The Old Man of the Mountain Part 14

"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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 pa.s.sed through the silent corridors, and were locked in their cells, each alone.

CHAPTER X

THE UNDERWORLD

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 gla.s.s. 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sembled, 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.

"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 subst.i.tution 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?"