The Old Man of the Mountain Part 8

"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 superst.i.tion, 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!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 dest.i.tute of large trees, and the little men paid the villagers for timber cut in the forest. This timber was conveyed to a certain spot some distance short of the waterfall, and removed thence by the little men to their home in the mountains, which the villagers had never beheld.

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

The man held up his hands with fingers outspread.

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

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

"Whatever they mean by the Eye, it is clear that something gruesome goes on among the little men," said Forrester. "There's nothing for it but to forge ahead, and tackle them if there's the ghost of a chance for us.

What do you say? Are you game to stick to it, even if we can't persuade the Nagas to come?"

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

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

CHAPTER VI

THE IRON SHUTTER

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

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

"And you, Hamid?"

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

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

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

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

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

Their preparations were quickly made, and they set off while the morning was still young. Hamid Gul carried his cooking utensils, plates, knives and forks, and other articles; Sher Jang shouldered some blankets, in which he had wrapped a quant.i.ty 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 ma.s.s 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.