticed was that the place was a rock-chamber of irregular shape; the further wall nearly perpendicular, the ceiling slanting to the side on which he lay. A strange roseate light filled the place, proceeding from whence he knew not. But now he became conscious of a second presence. Standing within this light was a human figure. What--who could it be? It was not that of a native. So much he could see, although the back was towards him.

Then it turned. Heavens! though _he_ had not seen it before, the recognition was instantaneous. This was the apparition at their former camp. The tall figure, the weather-worn clothing, the long white beard, and--the face! Turned full upon him, in all its horror, John Ames felt his flesh creep. The blasting, mesmeric power of the eyes, surcharged with hate, seemed to freeze the very marrow of his bones. This, then, was petrifying him. This, with its baleful, basilisk stare, was turning his heart to water. What was it? Man or devil?

There was a spell in the stare. That glance John Ames felt that his own could not leave. It held him enthralled. At all risks he must break the spell. "Where am I?" he exclaimed, astonished at the feebleness of his own voice.

"In luck's way this time. Perhaps not," came the reply, in full, deep tones. "What do you think of that, John Ames?"

"You appear to know me; but, I am sorry to say, the advantage is all on your side. Where have we met before?"

The other's set face relaxed. A ghastly, mirthless laugh proceeded from a scarcely opened mouth. There was that in it which made the listener start, such an echo was it of the mocking laugh thrown back at him out of the darkness when challenging that shadowy figure at their former camp.

"Where have we not met?" came the reply, after a pause. "That would be an easier question to answer."

"Well, at any rate, it is awfully good of you to have taken care of me like this," said John Ames, thinking it advisable to waive the question of ident.i.ty for the present. "Did I fall far?"

"So far that, but for a timely tree breaking your fall, you would hardly have an unbroken bone within you now."

"But how did I get here? Did you get me here alone?"

"A moment ago you were deciding that curiosity might sometimes be out of place. You are quick at changing your mind, John Ames."

The latter felt guilty. This was indeed "thought-reading" with a vengeance.

"Yes; but pardon me if it seems to you inquisitive--it is not meant that way," he said. "The fact is, I am not alone. I have a friend who will be terribly anxious--in fact, terribly frightened at my absence. I suppose you are in hiding, like ourselves?" Again that mirthless laugh.

"In hiding? Yes; in hiding. But not like yourselves."

"But will you not join us? I know my way about this sort of country fairly well, and it is only a question of a little extra care, and we are bound to come through all right."

"Such 'little extra care' as you displayed only yesterday, John Ames?

Yet an evening or so back you thought my presence hardly likely to prove an acquisition."

The cold, sneering tone scarcely tended to allay the confusion felt by the other at this reminder. This, then, was the apparition seen by Nidia, and he had been able to draw near enough to overhear their conversation with reference to his appearance. The thought was sufficiently uncomfortable. Who could the man be? That he was an eccentricity was self-evident. He went on--

"You were right in saying that your 'friend' would be terribly frightened. She has gone through such a night as she hopes never to spend again, and her fears are not over, but this time they are very material, and are for herself. There are shapes stealing upon her down the rocks--dark shapes. Natives? No. Human? No. What then? Beasts.

She screams; tries to drive them off. They grow bolder and bolder-- and--"

"Heavens alive, man, don't drive me mad!" roared John Ames, whirling up from his couch, forgetful alike of aching bones and bruised and shaken frame. "What, is it you see--or know? Are you the devil himself?"

But the face of the seer remained perfectly impa.s.sible. Not so much as a finger of his moved. His eyes seemed to open wider, then to close; then to open again, as one awakening from a trance. Their expression was that of slight, unperturbed surprise.

"Look here, now," said John Ames, quickly and decidedly. "You have taken care of me when I was in a bad fix, and most likely saved my life.

I am deeply grateful, and hope we shall get to know each: other properly. But just now I must not lose a moment in going back to my friend, and if you won't go with me, I'll ask you to put me into my bearings."

The stranger did not move in his att.i.tude, or relax a muscle.

"You can't go from here now," he said; "nor, in fact, until I allow you."

"Can't? But I must!" shouted John Ames. "Heavens! I don't see how you can know all you have been saying; but the bare suggestion that she may be in danger--all alone and helpless--oh, good G.o.d, but it'll drive me mad!"

"How I can know? Well, perhaps I can't--perhaps I can. Anyway, there's one thing you can't do, and that is leave this place without my aid. If you don't believe me, just take a look round and try."

He waved his hand with a throw-everything-open sort of gesture. In feverish strides, like those of a newly caged tiger, John Ames quickly explored the apartment, likewise another which opened out of it. His mind fired with Nidia's helplessness and danger, he gave no thought to the curious nature of this subterranean dwelling; all he thought about was means of egress.

At the further end of the apartment in which he had been lying yawned a deep shaft like that of a disused mine. Air floated up this; clearly, therefore, it gave egress. But the means of descent? He looked around and above. No apparatus rewarded his view--not even a single rope. He explored the further chamber, which, like the first, was lighted by a curious eye-shaped lamp fixed in a hole in the rock-part.i.tion wall.

Here too were several smaller oubliette-like shafts. But no means of exit.

The while, his host--or gaoler--had been standing immovable, as though these investigations and their results had not the faintest interest for him. John Ames, utterly baffled, gave up the search, and the terrible conviction forced itself upon him that he was shut up in the very heart of the earth with a malevolent lunatic. Yet there was that about the other's whole personality which was not compatible with the lunatic theory; a strong, mesmeric, compelling force, as far removed from insanity in any known phase as it could possibly be. Power was proclaimed large in every look, in every utterance.

"Was I right?" he said. "But patience, John Ames; you must be pitifully wrapped up in this--'friend' of yours, to lose your head in that unwonted fashion. Unwonted--yes. I know you, you see, better than you do me. Well, I won't try your patience any longer. Had you not interrupted me it would have been better for you; I was going on to say that while I saw danger I saw, also, succour--rescue--safety."

"Safety? Rescue?" echoed John Ames, in almost an awed tone, but one that was full of a great thankfulness and relief. "Ah, well, my awful anxiety was deserved. Forgive me the interruption."

Even then it did not occur to him, the level-headed, the thinking, the judicious, that here was a man--a strange one certainly--who had just told him a c.o.c.k-and-bull story about events he could not possibly know, with the result of driving him perfectly frantic with anxiety and a sense of his own helplessness. Why not? Because the narrative had been unfolded with a knowledge stamped upon the narrator's countenance that was as undeniable as the presence of the narrator himself. Strange to say, not for a moment did it occur to him to question it.

He looked at the seer; a steadfast, penetrating, earnest glance. The face was a refined one; handsome, clear-cut, furrowing somewhat with age and hardness; but it was the face of one who had renounced all--hence its power; of one who, for some reason or other, was a bitter hater of his species, yet which as surely bore traces of a great overwhelming sorrow, capabilities of a vast and selfless love. Who was this strange being? What his tragic past? John Ames, thus striving to penetrate it, felt all his repulsion for the other melt away into a warm, indefinable sense of sympathy. Then he replied--

"In using the expression 'wrapped up in,' you have used the right one.