CHAPTER TEN.
THE MARKHOR CAVE.
"There is a large section of our fellow subjects that votes Alpineclimbing the most incomprehensible form of lunacy known to science, onthe ground that to spend half one's life, and putting the whole of it inpawn, scrambling up rocks and ice and snow, for the sake of getting tothe top of some pinnacle which a hundred people have already got to, andthousands more eventually will, is to place one's self beyond the paleof ordinary intelligence. But I wonder what such would say of a beingof mature age, and laying claim to the possession of ordinaryintelligence, who skips up in the middle of the night, and under theguidance of an Asiatic whom he can't understand, and who can'tunderstand him, spends several hours crawling over boulders and alongblood curdling precipices, on the off-chance of one shot--and thecertainty of a miss--at an infernal wild goat, which is of no earthlyuse to you when you get him, except to stick up his head and brag aboutit ever after. The Alp-climber would have to cede to him the prouddistinction of prize imbecile, I guess."
Thus mused Campian, as, following in the wake of Bhallu Khan, he wormedhimself warily around an elbow of rock, between which and space, was afoothold just twenty inches as to width, and precarious as to stability,he bearing in mind the while two considerations--firstly, thedesirability of refraining from dislodging so much as a pebble;secondly, the necessity of refraining from dislodging himself. Thefirst grey of early dawn was just breaking upon the mountain world, andhere he was spread-eagled against a cliff of dizzy height and well nighperpendicular formation: raked by a piercing wind, and wondering whetherhe should eventually get off it by the ordinary tedious process of slowand sure progression or by the rapid one of a false step--leading topulverisation. As to one consideration, however, he laboured under noambiguity of mind. Nothing on earth should induce him to return by theway he had come, even if it must needs take a week to go round by somesafer way.
In due course however, the situation improved. The rock face grew lessperpendicular, the path wider, and finally they found themselves in asteep gully. Here the old Pathan, pointing upward began signallingvehemently, the gist of which Campian took to be that he must proceedmore noiselessly than ever, and that the ridge above being gained, theywould find markhor.
A clamber of a hundred feet--one pebble dislodged with a clatter,bringing his heart to his mouth, and a reproachful glance from BhalluKhan--and they were cowering behind the top of the ridge. Campianwanted a few moments to steady himself after their long, hard climb. Hecould not shoot straight in a state of breathlessness, he declared.
It was quite light up here now, but the sun had not risen above theeastern mountain-tops. As they peered over the ridge, the valleybeneath still lay in the grey half-dawn. But between it and their pointof vantage, on the rock-strewn slopes beneath, something was moving, andit needed not the touch on the arm from the old Pathan and the barelyarticulated whisper to set Campian's nerves tingling. He had alreadytaken the rifle from the forester so as to be in readiness.
"Markhor," he whispered.
Bhallu Khan nodded. A solitary ram, with fine horns, was browsingunconcernedly. There was no getting any nearer. Campian set the sightat four hundred yards. Then resting the rifle upon the rock in front ofhim, he took a steady aim and drew trigger.
The roar of the piece among the echoing stillness of the craggysolitudes was like a peal of thunder. The markhor gave one wild boundinto the air, and a thrill of exultation went through the shooter. Butthe disappointed headshake of Bhallu Khan would promptly have undeceivedhim, even had not the quarry taken to its heels and gone bounding downthe slope at a flying gallop. He let go a couple more shots from themagazine, but wider than the first. Then he threw up the rifle inmingled disgust and resignation, the markhor now being a mere boundingand very badly frightened speck.
"No good!" he exclaimed. "Can't do anything with certainty over twohundred yards, and that brute was nearer five than four. Well, I didn'texpect to, so am not disappointed, and it doesn't really matter a littledamn."
The only word of this reflection understood by Bhallu Khan being thelast, he smiled, and proceeded to expatiate in Hindustani, profuselyillustrating his harangue with signs. But of this, for his part,Campian understood not even the last word.
He cared the less for his failure to bring down the game in that thishad not been his primary object. The pretext of sport had been apretext only. He wanted to explore the markhor cave, and that quietlyand by himself, wherefore, when a couple of days after their visit toJermyn he had suggested to Upward a markhor stalk, the latter,remembering his expressed views on the subject of hard toil inadequatelyrewarded, had evinced considerable surprise, but excused himself fromjoining on that very ground, which was exactly what Campian hadexpected.
Now they were no great distance above that cave, and he soon signalledBhallu Khan his desire to proceed thither. Somewhat to his surprise,remembering the superstition attached, the old Pathan cheerfullyacquiesced, and a downhill climb of about three quarters of an hourbrought them to a position commanding its entrance. Signing him toremain there and watch, the forester crawled round to the rock above thegaping black fissure, where by dint of making a considerable noise, andrattling down showers of stones, he hoped to drive forth its inmate.But there came forth nothing.
"This markhor is a fraud, anyway," said Campian to himself. And hesignalled Bhallu Khan to return just as that estimable Asiatic hadhimself arrived at the conclusion that there was no point in makingfurther efforts to scare out of a hole something which was not withinit. Then they sat on the rock together and conversed, as best theycould by signs, while Campian breakfasted on some sandwiches and thecontents of a business-like flask.
The sun had risen now, and was reddening the great craggy pinnacles onhigh with the new glow of day. Later on these would bear an arid anddepressing aspect, but now they seemed to soar up proudly to thedeepening blue. Meditatively Campian watched the line of light as itdropped lower and lower, soon to flood the valley with its fierceheatwave. Now it had reached the _kotal_, now it was just touching thejunipers which embedded the forest bungalow. He could not see thelatter from his present position, it being shut off by a rounded spur;but the immediate surroundings of it drew his glance. Not that theyreminded him--oh, no! He had needed no mere reminder since that chancemeeting three days ago. Bother thinking! Thinking was worse thanuseless. Springing to his feet, he signed Bhallu Khan that he wanted toexplore the cave.
The fissure was easily approached, opening as it did on to a grassledge. Campian produced a couple of candles, thereby betrayingpremeditation in this quest, and, lighting one, gave the other to theold Pathan. Then they advanced into the darkness.
The fissure ran at a slant for about ten yards, then it widened out,with a tolerably level floor, to an irregularly shaped rock chamber,seeming to extend about thirty yards back. The light was flickering anduncertain, and Campian, who was a little in front, felt his arm suddenlyand violently seized, and a voice vociferated in his ear. For a brieffraction of a second the idea of treachery flashed through his mind;then he recognised in Bhallu Khan's tone the vehemence not of menace butof warning.
He had been about to step on a broad, black stripe which lay across thefloor of the cavern. Now he halted, his foot already raised. Helowered his candle. The broad, black stripe was a fissure--a crevasse.Of no great width was it--at that point only just wide enough to admithis own body--still it _was_ wide enough. But what of its depth?
Motioning him to stand still, the forester picked up a handful of loosestones, and dropped them in one by one. Both listened. The stones tooksome time to strike anything, and then it was very far down. There wasyet a further and fainter concussion. Bhallu Khan smiled significantly,and shook his head. Campian whistled. Both looked at each other. Thenthey examined the crevasse again. No current of air arose, which arguedno outlet. But the thing was of ghastly depth.
"Your markhor is a fraud, Bhallu Khan," said
Campian, as they inspectedthe floor of the cave, and emphasising the statement by signs. "Thereis no trace of such a thing ever having been into it."
The other smiled again, and nodded assent. But just then a soundoutside made them start and look at each other. It was that of a humanvoice. Bhallu Khan blew out his light, and Campian followed hisexample. Thus for a moment they waited.
Footsteps were advancing into the cave. Then the striking of a match.They made out the figure of a man approaching--a native--bearing alighted candle, which he shaded with his hand. Behind him came anotherfigure, which they could not make out.
"Salaam, brother," said Bhallu Khan in Hindustani, at the same timelighting his own candle.
The effect on the newcomer was disturbing. He gave a violent start,dropping the candle, which went out. But by their own light Campiancould see a business-like revolver pointed straight at him, while afull, clear, feminine voice cried out in purest English:
"Don't move, or I fire!"
It was his turn to start now. That voice! There was no other like itin the world. He replied calmly:
"Yes. Pull off. You may as well. It won't really matter much."
"Oh!" Just a little cry escaped Vivien Wymer. She lowered the weapon,then laughed, and there was a note in her laugh which, in one less selfpossessed, less self reliant, might almost have been taken forhysterical. "Who would have thought of finding you--anyone--here?" shewent on. "But I believe I was the more startled of the two."
"Yes, I am sure you were," he replied, advancing now into the light."We haven't said `How d'you do?' yet, and it's as well to keep up theconventionalities."
She put forth her hand to meet his, and again they clasped hands. Againthey had met under strange and unlooked for circumstances--here, in thesemi-gloom of the mountain cave.
"I was so interested in hearing about this place," she said. "MrUpward's account of it seemed to hold my imagination, and I felt movedto explore it for myself. I did not feel inclined to wait for a schemethat might never come off. Besides, the associations of mystery and atouch of eeriness would have no effect in the midst of an every day,sceptical crowd."
"Great minds jump together! That was precisely my own idea. But who iswith you? Surely you are not alone, with only one servant, and not avery reliable one at that, judging from his behaviour just now. It ishardly safe, is it?"
"Yes, it is. All these northern border tribes are of the best type ofMohammedan, and respect women. No, I am not afraid."
"You did not seem so just now, at any rate. But it is not only of thatsort of danger I was thinking. A gloomy hole like this might concealall kinds of hidden peril. It might be the den of a panther, or a wolf,or even a snake. For instance, look at this. Keep behind me, though."
He led the way--it was only a few steps--to the scene of his own narrowescape. There yawned the cleft, black and hideous.
"Keep back," he said, extending an arm instinctively, as though to bar anearer advance, and in doing so his hand accidentally closed upon hers.He did not let it remain there, but it seemed as though a magnetic touchwere conveyed from frame to frame, and there came a softness into histone which accorded well with the protecting, shielding attitude.
"Is it very deep?" asked Vivien, holding her candle over the brim, andpeering down into the blackness.
"Well, judging by the sound, it takes a stone a good while to get to thebottom. I should have been there myself long before this but for BhalluKhan here. In fact, I was placidly walking into it when he laid violenthands on me."
"Really? How horrible! Let's leave it now, and go outside. The ideaof such a thing oppresses one in here."
She turned away. Her voice was unshaken. Beyond just a faintquickening in her tone, she might have been listening to some mereabstract risk run by somebody she had never seen or heard of before, andCampian could not see her face.
"Just take one more look around before you go outside," he said. "Theidea of those hidden valuables being here won't wash. Both floor andwalls are of solid rock. There is no possibility of burying anything."
"Hardly, I should think," she answered, after a few moments' criticalsurvey of the interior. "But, this is not an artificial cavern,surely?"
"No. I have seen others rather like it, though none quite of its size.But if you follow out the formation of the place, it is all on the sameslant. The crevasse, to be sure, is at something of a different angle,but that is nothing to go by here, where the whole side of a mountain isseamed and criss-crossed with the most irregular network of fissures."
"What if the things are at the bottom of that cleft?" said Vivien.
At the bottom of it! This was a new idea. Was it a new light? But hereplied:
"Then they will remain there till the crack of doom. The hole is ofimmense depth--Bhallu Khan and I sounded it from every point--and issure to contain noxious gas at a certain distance below the surface. Doyou mind if I ask you a favour?--oh nothing very great!" seeing herstart. "It is not to talk about this, or speculate before others as tothe possibility of such a thing existing."
"Why, of course, if you wish it! But--do you believe in it, then?"
"Perhaps partly. But it may be that I have something to go upon. WhenI have more I will tell you more--but--I am forgetting--how on earth canit interest you?"
"But it will interest me very much--and--" "you know it," she was goingto add, but substituted: "life is prosaic enough for a romantic searchof this sort to add new interest to it. How is it I did not know youwere here?"
"Here--on this spot, or in this country?"
"On this spot, I mean. The other is easily understood. We have beenliving out of the way so long, and I see so few people. And you haveonly recently arrived?"
"Yes. As to being in here, I had no pony to leave outside. I have beenclimbing the mountains after markhor, hence a tolerably disreputable oldKhaki suit, and a battered and general air of not having been to bed allnight."
"Did you have any success?"
"No. I got in one shot, but missed it of course, just as I was sayingwhen up at your place the other day. However, what I really wanted todo was to come in quietly here and explore."
"So did I. Where is my syce, I wonder? There is my pony," lookingaround, for they had regained the entrance of the cave. "Ah! I seehim. He is at his prayers. Your man has joined him."
"Yes. Old Bhallu Khan is a whale at piety. I should think he stood afirst-class chance of the seventh heaven."
"These people are very devout," said Vivien, looking towards the twoMohammedans, who, with their shoes off, and their chuddas spread on theground as praying carpets, were prostrating their foreheads to theearth, and otherwise following out the prescribed formula--facingtowards the holy city. "I sometimes wonder if it is all on thesurface."
"I don't know why it should be. We make a good deal of show, too,though in a different way; but I doubt if we are any better than they.In fact, it is more than possible we are actually worse. But John Bullhas a fine, hearty, overgrown, schoolboy contempt for anything he can'tunderstand, and to him the bowings and prostrations enjoined by theMoslem form of worship is sheer nonsense. For my part, I am not sure itis not even too refined for him."
"Perhaps. I have often thought that to these people we must seemsomething worse than Pagans. I hardly wonder at their fanatical hatredof us."
"Neither do I, the more so that our attitude towards them is for themost part well exemplified in the remark made to me by a fine woodenspecimen of John Bull the other day coming down the Red Sea. Two orthree of these travelling traders had got up on the forecastle, and werepraying towards Mecca. `Ever see such humbug in your life?' says thischump. I said I had, and far greater humbug; in fact, couldn't see anyhumbug in the present performance at all. Oh, but it was all on thesurface! How did he know that? I asked him. Oh, because they wouldlie and cheat and so forth. But so would nine-tenths of the Englishcommercially engaged, I answered.
Whereat he snorted, and moved off.He thought I was a fool. I knew he was one."
"Very much so," assented Vivien. "I detest that wooden-headedness whichno amount of moving about the world will ever teach to think. And nowthat those two good people are through with their devotions, it is timeI got home again. Oh, Meran Buksh, _ghora lao_!"
The syce sprang to execute this order, and in a minute Vivien's pony wasbefore her, ready to mount.
"Why this is the first time you have ever put me on a horse," she said,as Campian seemed to be arranging her skirt with minute care, "and howwell you did it."
"Thanks," he said. "There. I hope you will not have too hot a ridehome. Good-bye."
"Good-bye. You will be coming up to see us again soon, I suppose, or weshall be going to see Mrs Upward. You are going to make some stay, areyou not?"
He replied in the affirmative, and, looking at her as she sat there witheasy grace, he felt that never had his self-possession been in greaterperil. Cool and fresh and sweet in her light blouse and riding-skirt--her glance full and serene meeting his--the flush of health mantlingbeneath the soft skin, she was a picture in her dark, brilliantattractiveness, framed against the background of savage rocks and raggedjunipers.
"Good-bye," was all he said.
A pressure of the hand, and she turned her pony and rode away at a walk,the syce following.
Campian watched her out of sight. Then he did a curious thing--at anyrate for a man of mature age and judgment. He returned to the cave andpicked up a small rough stone, quite an ordinary stone it was, but whilethey had stood talking Vivien had been rolling this stone absently toand fro beneath the sole of her boot. Now he picked it up, and,glancing at it for a moment, put it in his pocket. But he seemed tochange his mind, for, pulling it forth again, he hurled it away far overthe rocks.
Then he started out in the direction of Upward's camp, old Bhallu Khan,carrying the rifle, following close at his heels.