HOW I CROSSED THE MOUNTAINS
As I have already written, I offer no explanation of the incident with
which my last chapter closes, but whatever it was, it caused me to
do something I had certainly never done before over a mental shock.
I must have fainted. When I recovered consciousness I was lying on
the marble floor of my bedchamber, chilly and stiff, and with a very
palpable throbbing of my forehead, where, on examination, I discovered
a big bruise. So much for the outside of my head. Within, my brain was
also throbbing, partly with bewilderment, but a good deal more with
exultation. I might be the sport of an hallucination, but I flatly
refused to believe it had no foundation in fact. If I didn't know, I
_felt_ that help was coming.
I rose silently to my feet and stole across to the tracery-window.
From that spy-hole I could see two of the watchers standing at some
distance away, motionless but clearly awake, alert but seeming to have
no suspicion that anything out of the common had happened inside the
house. They could have heard neither my talk nor the thud I must have
made when I fell. I then crept back to my couch, and went carefully
over the events of the night. I wanted to fix them on my brain, for I
had a very pronounced impression they were going to be of use to me. I
determined, too, that to-morrow I would get ready to escape exactly as
if the chance were really on its way.
The day passed without much in the way of incident, but it was one of
the most exciting I ever spent, and long before nightfall I was in
a downright fever. I watched myself minutely for any recurrence of
the great depression, but there was no hint of it; my brain remained
clear, my spirits buoyant, and had it not been for the very noticeable
discoloration of my bruised knees, I should have found it difficult to
believe I'd been through the unspeakable tortures of the past week.
There was one fact that struck me at once as unusual--even significant.
My attendant, or gaoler as he was now become, had been accustomed to
occupy one of the servants' chambers at the back of the house; here he
took his meals and slept, entering the living rooms only to bring me my
food. To-day the fellow posted himself on a couch in the main hall and
remained there practically all the time. I pretended to take no notice
of his presence, but I couldn't fail to see the meaning of it; and the
thought raised my hopes still higher. It looked as if there _was_ a
plot on foot to further my escape, and my enemies, having got wind of
it, had ordered this fellow to remain where he would be in a better
position to raise an alarm.
The man said not a word to me all day, but sat for the most part still
as a statue, and as handsome. He was only a servant in this valley of
Olympians, but he had a face that in any drawing room in Europe would
have forced the eyes of every man and woman upon him like a magnet.
At somewhere near eight o'clock, he brought his evening meal to the
main hall, laid it on the low table, and began to eat. I withdrew to
my bedchamber as if to sleep, though I'd not yet eaten my own supper,
which I was in the habit of taking about nine. After a while I became
conscious of a curious stillness in the large room. I crept to the
doorway and peeped between the curtain and the marble jamb. To-night
the great hanging lamp had been lit, and was filling the place with a
soft fragrance usual with the luminant oils used in the valley, and by
the light of this lamp I could see my gaoler quite clearly--could see
his face and the uncommonly languid expression it wore. The man was
dozing. Two minutes later he was asleep, and five after that, I knew
from the deep stupor he had fallen into that his food had been drugged.
So far so good. Now to get out. I rapidly searched him for the keys
of the building. They were not on him. Nor could I find them in his
quarters. I made a swift exploration of the whole place, but so far as
escape went, I seemed to be no better off with my gaoler insensible
than before: the main door, and the one other door at the back of
the house, were locked, and far too strong to be forced. However,
the drugging of the attendant proved that friends were stirring for
me--very capable friends at that, for the tampering with this man's
food could only have been effected by extreme craft and daring; and I
must apparently possess myself to sit down and wait to be rescued.
The hours dragged on, each seeming a week. I was getting desperate. I
watched that attendant's face for any sign of returning consciousness,
and had he given it, I veritably believe I should have strangled him
in cold blood. But he remained quite motionless, sprawling on the
couch where he had eaten, and at last, to my inexpressible relief, I
heard a gentle grating sound in the front of the house. A moment later
the main door came ajar. I stared at the form that sidled through
the opening, but though his face seemed curiously familiar to me, I
couldn't recognise him at first. His skin was of the usual fairish
tint of the valley, his lawn robes might have been the garments of any
casual passer-by in the street, and if his hair was a little straighter
than that commonly seen about the city, it was at least cut to the
common pattern. Yet for all the cosmetics and pomatums he had lavished
on himself, I'm much afraid his low stature and high cheekbones would
always militate against Lo Eng looking like a genuine native of Hellas.
'My master's wish, sir,' he said, in his quaintly exact English, 'is
that you should follow me at thirty paces without seeming to follow.'
In an instant I had darted into my bedchamber and snatched up the very
small bundle I purposed to take on my flight, and had followed Lo Eng
into the open air. There was no sound, no sign of movement; I think
I have mentioned that it was rare for the citizens of the valley to
be abroad long after nightfall, and it was now, I judge, about eleven
o'clock. Even the sentries outside the house appeared to have been
withdrawn, but as I stole across the courtyard I saw this was not so.
I couldn't understand at first those white heaps lying on the marble
flags; then I saw they were my guardians. Whoever had attended to the
drugging had carried out the work comprehensively and well.
The light was uncertain, but I had no difficulty in keeping Lo Eng's
swiftly retreating figure in view. At last he stopped, and when I came
up with him I found two litters waiting. These we entered and resumed
our rapid journey across the city and out towards the plain beyond;
soon, peeping through the curtains, I saw we had come to the outskirts,
and some while after that we were clear of houses altogether. The
bearers halted. As I climbed out of my litter I saw them drop
simultaneously with their faces to the earth. A figure had emerged from
a grove of fruit trees, approaching us, and a moment later Saunders
Philipson was grasping my hand; he bade the bearers withdraw, then
began to speak, hurriedly and earnestly.
'Listen closely, Mirlees,' he said, 'for everything depends on speed.
If you are to leave this valley you must leave immediately. Are you
prepared to risk it?'
'Anything is to be preferred to my last week,' I said.
He laid his hand on my shoulder. 'I am to blame for that,' he said,
'I who brought you here. But then--ah, it was all so vague and
uncertain--how could I know? However, that is past. I am doing what
I can to make amends. Believe me, Mirlees, it is not without risk to
myself that I am helping you to get back to your own world. When the
populace learn that you are gone, fear of invasion from without may
overwhelm even their devotion to me, and if both the people and the
Nine turn against me, I am like to lose kingdom and life in an hour.
After Poyning and you broke into the tomb, Kalliboas went straight over
to the party of Kalliphanes, and worked for the death of you both.
But'--here Philipson passed his hand over his brow, as if recollecting
something he would have been glad to forget--'there were powers in
this valley greater than those of Kalliboas. My rival's faction have
made great head, none the less, and at this moment my fate actually
swings in the balance. However, I am prepared for either destiny. Many
times you risked your life helping me to a kingdom, Mirlees, and I will
cheerfully risk mine helping you out of it. Now, as to affairs in the
outer world. When you reach Chungking, show this seal to En Chin, and
he will hand over the launch to you--it may be of service. Here is a
signed deed of gift which makes you the possessor of that boat and such
monies as still stand to my credit in the Bank of Cathay. There will
be more than enough to repay you for the time you have spent on this
adventure, though your services to me not all the money in Asia could
requite. But one thing--as you value your life, be constantly on guard.
The enemies who tracked us up from the sea may have lost sight of us,
but they have not forgotten. They will wait years for vengeance if
necessary, and it is possible that watchers have been left at the last
point to which they followed us, on the chance of our returning by the
same way. You may even deem it safer to avoid Chungking altogether--to
strike northward for the Koko Nur route across Mongolia--that I must
leave to your own judgment. But wherever you go, as soon as you enter
the known world again, beware of the Holy Brotherhood of Shigatse!'
'That's well enough,' I said, 'but I have to get to the known world
first. I seem to remember that the trek this way was tremendously
difficult, even with a party of us to help one another.'
At this moment there was a sound of footsteps approaching. Philipson
drew me swiftly in under the shadow of the orchard, and we waited, with
held breath. Then I felt him give my arm a gentle squeeze.
'Friends,' he muttered. 'All's well. Come with me.'
I followed him out on to an open plot of grass land, where we found two
men carrying between them something like an enormous cigar. This they
laid on the ground, and one of them turned and came towards me with
outstretched hand.
'After many days, Mirlees,' said Stephen Poyning. 'You've just got
out?'
'Not half an hour ago.'
'It's my first night loose too. I've put it to good use. Philipson
didn't want to take more servants into his confidence than he could
help, so I went with Ah Sing for this.'
He pointed to the cigar-shaped object, which I now saw was a folded
pair of wings of the largest type, fitted with that peculiar "carapace"
above the hinges.
Philipson had stooped in silence, and was examining the structure all
over.
'You should be a skilled flier by now, Mirlees?' he said briskly,
looking up.
'Pretty fair with the wings of the school. I've never used this
pattern.'
'Kneel down here, and I will show you the difference. These are harder
at first, but afterwards there is no comparison--they will carry you
far faster, and the greater wing-purchase will give you longer rests.
On these wings, barring accidents, you should get over the worst of
the heights before daylight. Then the dawn-wind will set in from
due west--your very course--and blow steadily all day, as it almost
invariably does at this time of year. With the help of that and the
power you should get so far across by sunset as to be well down off the
ridges and over a spot where you may risk resting in the open. As soon
as you come into inhabited country again, burn the wings and make your
way on foot. There--it's risky enough, but our people have often done
as much and more. What do you say?'
'How about the cold?'
'I have prepared for that. Here is one of the suits used by our own
fliers when they go over the heights. Once you have put it on you must
get out of this valley quickly, however, or the heat of it may overcome
you.'
'And the power?'
'That is quite easy. This lever sets it in action, this connects it
with the rib; both are moved by the right hand reaching up, the arm
flexed double.'
Simple as the device obviously was, I didn't care to trust my life to
it without trial. Philipson noticed my hesitation.
'Never fear, Mirlees,' he said. 'You shall take a preliminary turn
here--but it must be a short one. If you do not think you can manage
the wings, come down again, and I will hide you until I can devise
other means for your departure.'
'And you, Philipson?' I said. 'You remain here?'
His voice sank to a solemn whisper. 'It is my destiny,' he said. 'I
remain for good or ill. My servants also--they are already married to
women of my people.'
'And you, Poyning?'
'I have not changed, Mirlees,' he said. 'I shall never change.'
I shook the both of them by the hand, then called up the Chinese
servants and bade them good-bye also. Philipson helped me into the
suit, a light garment but astonishingly warm, which fitted close to the
body all over, leaving nothing exposed but the mask of the face; round
my waist were strung my little bundle, a parcel of food, a packet of
rough silver, and a flint with which I was to burn the wings when they
had served my purpose. The latter were then opened out and strapped to
my shoulders, and everything was ready for the attempt.
Despite the ghastly experiences of my imprisonment, I felt surprisingly
vigorous and alert, whipped up, I've no doubt, by excitement; and
though I found these heavier wings were indeed harder to use than the
unpowered type--particularly when it was a question of first getting up
from earth--I managed to rise on a light puff of wind and swept round
once or twice with fair ease. The power was easy to manipulate in the
extreme. I had barely moved the second lever when I heard something
swing into place with a sharp clink and felt the wings suddenly begin
to flap without any help from my arms. Though I had seen this pattern
of wing before and speculated long on its secret, I must admit my
first experience of it at close quarters filled me with the utmost
stupefaction. That strange power-box, emitting nothing but a faint
clutter which was almost drowned in the rustle of the wings themselves,
was working strongly and steadily within two feet of my head, yet not
for all the wealth in the world could I more than vaguely guess how.
Amazement gave way almost at once to confidence. It was incredible,
of course, that I should really be able to cross tremendous ranges
of mountains on this apparatus, yet I know that at that moment I was
profoundly convinced I could. Then, remembering Philipson's injunction
I turned off the power; even so I was astonished to find how far my
wings had taken me from the spot where Philipson and Poyning stood
waiting.
I drew near, hovering in the way I had been taught, and swept my gaze
back over the lost city of Hellas where it rose calm and magnificent,
its white roofs gleaming in the moonlight. At that instant I saw
something that set my pulses tingling with more than the exhilaration
of flight. Away over the city, three or four black bat-like shapes had
appeared in the sky. In a second I had begun to rise again, wheeling
round short.
'Look towards the city!' I cried. 'Good-bye and good luck to you all!'
I heard a sharp answering cry from below--
'Fly for your life!'
That was the last word I was ever to hear from the lips of the man I
had known as Saunders Philipson.
My mind had been instantly made up. As in a lightning flash I saw my
escape, which by this time had become a mad, overwhelming desire in me,
suddenly threatened by those sinister shapes against the wan-gold sky
of the night. All the horrors of my captivity of the past week rose
again before me, and I determined I would make my dash for freedom
now, pursuers or none, and that I would never be taken alive. So, with
Philipson's last cry ringing in my ears, I pushed back the power-lever
of the wings to its fullest, and swept furiously away into the night.
I climbed fast, but long before I got into the cooler air above I was
perspiring from every pore; the material of that garment, I imagine,
must have been treated by some cunning chemical process, for it seemed
to envelop the whole body in a strong glow of heat. And then began a
chase which, like so much more I experienced on this adventure, would
need the pen of a Poe or a De Quincey to describe. For some time I
flew on in a downright delirium, unable to think this flight was not
another wild, fantastic dream. The wonderful thrill of hurtling through
the air at such speed; the uncanny power of these wings that bore me
so easily and so well; the contrast between this swift retreat and
our plodding, agonising tramp over the snows a month or two back--all
combined to destroy my belief in the reality of what was happening. I
had risen above the highest point of our route in what seemed a few
minutes--though it can hardly have been less than an hour--and was
whirling at a prodigious pace over the long gutter-like depressions
which, fortunately for me, preserve in this region a general
east-by-west trend. On either hand towered majestic peaks, wilder and
grander in this eerie light even than they had looked to our fevered
eyes when we came, and though my own altitude was far below their
summits I knew I must be little short of four miles above sea level.
Height-sickness I certainly felt: I could taste blood as it trickled
down over my lips, and my breath came in long, violent gasps; yet this
malady seemed to attack me far less dangerously than when moving on the
ground--which I attributed in some degree to the glow of warmth I felt
all over me from my clothing, and to the fact that I kept my arms for
the most part through the thong loops of the wings, thus producing a
violent exercise and augmented body-heat.
I had glanced back several times for any sign of pursuit, but there
was none. No doubt it was that that made me over confident. I must
certainly have relaxed my vigilance, for now, suddenly looking up, I
saw quite distinctly a figure flying ahead of me. How that form could
have got past without my having any suspicion, I was utterly at a loss
to imagine, yet there it was; and more uncanny still was the fact that
when I now looked behind I saw _three_ figures only a few hundred yards
from me. These were apparently the three pursuers I had seen over the
city.
I plunged furiously on. It seemed certain enough that if four enemies
could "bracket" me in this way both behind and in front, they would
have small difficulty in heading me off if I turned out of my course;
moreover, to do that would necessitate climbing over the enormous
ridges to north or south, at a height where the thin air might and
probably would cause me to collapse altogether. In any case, safety lay
to the east, safety and inhabited if uncivilised lands, and I knew that
every minute was bringing me a mile nearer to it.
The mysterious chase went on. I don't think my pursuers were any longer
gaining on me from behind, but I seemed to be steadily closing up
with the figure in front, and was at last so near that I could almost
distinguish the outlines of the body borne by those wings. It may be
the moonlight and the wild frenzy of the escape deluded me, but the
longer I looked the deeper grew my impression that what I saw was the
figure of a woman. Moreover, though I was now a good deal nearer to
this figure than to those behind, it seemed curiously less distinct,
and grew less and less distinct the nearer I came. At any other time
this would no doubt have amazed me, but amazement was a faculty of
which I was no longer capable.
Then the figures behind grew indistinct also. They seemed to be melting
into a veil of grey mist, which was approaching me a good deal faster
than they. Then all became dark, the moon was blotted out, and I
realised what that strange mistiness really meant.
With a blow that struck like something solid the tempest overtook me,
hurling me forward with a frightful access of speed. I summoned every
ounce of strength and nerve that was in me, and hung on. In an instant
I was whelmed in the blackness of the Pit, whirled literally like an
autumn leaf in a scurry of wind, conscious of nothing but the screaming
wrath of the elements all round me and blank despair within. This, it
seemed, was the end of all. I had lost control, was borne on and held
up by the strength of the storm alone; sooner or later some devilish
caprice of the wind must drop me, as a wanton child may break a
plaything it is tired of, and then it would only be a matter of moments
for me to be dashed against the cliffs and crags of the mountain side
and find a death mercifully instantaneous. To steer was utterly out
of the question, even to keep my equilibrium impossible; once I was
tossed high and flung over and over like a bounding ball, until my head
spun and my eyes were full of blood and I thought the straps of the
wings must tear out the shoulders from my body; yet even here the very
force of the tempest was my salvation, for though I fell, long before I
neared the face of the mountain I had been caught up in a fresh blast
of wind and hurled forward more furiously than before.
How long the storm lasted I would hesitate to guess within hours,
but this much I can be tolerably sure of: that of all the amazing
experiences I underwent during my quest of the lost land of Hellas,
nothing came so near the miraculous as my escape through that
tremendous tempest on a pair of artificial wings the use of which I
did not fully understand. That I escaped at all I can only ascribe to
the marvellous skill with which the wings had been constructed: they
resisted that frightful wind by yielding to it; so well-knit were they,
so cunningly blending rigidity with elasticity, so cleverly copying
the wings of the feathered creation, that I imagine I must have been
pretty much like a gull in a hurricane at sea, whirled along helpless
on the storm, but at last recovering wing-purchase and flying again on
its own power. Not least astonishing was the fact that through all that
terrific buffeting by the wind the mechanism of my wings had remained
unbroken and continued to work--to that also I no doubt owed in part
my deliverance from a ghastly death on the crags.
At last the wind suddenly fell, in the abrupt way these mountain
tempests will drop; the sky had cleared and the moon shone out again,
and by its light I could see the mountains below me white with great
drifts of snow. Of my three pursuers and the mysterious figure who
had preceded me there was no sign, and who they were or whether they
perished in the storm I was never to know; but I don't fancy the form
in front of me met with destruction, or could do so in the nature
of things. When I say I believe that form was no bodily presence at
all, but a vision sent to guide my escape, not to hinder it, I may be
charged with superstition. If so, it won't distress me, or even shake
my belief.
I came to a stretch of mountain that looked tolerably even, and decided
to make a landing, for I was not only exhausted but ravenously hungry.
I succeeded in alighting, and there, without even trying to loosen my
wings, I squatted under them in the snow and ate several handfuls of
food from the bundle strapped at my waist. The cold was terrific--far
more than I had felt it in the air; and a moment later when I struggled
to my feet and strove to ascend, I was within an ace of final disaster.
So stiff had I grown even in that brief interval of rest that I came
near crashing for want of a few sweeps of my wings to get me clear of
the earth. Luckily, I had just strength enough to reach up and touch
the power-lever. The broad wings answered faithfully to it, and within
a few moments I was hurtling towards safety again as fast as ever.
That was the last descent I was going to risk until I had done with
flying for good. I knew that while I might yet remain in the air a long
while, my strength was no longer to be trusted for purposes of rising
again. Moreover, barring the danger of absolute collapse, those wings
were the very best means of locomotion I could have wished, and might
save me many weariful weeks of tramping over the pitiless heights.
A wind rose with dawn, not like the tempest of the night, but the
steady day-wind of summer, and on this I made marvellously good
progress. I kept at barely a hundred feet from the mountain, and though
there was no descent appreciable to the eye in that enormous elevated
region, I knew by the rising temperature of the air that I was getting
down. Beyond that, I knew little of what happened to me during that
day. I flew on and on, in a sort of half coma. At times, I veritably
believe, I was asleep, and had there been any more demanded of me
than simply to rest on my wings, I must have assuredly come to grief.
It was hunger that drove me down at last. I was now past the limits
of weariness, but I was hungry as I had never known hunger before.
How long I had been in the air I couldn't even guess from my own
recollection of the day, but I remember being drowsily amazed to notice
that the sun was now beginning to dip behind the highest peaks westward
of me. Also, I had a hazy impression of having once or twice during
the last hour caught glimpses in the distance of what might have been
rude human habitations. The time was come to destroy my wings, and seek
shelter and rest.
I got to earth, loosened the straps and struggled out of them, and
looked around for fuel. There was a fair quantity of coarse withered
scrub sticking up through the snow here, and I soon had a pyre built
big enough for my purpose. On to this I dragged the wings and held
my flint ready to kindle the strange sacrifice. Up to the present,
be it noted, I had acted under a sort of blind impulse to perform a
duty, as required of me by my oath; I didn't think, I couldn't. The
long-deferred sleep was sweeping over me in waves; I was hard put to
it to stand, and I retained just sufficient consciousness to know that
if I fell I should lose it immediately. Then, however, as I stared
at those wings, sleep for a moment retreated again, pushed back by
an overwhelming curiosity. I could not bring myself to destroy that
marvellous mechanism without one last attempt to probe its secret. I
knelt beside it and began tugging at the power-box with my hands. I
could make no impression either upon the box or the slender connecting
rods that protruded from it. Time was short. The irresistible sleep
might come upon me at any instant. I found a fragment of rock about as
big as my clenched fist and set about breaking the box open with that.
Standing at the head of the folded wings I raised that stone and hurled
it down on to the wings with all the strength left in me. The next
instant I was hurled down myself, while something spread itself above
me, darkening the sky, and then was gone. _The wings had sprung up and
flown away._
I lay on my back, gasping. Of all the uncanny shocks ever meted out to
a human being, I question whether any could have been more startling
than that one of mine on those lonely mountain slopes. For an instant
I was veritably inclined to believe those wings embodied not only
a mysterious force, but a sentient mind and will, and that finding
themselves attacked they had sprung up to attack me. It was a fantastic
notion, yet at the time and in the circumstances I imagine anybody
might have been excused for harbouring it. What had really happened, of
course, was simple enough. In trying to wrench open that box with my
hands I had unwittingly pressed it down on to the brushwood; the jar
of the stone forced it down still farther, thus causing the levers to
turn and setting the power in action, and the wings, obeying the law of
their construction, had immediately unfolded and started to flap.
At first I thought the apparatus must come to earth for want of
guidance, but there I had greatly under-estimated the cunning of the
builder. So perfectly poised were the wings that they preserved their
equilibrium from the start, automatically, and all the difference the
absence of my weight seemed to make to them was that they rose far
more swiftly and easily. They had lain on the pyre of scrub pointed
due west, which direction they kept, and I wasn't long realising
those wings would come to earth only when the power in them was
exhausted. How long that would take I had no notion, but when they
finally disappeared into the sunset they appeared to me to be working
as strongly as ever. Somewhere, no doubt, far out on those trackless
mountain wildernesses, buried in blown dust and driven snow, there
lies the wreck of certainly the most amazing and ingenious device ever
perfected by the brain of man.
I was staring blankly after my lost pinions when I became aware that
a party of natives were spying me from behind a big boulder at some
distance away. I called to them, but they seemed a good deal readier
to run away than come near; it was pretty obvious they had witnessed
my dealings with the automaton and set me down for a wizard of the
mountain conjuring up familiar devils. Like Saunders Philipson, I knew
something of this breed and how to treat them; and without taking any
further notice of them I turned away and lit my fire and sat warming
myself and counting over one or two pieces of my rough silver. It had
the desired effect: they gradually gained heart and drew near. I told
them I was a traveller who had strayed from my party, and that being
without food and seeing the great bird perching on the mountain I
had attacked it with a stone, but that it had escaped from me. They
listened politely if awesomely to my tale but obviously didn't believe
it, and without Philipson's very serviceable rough silver I don't
imagine I should have got much help from those natives. As it was, they
helped me down to their wretched hill-village, and thence, after I had
rested several days, set me on my way back towards civilisation. The
journey, which took three or four weeks on foot, was totally devoid
of incident, and I pass it over in silence; but before leaving this
phase of my adventure I will record one thing which may be of interest
as indicating, however roughly, the geographical position of the lost
city of Hellas. Since my return to the outer world I have made many
calculations of the distance I covered in making my escape. The result
is pretty amazing, but I have checked and re-checked my reckonings--the
journey there as against the journey back--and if the figures err, it
is probably on the side of under-statement. During the eighteen hours
of my flight from Hellas to the point on the mountain side where the
party of natives found me, I must have travelled not less than _nine
hundred English miles._
I hurry on to the end, for I know that little time is left to me to
complete this record. At Chungking the boatman, En Chin, handed over
the launch on production of Philipson's seal, and believed readily
enough that I was the sole survivor of our party--a tale to which my
extremely weather-beaten appearance must have lent support. From En
Chin I learned that only two days after we left for Kiai a Tibetan had
come to him inquiring our whereabouts. En Chin had had his instructions
from Philipson, however, and observed them; said we had gone on up the
main stream, destination unknown; and he thought the man had then left
in that direction, for he saw or heard no more of him.
I spent a day overhauling the launch, engaged a native to help me
run her, and went to bed in En Chin's house by the waterside. That
night I dreamed of Hellas, long and confusedly. The city was in vast
turmoil, out of which emerged at last the face of Saunders Philipson,
sombre and foreboding--I almost felt in my dream that he was striving
to warn me against something. I woke with a start, full of a strange
but very urgent impulse to get gone. I rose, roused En Chin and my
native boatman, threw some provisions into the launch and ran her down
from the yard into the river. I had made most of my other preparations
overnight, and within five minutes we were dropping down stream,
drifting, for there was little petrol to be got so far inland and I
wanted all I had for the rapids below. It lacked still an hour or two
till dawn, but suddenly, a little while after we had left, we both
noticed a queer light in the sky behind us. I didn't know the cause of
it then. Some weeks later I learned that En Chin's house had caught
fire and been destroyed, with many other native houses, barely an hour
after our departure. It may have been accidental, but I don't think so.
Arrived at last in Shanghai, I settled down in my old hotel, living
very quietly--but not for want of funds; setting aside Philipson's bank
balance, which was substantial, that little bundle I had kept by me all
the way back from Hellas would, I knew, see me through to the end of my
days in a good deal greater affluence than I wanted. I heard no mention
anywhere of the affair that had immediately preceded our flight from
Shanghai, and it seemed that so far as the police were concerned, that
episode had been let drop. I soon got to know, however, that in other
quarters it was neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Three days after I arrived, a shot was fired at me from the window of
an empty house in the suburbs. The police investigated that matter,
but they never knew who fired the shot. I knew without investigation.
A week later, returning to my hotel after dark, I was very cleverly
lariated and three-parts strangled by two natives, one of them I fancy
a Tibetan, working from a dark doorway; and two days after that, as I
walked in broad daylight down a crowded street in the Chinese city, a
knife whizzed past my ear and buried itself an inch deep in a pillar of
hard wood.
From that time onward attempts on my life were frequent.
I drew more and more into seclusion, keeping to my rooms at the hotel
for days together, yet even here I wasn't safe. One day, when lunch was
brought up to me--I never used the public rooms for meals--I noticed
as I shook some cayenne pepper from the caster that the stuff was
curiously light in tint. Now since my return I had often dreamed of
Hellas both by night and day, and before long it became too obvious
to escape remark that shortly after these dreams I was invariably in
danger from my enemies. Coincidence, or some subtle warning conveyed to
me from that mysterious land beyond the snows--I've no time to discuss
the point now; but the fact remains that on the night before I detected
that curious pallor about the cayenne pepper, I had dreamed of Hellas
very vividly indeed. I called up the manager, and had the stuff
analysed. The chemist reported a rare and very deadly alkaloid, the
name of which I have forgotten. The manager of the hotel was greatly
distressed. He investigated the business thoroughly, but without
discovering any hint as to how the poison could have been introduced
into my private pepper-caster. The chef and all the servants had
been with him a long time, bore excellent characters, and denied all
knowledge of the attempted poisoning. The manager at last offered me a
solatium to say nothing of the affair. I refused his money, of course,
and wouldn't even let him sack the cook, but that night, alone over a
briar, I thought out the whole position.
By midnight I had come to a pretty far-reaching decision--no less than
to write a full and accurate account of my visit to the lost land of
Hellas. My reason for doing this was simply that I was unwilling my
secret should die with me. That I must die before long, I was fully
convinced. My enemies had made it quite clear to me by this time that
they would only be satisfied with my death. I might--though this is
doubtful--prolong the hunt by fleeing from China, but that I declined
to do. The great Yellow Land which has been the subject of my life-work
has been my home for many years now. I have few friends in it, but none
at all outside, and there is at this moment, I believe, no relative of
mine left living. I would stay where I was, and pray that time might be
left me to complete the record.
I write these final words as fast as pen will travel over paper, for I
know the end is near.
I began to write, working night and day whenever my brain was clear
enough to think and remember. It was not so always. I think it was on
the night I finished my chapter describing our descent into the valley
of great birds that the first attack came upon me. I have no time here
to describe the visitation, nor is there need, for it was a recurrence,
three-fold intensified, of that paralysing oppression of spirit I had
known during my imprisonment in Hellas. I knew what it meant. I was
paying the penalty of my broken oath, to a people more terrible by far
than any secret organisation of natives in the outer world. Almost have
I expected to see materialise, in this room where I write, the tall,
stern, accusing finger of some wise one from the Hall of Wandering
Souls, but that horror at least has been spared me. As before, the
onsets have steadily increased in fury, but as before they have been
intermittent; and it is during the dwindling intervals of peace that I
have rushed on with this narrative, to which I now write _finis_ as the
crowning work of my life....
May God have mercy upon my soul.
EPILOGUE
So ends, in a hand markedly hurried and scrawled in comparison with the
earlier portions of the manuscript, the narrative which was brought
into my room on that bitter Peking morning so long ago: a narrative
which, leaving out of consideration the ingenious but confessedly
fictitious compositions of the professional romancers, struck me and
strikes me still as the most remarkable record of human experience ever
set down in black and white. I have already written, in my preface to
the manuscript, that the reader must judge for himself of its truth
or falsity; but I may perhaps fittingly add a few lines as to my own
view and the circumstances under which this narrative now comes to be
published.
Firstly, regarding Ronald Mirlees, the writer of the manuscript. I had
had personal experience of him in the past, and found him to be a man
of the staunchest trustworthiness. No one who had known him would, I am
convinced, ever credit that he could be guilty of deliberate falsehood;
indeed, his greatest handicap in advancing his repute among scholarly
Europeans of the East had been a too dogmatic manner of stating what
he believed to be the truth. Critics who were reluctant to accept the
fruits of his researches on sight he treated invariably with a cavalier
outspokenness approaching to contempt--an attitude which may have been
at times in some degree provoked, but was certainly not calculated
to make him popular with other orientalists. As for engineering an
elaborate hoax and planting it on a former friend and comrade in
adventure, I should eternally believe him incapable of this, if only
for the reason that to the best of my knowledge he was totally devoid
of a sense of humour. So much for the character of Ronald Mirlees.
Then as to his proofs. These are admittedly scanty. Yet the uncut
diamonds which he sent to me were real enough and, as I found when I
came to have them polished and weighed, of extraordinary value. This
fact alone must be accepted as ample evidence that he had visited a
region yet undiscovered by the world. As is well known, there are
tracts of the wild mountainous land to the west of China where valuable
minerals are found in plenty--particularly the minor precious stones
such as amethyst and jade; but anything like the rich diamond field
from which these magnificent stones must have come has certainly not
yet been brought to light.
Next, I endeavoured to find out something about the men whom Mirlees
describes as having accompanied him on his adventure, paying a
special visit to Shanghai for this purpose. At the Consular offices
I discovered that a British subject named Stephen Poyning had indeed
been registered as a newcomer to China but very shortly before the
time when Mirlees' narrative begins; and some months later an Indian
Army friend employed in the Intelligence Department at Delhi, to whom I
had written for information, replied that there _was_ a Major Poyning
who had mysteriously vanished from his regiment on the frontier some
years before. Of the man known as Saunders Philipson I was able to
collect several scraps of hearsay. Most of the evidence represented
him as a person of wealth and extraordinary habits, believed to be
profoundly versed in the languages of the East and to have spent
much time travelling as a native in the interior. He had apparently
shunned European society even when resident in the Treaty Ports, and
what few men had known him were unanimous in describing him as a dark
horse--"shady" even was the expression used by one of my informants.
The manager of the Bank of Cathay told me that he had known Saunders
Philipson, but not intimately, and that he believed him to be now
absent on one of those long journeys up country which had been
customary with him for years: beyond that, I would of course understand
the affairs of his clients were not a matter he could disclose to
strangers. I did not deem it discreet to push my inquiries further in
that direction, but so far, I had to confess that the evidence bore out
well enough the truth of Mirlees' narrative.
I pass on to his discovery of the highly civilised white--or rather
hybrid--race hidden away in a valley of Central Asia. This would seem
on the face of it to be an astonishing claim, yet when I came to weigh
up the probabilities I found myself less and less confident to reject
it out of hand. In the first place, Mirlees' story seems to me to be
told with a plain straightforwardness that has the distinct ring of
truth. Secondly, we of the outer world know practically nothing of
those regions through which he travelled, and are therefore hardly in
a position either to indorse or contradict any assertion regarding
them. The profundity of our ignorance can perhaps be represented by
an illustration. If half a dozen ants were set down at intervals on
one side of Hyde Park, and crawled once to the other side, but avoided
the central area altogether, their tracks might very well stand for
the mere threads of country observed by the half dozen or so white men
who have ever won across the barren heights of Northern Tibet; and the
ants' knowledge of Hyde Park at the end of their journey would be fully
as extensive as our acquaintance with that other region of the globe.
Moreover, no one familiar with the writings of our greatest authorities
on Central Asia--allowing that any man can be counted an authority
on lands which remain to this day practically unexplored--need be
reminded that among the native tribes of the lower, inhabited districts
there are persistent traditions of buried and lost cities. And from
what known history tells of Greek penetration into the regions around
ancient Baktria--the modern Balkh--it would seem not too great a
stretch of the imagination to suppose that other bands of adventurers
thrown off from the main current of Alexander's advance penetrated
farther east still.
But admitting the existence of the Greek-descended race to be possible,
one comes to the real strain to credence when Mirlees goes on to say
that this nation had been founded by Alexander the Great _in person_.
I am open to admit that I was at first disposed to put aside this
notion as the merest, wildest legend, unsupported by historic fact or
even probability. After a while, however, it began to appeal to me
with a peculiar fascination, which deepened the more I pondered over
it. I became interested. I ordered in books for which the stores of
our far corner of the world were seldom troubled and had to keep me
waiting long. They arrived at last, however, those tomes of ancient
history, and I devoured every word that has come down to us regarding
the last years and the last hours of the great conqueror; yet nowhere
in any authentic record was I able to find one fact by which the claims
of this lost race of Hellas could be disproved. To their theory of
Alexander's "death," history itself would seem if anything to lend
colour. We know that there has been down through the ages an uneasy,
vague feeling that the fever which was supposed to have carried him
off was insufficient to account satisfactorily for his end; that long
after the event there persisted a widespread suspicion that the real
cause was poison. We know that the conqueror's features were remarkably
like those of his friend Hephaistion, and from this may reasonably
assume that his was a type of personal beauty not uncommon among the
Macedonians who followed him into Asia. It is tolerably well vouched
for, too, that the commanders of his army were at the time engrossed
one and all in their own greedy designs on the empire; they _wished_
Alexander dead, and seeing that no live Alexander came forward to
refute the story of the dead one, it would hardly have occurred to
them to stop and verify that the body on the royal bier was really
Alexander's and not that of a "double" from among his own comely Greeks.
I had also to confess that the reason given by the people of Hellas for
Alexander's abdication from the world seems plausible enough. Even a
cursory reading of the history of his last years makes it quite clear
that the great conqueror was a disappointed, a disillusioned man. He
wept not because--to quote the tag of our schooldays--there were no
more worlds to conquer, but for the failure of the great ideal which
had inspired his conquest of this one: a union of the races of East and
West not only by political fusion but by actual inter-marriage, and an
overthrow for good and all of the barbarous fetich which would set the
people of either continent necessarily in a position of superiority to
the other. It may even be that among ourselves the time will come when
this humane ambition is held, more than all his marvellous military
adventures, to be his true claim to the title "great." During his life
Alexander strove to put the ideal into effect; and history tells us
how he failed. His ideas were many centuries ahead of his time; there
seems likelihood, indeed, that were he alive now--leaving aside for
a moment his supposed reincarnation in the person of the man called
Philipson--he would find the world little farther advanced towards a
liberal and truly civilised outlook on these questions than in his own
day. His generals gave lip-service to the ideal of race-fusion, but
it was from mere submission to the will of the king, and without true
sympathy or understanding.
But that Alexander, despairing of his followers and abandoning the
struggle against intolerance, gathered a handful of enlightened spirits
and voluntarily disappeared from the known world to found a new kingdom
in the unknown, remains to my mind a riddle which written history is
incapable of solving. The historians who place his death in Babylon in
the year 323 B.C. wrote merely what was currently believed
in their day. Mirlees, in the foregoing remarkable narrative, records
the belief of a people in the secret interior of Asia that Alexander
brought his small band of faithful to that fertile valley in the midst
of the eternal snows, where his ideal of blending European with Asiatic
blood might be realised without interference from the outer world. It
will be noticed, however, that Mirlees does not quote proofs beyond the
universal belief of the people of the valley, the inscription on the
obelisk, and the statue said to have been by the hand of Dinocrates. Of
these, the first two do not appeal to me as strong evidence. Supposing
the original settlers were Macedonians, it is quite possible that
among their descendants the tradition may have arisen in the course
of the centuries that among those who first came to the valley was
Alexander himself, and that this tradition finally crystallised into
accepted history. Probably, too, it was at some such later date as this
that the obelisk recording the tradition was erected: Mirlees, it will
be remembered, describes the carving on the monument as easily legible,
which could hardly have been the case had it dated from Alexander's
own time. The statue, however, is a much harder nut to crack. From its
perfect resemblance to the features of Saunders Philipson, who, as
Poyning noticed on first seeing him, was astonishingly like the extant
effigies of Alexander, it seems likely that the statue was done from
life, and it certainly must have been done in the valley, since the
first settlers would neither want nor be able to carry a heavy iron
image across the mountains. Altogether, after a long examination of the
evidence, I was driven to the conclusion that while it might be rash to
allow the claim of the people of Hellas, it could be scarcely less rash
to deny it.
To the remarkable powers of mind with which Mirlees credits this
people, again, it would seem unwise to oppose a blank unbelief.
Admitting that they had lived secluded from the world for twenty-two
centuries, undistracted by the wars and turmoils and oppressions which
have crippled the rest of humanity during the same period, one might
not unnaturally expect that their energies, turned inwards, would lead
them to great advances in science and the arts. The race, it must
be remembered, brought into the valley the highest civilisation then
known to the world, and thereafter, to build upon this solid basis the
wonderful superstructure of enlightenment which Mirlees describes,
would be merely a question of time. In two things, the art of flight
and the prolongation of human life, they appear after all only to
have anticipated by some centuries the surprising discoveries made by
ourselves during recent years. In psychics, a marvellous advancement is
ascribed to them, but is this beyond belief? We ourselves have sanely
and soberly studied the subject for barely half a century, yet already
we have made some progress; we have even recorded cases of projected
personality, though in most instances the act was probably involuntary
and the power unreliable. Is it too much to suppose that a race
originally of great intellectual and nervous force, which had studied
these matters for centuries, should have so perfected their control of
the human mind as to be able to launch it forth _at will_? I think not.
Nor, I fancy, is it unthinkable that an actual visible shape of the
projected personality might appear to the person who was the subject of
the visitation. But that the mind-wizards of Hellas, by willing such a
visitation and infusing it with hostile intention, should be able to
cause the death of the person visited--on this point, I must confess, I
am sceptic.
That brings me to the death of Ronald Mirlees. Frankly, in spite of the
mysterious and inexplicable nature of his end, which baffled doctors
and public alike, I incline to think that he himself was under a
delusion as to its cause--particularly as a far simpler explanation
occurs to me. Men of Mirlees' stamp, who in their quest of knowledge
plunge into the perilous underworld of native life, with its secret
organisations and obscure religious cults, often meet with a fate as
dark as the matters they went out to explore. Many such cases lie
buried in the dusty official files of the East. Sometimes it is a
jealously guarded secret filched, sometimes a criminal betrayed to
justice, but always there is the possibility that sooner or later the
rash foreigner who has ventured into such deep waters will pay for his
temerity with his life. Mirlees, as I knew, was in the habit of thus
diving into the underworld, where his knowledge of native life and
language enabled him to move in a way that would have been possible to
few other foreigners living; and he was, as I also knew, a man utterly
devoid of fear and not greatly gifted with common prudence. In this
manuscript he represents himself as having incurred the wrath of a
secret, semi-religious society whose members were also on the track of
the hidden land of diamonds. Blood had been shed--it may have been the
blood of men highly placed in the organisation; and his story of the
renewed attempts on his life when he had ventured back into China bears
to my mind the character of extreme probability. Also, I am inclined
to believe that one of these attempts finally succeeded. The murder
may have been effected by means of some subtle native poison which no
European doctor could detect--it will be remembered that he records
an attempt of the kind as having been already made and frustrated.
His own belief--that he was being done to death by mental force
acting at a great distance--seems wild enough, but by no means hard
to understand after the experiences through which he had passed. The
amazing powers of the people of Hellas had obviously left a profound
impression upon his mind, so much so that he was able to put forward
the astonishing hypothesis that the mechanism of those artificial
wings on which he fled from the valley was actuated by _isolated brain
force_; the grim mystery surrounding the death of Major Poyning would
still further deepen this impression; and Mirlees' dream-interview with
the Princess Euphrosune--I prefer to regard this as merely a dream,
since at his meeting with Saunders Philipson on the following night
the latter appears to have made no mention either of it or of Mirlees'
supposed oath of secrecy--may well have rendered the delusion complete.
All this, taken in conjunction with the cumulative horror of the
several attempts on his life, would seem to me to afford an adequate
explanation of Mirlees' extraordinary belief.
I come, in conclusion, to my reason for now breaking the silence of
thirteen years and giving Mirlees' manuscript to the world. When the
document reached me I read it several times from beginning to end, with
astonishment that deepened rather than dwindled, and then put it away
in a place of safety as the writer had requested. This was not because
I believed--to quote Mirlees' words--there was "a doom in it"; as I
have made clear in the foregoing paragraph, I found myself unable to
accept that theory. But there were other considerations. It seemed to
me that the statements made by Mirlees were so daring, so sensational,
so flatly contradictory of what has passed for history during two
millenniums, that they would be greeted with incredulity--perhaps even
resentment--on all sides, and that the ultimate result would be to
damage Mirlees' well-earned repute as an orientalist and scholar. There
were, as I knew, rival "authorities" who would possibly even welcome
such an opportunity to throw discredit on the whole of his life-work.
Now, however, the aspect of affairs is rapidly changing. With the
great strides recently made in the art of air-travel it seems likely
that before long the last secrets of this vast continent of Asia will
be wrenched from her. Where previously a mere handful of indomitable
adventurers have been able to cross the awful heights of Northern Tibet
on foot, taking months of the most tremendous exertion and peril in the
crossing, soon the perfected swift planes of modern explorers will be
traversing that unique region of the globe in a few days. Then the race
which Mirlees describes as lurking hidden beyond the great mountain
barrier will be discovered willy-nilly to the world at large; and it is
my most earnest wish that the fame of having first placed upon record
a description of this people and their supposed origin and history
should be awarded to the man who struggled so gallantly and suffered
so much in winning through to their secret land. I knew Mirlees as a
trusty comrade, a brilliant scholar, and a most disinterested seeker
after truth. He deserved greatly of his fellow man for his services in
exploring and making better known these little-known portions of the
earth, and it is no more than common justice that the credit for his
last and greatest discovery should go to him and no other.
Whether subsequent exploration will confirm his assertions, only the
future can show. For myself I will say candidly and without fear of
derision that I believe that somewhere deep amid the mountain solitudes
there _does_ exist that Navel of Light; that it is peopled by a race
from whom the outer world has much to learn, not only in scientific
ingenuity but in breadth and humanity of ideas; that it is ruled by
a modern Greek of great personal beauty and strength of body and
mind, whom the folk of Hellas believe, rightly or wrongly, to be the
reincarnated personality of their great founder. Whether my belief is
warranted or not, let the reader of this narrative decide. I have done
my part in publishing, literally and without so much as the addition
or removal of one comma, the manuscript which reached me from the
representatives of Ronald Mirlees shortly after his lamented and most
mysterious death.
_Terminat hora diem: terminat auctor opus._
* * * * *
DUCKWORTH'S FICTION.
THE GREAT MOMENT
BY ELINOR GLYN
THE PRIMROSE PATH
STORIES BY ARTHUR MILLS
THE MARSDEN CASE
BY F. M. FORD (FORD MADOX HUEFFER)
OUT OF BONDAGE
BY OLIVE MARY SALTER
THE ROAD BY LADY DOROTHY MILLS
BODIES AND SOULS
BY SHAW DESMOND
THE VALLEY OF EYES UNSEEN
BY GILBERT COLLINS
REVOLVING LIGHTS
BY DOROTHY RICHARDSON
BLOWING WEATHER
BY JOHN T. MCINTYRE
* * * * *
THE VALLEY OF EYES UNSEEN
_By the same Author._
FLOWER OF ASIA
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