WHAT BÂL NARÎN HAD BEEN DOING
We return to Bâl Narîn, whom we left pondering deeply on the
significance that might belong to a muslin thread and two little silver
beads.
To make this part of my narrative clear, I must explain, having
received the information from this cleverest of Ghoorka guides, that
besides the robbers' path, as it was called, there were other narrow
tracks running in every direction through the jungle. These were due
to the animals that at this season make the kutcha-grass their haunt.
Wild beasts, like civilised men, are the creatures of habit. They love
their old lairs and their daily walks, and are given to ranging certain
circumscribed areas, which, no doubt, are to them what our village,
city, or club is to us. These animal highways, then, had, through
repeated use, become widened and trodden down, so that it would have
been easy for the inexperienced to mistake them for paths frequented by
men. When Bâl Narîn so impetuously waved Tom away, the notion that thus
it might have happened to the fugitives of whom he was in search had
suddenly come to him. It was a terrible thought, for in such case they
would probably have walked right into a wild beast's lair, and nothing
could save them from destruction. The idea, however, having occurred to
Bâl Narîn, he could not cast it off.
His mind was of that dogged type which often distinguishes men of his
profession. From his boyhood it had been his meat and drink to struggle
with difficulties and overcome them. The more arduous the task the
better it pleased him, and the mere fact of his having entertained the
possibility of undertaking it was stimulus sufficient to make him carry
it through. By sympathy in the first place and severe personal effort
crowned by partial success in the second, he had worked himself up to
strong interest in this work of rescue, and passionate determination
that nothing should be wanting on his part to bring it to a successful
issue. All the force, all the dogged resolution of his nature was
aroused. Working for the master whose kindliness and grace had won his
attachment, he was also working for himself, that no man in the future
might relate how Bâl Narîn had failed in the task he took in hand.
It was in this mood that the new idea met him, and he set himself
immediately to work it out. On the robbers' road, where he had been
told he might find the fugitives, he had seen indications which led him
to believe that he was on their track. If these indications continued
he would know, as far as it was possible to know anything, that the
fugitives were on ahead of him. If, on the other hand, they stopped
at any particular point, there would be every reason to suppose that
the road had been abandoned, in which case he saw that there would be
nothing for him to do but to try the likeliest of the jungle paths.
Quietly he stole on. A few yards ahead of the spot where he had
paused to take his bearings the road was crossed by a path wider than
itself, and of such character and appearance as to be almost certain
to mislead any but the dwellers in the jungle, or those who, like Bâl
Narîn, had traversed it so often as to be fully acquainted with all its
peculiarities.
He happened to know it, for it led to a little marsh surrounded lake
where the tigers went down at night to quench their thirst, and near
which he had waited for them more than once with European sportsmen.
He had lighted his lamp meanwhile, for he always carried one in his
belt, and with its help he was examining the ground. Close to the
opening of this jungle-road, where it turned off the road to the right,
he found a third bead. He went on for some distance and saw nothing,
then he retraced his steps. A conviction amounting almost to certainty
had come to him that it was down this pathway those poor souls had
gone. If so he must follow them. Having looked well to the priming of
his revolver, and taken from its sheath the short, murderous-looking
knife, which he had used several times with effect in close encounters
with his fierce jungle-foes, Bâl Narîn adventured himself into the wild
beasts' highway.
At first he found nothing to confirm his conjecture. The character
of his surroundings had changed. Instead of the tall kutcha-grass
there were about him low, thorny bushes, with here and there a
ghostly-looking tree; and nullahs, in which hideous forms of vegetable
life were growing, stretched along the sides of the beast-trodden path.
A strange way it was, and devious, going straight for a few yards,
and then shooting from right to left, as, like the fire-flash from
lightning-charged clouds, it followed the track of least resistance. A
dangerous region, and Bâl Narîn, being too old a hunter to be caught
napping, trod warily. Once, however, he almost lost his caution. It was
when the light of his lamp fell on a shred of coloured stuff that clung
to one of the spiked leaves of a sickly, stunted aloe. That moment, he
has told me, was one of the strangest, the most triumphant of his whole
fife. He knew now that the sagacity upon which he prided himself had
not failed him in his need. Whether the fugitives were found or not, he
had positive proof that they had passed this way.
Meanwhile the darkness that had made Tom curse his helplessness began
to assail Bâl Narîn's more subtly tempered senses. He did not mind it.
All his greatest enterprises had been carried out in the night time,
for it was then that the foes with whom he waged war were at large,
and the blackness of the heavens rather quickened than deadened his
energies. He drew aside quietly from the beasts' highway, let his lamp,
which was burning steadily, shine in front of him, and having twisted
some of the gigantic stems of the kutcha-grass into a torch as he came
along, he set light to it, and held it flaming over his shoulder. Thus
equipped he was far too terrible an object for even the man-eating
tiger to tackle. So he went on towards the marsh-surrounded lake.
But what was his distinct object? He could not, I think, have explained
it to himself. I found, in fact, when I tried to pin him to this point
of his narrative, that a peculiar confusion reigned in his mind.
Up to it and beyond it he was perfectly clear. He could tell about
everything, even the working of his own mind. Here he faltered and
stumbled in his speech. 'Why did I go on?' he exclaimed to me one day.
'Sahib, I must confess to you that I cannot tell. I should have been
mad to think that they were alive. I should have been mad to suppose
that, if they were alive, I should find them in that darkness. I knew
I was going into danger. Think, Sahib, of where I should have been if
my lamp had gone out. I thought of that myself. "Billy," I said, "you
are a fool. You are running into danger like an ass that has no wit to
keep out of it. Go back! Tell them at the camp what you have found,
and bring the rajah and his men with you to search this place in the
daylight." That would have been the wisest plan, Sahib. Why did I not
take it? As I live I cannot tell you. Sometimes,' his voice dropped
mysteriously, 'I have thought that it was not of my own will I went
forward. The Sahib, being a wise man, will understand. There are things
of which it is not well to speak too plainly. The jealousy of the gods
is easy to rouse, and difficult to stay.'
I knew what Bâl Narîn meant, and I nodded my approval, whereupon he
proceeded with his story. Though, as he had confessed, he was going
forward without any distinct aim, his vigilance did not sleep for
a moment. His ear, trained to a subtlety of perception such as we,
dwellers in towns, and inheritors of the grossness born of luxurious
living, can scarcely imagine, was alive to every sound. His eyes
searched the darkness. His sense of touch, which was not, as with
us, confined to the effects that arise from actual contact, sent out
feelers in every direction. Through his delicate nostrils--the subtlest
of the nine gates of the body--he interrogated the humid atmosphere,
finding separate odours where we should have distinguished nothing but
the vaporous distilments of the jungle.
Presently he came to a full stop, lowered his torch, and drew a long
breath. Something strange, subtle, impalpable, was floating towards
him. He could not for a moment determine what it was or even through
which of the sense-avenues it had come; but he knew, he was penetrated
with a conviction as strong as death, that presences, either spiritual
or corporeal, but other than the beasts of the jungle, were near him.
He paused for fully five seconds, making an effort to define his
sensations, and in the meantime he made another observation.
Overhead the darkness grew darker, there was a curious agitation of the
air, and he knew that the vast birds of the mountains--the eagle and
the vulture--were flying round him in ever-narrowing circles. The dead
or the dying, then, were near, and they had scented them from their
eyrie in the hills. At this moment, when he had recognised the birds
as blots on the blackness, and was straining his eyes to follow their
flight, there was a faint glimmer of light in the east from the rising
moon. Faint as it was it gave the shikari all the light he needed to
enable him to see plainly. He looked up and saw a gigantic bird sailing
slowly down the wind. His heart beat, and his blood seemed to bound in
his veins as he watched it, for it was taking the direction whence his
own sense-perception had come. A second followed, and then a third. By
the help of the silver light in the east he was able to keep them in
sight. Leaping nullahs, tearing through thick jungle, uttering fierce
cries to frighten away the wild creatures that might be crouching in
cover, he followed in their track. If he had stopped to think, as he
has told me, he could not have done it. Nor would it ever have occurred
to him to follow the birds, had it not been for that impression,
inexplicable even to this day to himself, that unseen presences were
near him. But once started he staggered on. Insects stung him, thorns
cut into his flesh, his torch was extinguished, his lamp burned dim.
Through all his excitement he realised that if he was left in darkness
he was lost beyond hope of redemption. His life-foes would have him as
their prey. No one would ever hear of Bâl Narîn again. Once he fell,
but he sprang to his feet again and flourished his lamp, and a tiger,
disturbed in his lair, rushed by with angry growling that would have
chilled the blood of a man of ordinary courage.
But still he held on. The vulture sailed on, swooped down, rose into
the air with a harsh cry--was it of disappointment?--swooped down
again, and was lost in the jungle. But Bâl Narîn was triumphant, for
he had marked the very spot of his disappearance. The second bird and
the third sailed up. They helped him to mark the spot. He could not
mistake it now, for a tall cotton-tree, whose candelabra-like branches
stood out boldly from the silver grey of the eastern sky, was in its
immediate neighbourhood. There were few of these trees in the Terai,
and they indicated places where the soil was comparatively wholesome.
So far as he could judge he was not now very far from the tree which
made his landing mark, but there was still a wide nullah to be crossed.
Torn and exhausted as he was he experienced some difficulty in getting
to the other side, and he considered himself happy in meeting no tiger.
He had scarcely force left to grapple with one.
And now, to his measureless surprise, he saw the jungle open out before
him. A small clearing, such as those in which the Aswalia villages are
planted, only of much more limited extent, lay under his eyes. A low
fig-tree, a stunted bamboo, and the cotton-tree which he had already
seen, could be dimly discerned through the darkness. Nothing else at
first except the three vast birds. They sat side by side under the
cotton-tree, as if in hideous expectation of a feast. Bâl Narîn stamped
his foot and cried out, and they rose slowly, but they did not go far.
They hovered overhead, and it seemed to him that they were watching his
movements.
And now, pausing, he could hear distinctly sounds as of fluttered
stirring to and fro, and breath drawn labouringly. He trimmed his lamp
and went on cautiously, carrying it before him. In a few instants its
light fell on a rude shed, made of branches of trees and dried leaves.
On the side by which he had approached it there was no opening; but he
could see, through the interstices between the branches, that figures
were moving about within. Giving it rather a wide berth so as to see
before he was seen, he came round to the front, and pulled up for a few
moments to observe what was going on.
Within the small enclosure, which was such a hut as hermits dwell
in, he saw three figures. Two were on the ground, whether dead or
asleep he could not tell, and the third--a slender figure in woman's
garments--was going from one to the other, stooping over them, and, as
it seemed to Bâl Narîn, weeping bitterly. While he was considering how
he should reveal himself without increasing her distress and alarm,
she came out to the front of the hut, and, his lamp being turned that
way, he saw her plainly. That was a moment which Bâl Narîn will never
forget. For an instant he shut his eyes. He was seized with a tremor
that seemed to be drawing away his power, and the presence of mind on
which he prided himself. Wild as she was, with that haunting terror
in her sweet eyes that was never, so long as she lived, to leave them
again, there was a beauty and majesty in this face that awed him, he
could not have told why. It was like the face of a spirit, he said--of
one who had done with the earth for ever. Thus for a moment he saw it;
in the next it was suffused with a horror and anguish, such as he had
never beheld before. Looking up, he saw the heavens darkened with the
wings of the birds of prey that were swooping nearer and nearer to the
entrance of the hut, as if they would defy this weak living woman to
keep them any longer from the dead.
A cry of unspeakable despair broke from the woman's lips, and she
agitated her arms wildly above her head. They retired, settled,
approached again, the girl still gesticulating wildly. Then the ping of
the shikari's revolver rang through the jungle. Again it sounded, and
again, the girl retreated trembling, and two of the birds fell to the
ground mortally wounded, while their mate sailed away sullenly to his
eyrie in the hills.
Before the echo of his last shot had died away, Bâl Narîn was standing
with bowed head before the girl in the hut, and addressing her in his
choicest Hindoostani. 'Let me entreat my gracious lady not to fear
me,' he said. 'I am a poor hunter from the hills--a man of the Ghoorka
nation, to whom the white races are honourable. I saw my gracious
lady's distress, and I slew the birds that caused her fear. Can I help
her further?'
'Could you help me--would you?' said the poor girl.
'Let my gracious lady try me?' said Bâl Narîn.
At this moment there rang another sound through the jungle--a low
whistle, prolonged and flute-like, but curiously tremulous, that seemed
to be floating down from above them. The girl pressed her finger to her
lips, and a colour, soft as the crimson of the morning, flooded her
pale face.
The tremulous, sweet sounds go on--they form themselves into a melody.
Ah! What is this? What is this? In a moment--in less than a moment--the
poor girl is back again in the past. Under her feet is a carpet of
soft, green grass; above, swayed gently to and fro by the breath
of a June morning in England, wave the light branches of a weeping
willow-tree--the waters of a river lie before her--a boat is cutting
through them--it has one rower. Oh! the fair, boyish face--the dreamy
eyes--the rapture of adoring love!
'Come where my love lies dreaming,' he sings.
'Yes; I am dreaming. I must awake,' sobs poor Grace.
The sounds go on--distant but clear. 'Dreaming the happy hours
away--Come--Come--Come where my love----' Groaning, she covers her face
with her hands.
Bâl Narîn, in the meantime, is showing the most extraordinary
excitement--shouting, dancing, tossing his hands about in exultation.
Returning from her dream, the girl gazes at him in speechless surprise.
'Pardon your servant, gracious lady,' he says, 'if his pleasure lifts
him off his feet! My master and I have waited for this moment. As the
sick unto death long for the morning, so have we longed for it, and how
can I help being triumphant?'
'Your--master?' says the girl, fixing her large, fever-bright eyes upon
his face.
'My master--the Rajah of Gumilcund. He is on his way. He will be here
soon, if--now the demons of the jungle guide him! Here! here!' he
cries, lapsing into his native Ghoorka in his overpowering excitement.
'Look for the cotton-tree! Ah! what a fool I am! He does not know my
tongue. Lady, you have a light within?'
Trembling with excitement, Grace ran inside and caught up a little
rush-candle--their last!
'One moment, dearest Kit!' she cried, for a little moan had come up
from the ground. 'They have found us. Tom--our Tom--will soon be here.
He will frighten the dreadful birds away.'
She ran out to Bâl Narîn, who had torn off a dried stick from the
cotton-tree and twisted a bunch of withered grass to its extremity.
Anointed with the drop of oil left in his lamp and lighted from the
rush-candle, it flamed out brilliantly in a moment. He waved it over
his head and rushed forward with shouts into the jungle, 'This way,
master; this way!'
But in a few instants he returned to the space before the hut, fed his
torch with wisps of straw, and caught up the rush-candle. The whistling
had ceased, and there was no answer to his frenzied cries. Grace looked
up into his face and saw its hazard look.
'Is he not there?' she moaned.
'It is a dangerous road,' he answered, 'and my master is not a shikari
like Bâl Narîn. Listen, Miss Sahib! Do you hear that?'
'Thunder. I have heard it several times to-night.'
'Not thunder--the tramp of a herd of wild elephants. Miss Sahib, I must
go----'
But Grace did not hear. She had rushed back into the hut. With hands
cramped together and beating heart she was crouched on the ground, near
the couch of dried grass where she had laid her little Kit, praying
that the Father in heaven, in Whom through all these dreadful days she
had trusted, would, at this last moment, be gracious to them.
'Save him, oh! Father,' she sobbed. 'Let him take my darling Kit from
this awful place, and then my work will be done, and I will go to Thee.'
Over and over again, while Kit's little arms were about her neck and
his burning cheek rested on her shoulder, she whispered the same words,
'Save him! Save him!'
Moments passed into minutes. The hold of Kit's arms relaxed, as, lulled
by the sound of her voice, he fell back upon the pillow. Her own head
drooped. The long and awful watch by the dead that lay in the hut with
them--the sudden shock of terror and joy--the suspense--the strain of
expectation seemed to be more than her enfeebled frame could bear. Her
mind wandered. 'Kit! keep me awake,' she whispered. 'Those awful birds
will come again.' But Kit did not hear her. He was dropping off into a
doze. Her eyelids fell. Oh! if she could only sleep! If somebody was
here--a friend--some one who would watch for her, and keep the birds
and beasts away! Ah!--she started up suddenly, wide awake and trembling
in every limb. The light that was diffused through the tent--that shone
on the rigid form of the old man who had protected them so far, giving
at the last his life for theirs, and on the yellow matted curls of
poor little Kit--was the light of the moon. There was nothing to keep
the wild things out. A convulsive shudder agitated her frame, and she
tried to rise but could not. Then she put her face down near Kit's. 'My
poor darling,' she whispered. 'It is all over. I had a dream. It has
gone--and I have no more strength to fight.'