We must glance back.
Mervyn's camp was pitched not very far from the mouth of the Duran
Tangi; that is, not very far from the scene of the sniping episode of a
week or two previously, of which, of course, he was in ignorance, but
far enough from the great overhanging wall of terraced cliff, to be
beyond the possibility of a repetition of the same. He had been warned
at Mazaran that the country was extra restless just then, and that
moving about in it, in the happy-go-lucky way he proposed, was
positively unsafe; but with his usual gustiness, he pooh-poohed every
suggestion of the kind. No one was good enough to teach _him_ his
India, he declared. If it suited the military element to get up and
foment a chronic scare, well that wasn't going to interfere with him.
It was of no use representing to him that this wasn't India precisely,
but the Northern border--whose inhabitants were a fierce, predatory set
of fanatics caring for no show of authority, and that even now these
were in a state of unrest--well, he knew them too. When he heard that
his old friend Varne Coates--and especially the latter's relative, and
his friend, were on a shikar expedition two or three days out, that was
sufficient. He only spent long enough at Mazaran to collect camp
necessaries and hire servants, and at once set out to join them.
He had even demurred to the escort of four Levy sowars, which was
pressed upon him. These damned Catch-em-alive-ohs, he declared, were of
no--ditto--use. They couldn't hit a haystack if it came to shooting,
and even then they'd either clear or make common cause with the enemy,
to whom, tribally, they as likely as not belonged. So--here he was.
They had made a very early start from their last camp, and the morning
was yet young. They had not long finished breakfast, and were seated in
camp chairs under the shade of a canvas awning.
"Oh, this is perfectly glorious," Melian was saying, her eyes seeming to
feed upon the sunlit wildness of the surroundings. "What a contrast to
dear old Heath Hover, too. Look at that splendid mountain face, all
terraced, as it were, with great cliffs; and even the openness of it all
has a marvellous charm."
Her uncle puffed meditatively at his cheroot, then looked at her, and in
the result felt not unsatisfied. She had taken, with characteristic
readiness, to this strange wild country and its life--and every phase of
it afforded her a fresh delight. And its people, too, of every shade
and type, but that which attracted her most, was the tall, turbaned,
often scowling, mountaineer, with his primitive _jezail_ and never
absent and wicked looking tulwar--a very Ishmaelite in deed and in
appearance.
They had come up the _tangi_ in the early morning and she had been
entranced with the vastness of the huge narrow chasm, the first of its
kind she had ever seen. And now, as Mervyn contemplated the eager
animated face, tinged with the golden glow of an open air life, the blue
eyes clear and large in contrast, he found himself thinking satirically
that it was small wonder if Mazaran had sought to throw stumbling blocks
in the way of their leaving it. And then as though the mention of Heath
Hover evoked a recollection she suddenly said:
"I do hope old Joe and Judy will take real care of our little black
poogie, and not let it out at night to get shot, or get into a trap in
the coverts--dear little pooge-pooge?"
"Oh, I'm sure they will. But--we couldn't have done with it here, could
we?"
"No, but I would like to have it all the same. Why, what's this?"
A whirl of dust was coming down the road, and as it drew nearer, they
could make out a band of horsemen, clad in the loose white garments of
the mountain tribes. Through it, too, as the gleam of weapons.
"Oh, it's some of these picturesque people, and they are so
fascinating," cried the girl. "It'll be quite a sight to see them ride
past."
The road ran about a hundred yards below the site of the camp. For the
first time some qualm of misgiving came into Mervyn's self-sufficient
mind, and he found himself actually hoping that they really would ride
past. They looked a formidable gang enough, some two score strong, and
armed to the teeth. It was not lessened as he saw that they were not on
the road at all, and were heading straight for the camp.
Came another sight, which caused his face to pale and stiffen strangely.
"Melian, go inside the tent, and stay there till I tell you to come
out," he said sharply.
"Why? Mayn't I see?"
"Do as I say--at once," he repeated, with a stamp of the foot. "They
may be a bit rough, but--I'll settle them."
She obeyed, greatly wondering. "Mayn't I see?" she had said. Good!
Then she had not seen--what he had, and he felt thankful.
Out on the plain two of his camp natives were herding the camels. He
had seen several of the horsemen dart out upon these from the main body,
and cut them down with their keen edged tulwars without giving them time
so much as to utter a shriek. At that moment John Seward Mervyn
realised that if ever he had been in a tight place in his life he was in
one now, and if he did not, when too late, curse his own foolhardiness
for bringing him into it, why it was only because he had not time.
The whole band rode down like a whirlwind upon the camp. The bearer and
khitmutghar, and the cook, Punjabi natives, scared out of their lives,
had crept into one of the tents and crouched trembling. The Levy sowars
alone showed fight, and pointed their rifles, but it was plain they
would have welcomed any chance offered to surrender.
"Melian, don't move outside, do you hear," said her uncle over his
shoulder. He had risen, and stood confronting the wild array. These
had now reined up, and were facing him, in a crescent formation.
"Salaam!" he said. "This is a strange welcome to a stranger in a
strange land, brothers."
A grunt broke from the fierce shaggy faces; and the gleaming, hostile
eyes seemed to take on a further deepening of hate and greed.
"This is the Sirdar, Allah-din Khan," said one, designating the man on
his right.
"That is good to hear," answered Mervyn, speaking in the Pushtu,
"Salaam, Sirdar Allah-din Khan. I repeat this is a strange way of
paying a friendly visit."
"A friendly visit?" repeated the chief, in deep tones. "But what if
this is not a friendly visit?"
The fierce eyes of the fanatical predatory Asiatic, and the hard,
determined blue gleam in those of the European met, and there was no
yielding in the glance of either.
"In that case," replied the latter, "I invite the Sirdar to withdraw.
It is not safe to stay--for him, for as the life of the Sirdar Allah-din
Khan must be worth the lives of all his followers put together, it is
not good policy to throw away so valuable a life."
The tone was perfectly even, in itself containing no threat. Mervyn was
at his best now, cool, desperate, therefore deadly dangerous. At his
words a gasp of amazement escaped from the other side. The first
thought was of a trap. Were there soldiers concealed in the tent, with
rifles trained upon them through the canvas? And meanwhile Mervyn stood
confronting them, calmly; one hand, however, always behind him.
"The life of so important a chief as the Sirdar Allah-din Khan must be
of great value," he went on in the same unconcerned tone. "And--he has
but one."
"And thou hast two, Feringhi," answered the chief, darkly. "Two, and
that means two deaths instead of one, lingering and painful deaths at
that. One of thy `lives' is behind in the tent. Good! I may fall or I
may not, but I swear on the tomb of the Prophet that if thou so much as
drawest the weapon now held behind thee, thou and thy daughter,"--this
was a figure of speech--"shall be burnt alive. She first."
Mervyn felt desperate. He tried not to pale as he gazed at the speaker.
But his hand did not move from behind him. In that fierce, hard, set
countenance, in the very words of the oath uttered, he knew there would
be no going back from that sentence. He might shoot the chief dead, but
no power on earth would turn the whirlwind rush of his followers. And
they would be as good as their leader's word, as to that he entertained
no doubt whatever. Melian--writhing in a death of fiery torment--the
bare idea was as a pictured glimpse into hell itself. A great roll of
time swept over his mind in that moment or two, as he stood, confronting
the man in whose power he was.
"She first," this barbarian had said. There was a full refinement of
diabolical cruelty in the words. God! the thing was unthinkable!
"I draw no weapon," he answered. "What does the Sirdar Allah-din Khan
require. Money?"
"Thyself."
The answer was curt, deep toned, uncompromising.
"Myself?"
"Nothing else."
"And what of my `daughter'--who however is not my daughter, but my
sister's daughter?" went on Mervyn, who was puzzling hard over what took
on more and more the look of a very hopeless and dreadful situation.
"As believers you dare not harm a woman, the holy Koran itself forbids
it. But how shall she find her way back to her people alone, she who
has never before been in this land?"
"We want nothing of her," said the chief. "She may go in peace. Two of
my people here shall escort her safely to within view of the camp of
yonder Feringhi," with a nod over his shoulder in the direction of Varne
Coates' camp. "But for thyself thou must go with us."
To say that Mervyn felt as if more than half the cloud had lifted would
be to put it mildly. The awful deadly weight that had been crushing
him, the consciousness to wit, that by his own foolhardy obstinacy, he
had brought Melian into ghastly peril--was that which afflicted him
most. He himself and his own potential fate was a matter of utterly
secondary importance--and, here was a way out.
But could he trust the chief's promises? He knew that in this instance
he could. So he made answer, and that very earnestly.
"You will keep faith with me, Sirdar Sahib? My sister's child shall be
escorted to yonder camp by two of your people, and delivered there safe
and unharmed either by word or deed, on condition that I go with you
now? Do you swear that solemnly on the holy Koran and the tomb of the
Prophet?"
"I swear it," answered Allah-din Khan, "on the holy Koran, by the tomb
of the Prophet, and on the holy Kaba." And he raised his sword hilt to
the level of his forehead. Mervyn knew that the oath would be kept.
"I would fain bid farewell to the child, and prepare her for the
journey," he said. "I, too, make oath, that nothing will be done inside
the tent but that."
It seemed strange, but to this the chief made no objection, nor did he
require that one of his followers should be present. He merely bent his
head in assent.
"Well, what has happened? You have been talking long enough, dear,"
said the girl, as he entered the tent.
"Melian darling, you will have to go on to Coates' camp a little ahead
of me. The fact is--I must go with these people for a bit--but I'll
rejoin you soon. The chief is going to tell off two of his men as an
escort for you, and you will be quite safe--quite safe. Tell Coates
I'll join him later."
He tried to speak jauntily--to force a smile. But Melian was not to be
taken in--not for a moment. She shook her head.
"I am not going to Mr Coates' camp," she said, "at least, not without
you. If you have got to go with these people I go too."
Mervyn had not reckoned upon this. He tried to reason with her,
pointing out that a forced march with a gang of wild tribesmen and a
sojourn in their more or less uncomfortable villages, was no fit
experience for her. Of any clement of peril he purposely said nothing,
knowing full well that to do so would be simply to rivet her opposition
the closer. But he might as well have argued with the tent walls, or
have tried to turn the Gularzai chieftain from his fixed purpose.
"Now be reasonable, my little one," he concluded. "Say good-bye to me
here, and I'll see you started off all comfortably."
But Melian set her lips, and those very pretty lips of hers could set
very firmly indeed on occasion.
"I shall do no such thing," she answered. "I'm going with you. We came
here together, and I'm not going to leave you."
She was clinging to him now, firmly, and kissing him.
"You won't go to Coates' then?" he said helplessly.
"No. I'm going with you. So now, let's go out and tell them so."
The chief might have been excused if he had grown impatient, but he had
not. With true Oriental impassiveness he and his wild followers sat
their horses, waiting--incidentally the camp servants crouching in their
tent, went through the bitterness of death many times over during that
period of waiting. Then Mervyn came out and announced that they would
have to take two with them instead of one. But Allah-din Khan received
the statement without great demur; it may have been that he scented
advantage to himself in this addition to his own programme.
In not much longer space of time than it took them to bring in the two
horses, and hurriedly put together a few necessaries, were they ready to
start. The syce, who was ordered out on the first errand, showed no
great concern. He was a Pathan and a believer, and stood in no fear of
the scowling horsemen. But the bearer, who had perforce been convened
for purposes of the latter, had wilted and cowered before the lowering
glances darted at him from under fierce shaggy brows, as a Hindu dog and
an idolater. But it did not suit their purpose to shed more blood on
that occasion, else would he and the others have felt the tulwar's edge
there and then. The two already slain had been victims to a sudden,
unthinking blood lust.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Again we must glance back.
Since the last visit of Helston Varne to Heath Hover, and the boding
manifestation that same evening, of the opening door, an unaccountable
and evil influence seemed to pervade the place. There was no gripping
it, but it was there, and on Melian especially, it seemed to take a firm
hold. All her bright sunny spirits, her joyousness in life, seemed to
leave her, and that with a suddenness and rapidity that was little short
of alarming. She grew pallid, and lost her appetite. She grew nervous,
too, and would start at any and every sound; and when night time came,
and with it solitude, she shrank from it with a very horror of
shrinking. Nothing had happened, according to the tradition of that
boding presage, but the fit grew upon her, and it affected Mervyn too,
though differently. At last he took her to task about it, and she owned
up to the whole thing.
"This'll never do, little one," he had said, looking at her with very
grave concern. "We must go away for a change."
The relief which sprang into her face confirmed her former revelation.
Still she made protest.
"Why should I break up your peace and quiet, Uncle Seward?" trying to
smile, but the smile was a wan one. "You have given me a home, when I
had none--such a happy home, too--but somehow now, I don't know what it
is that has come over me. I seem to be always frightened--of
something--or nothing."
Yes, he had noticed that, but had hoped it would pass. But it had not.
"Where shall we go then? Where would you like?" he said.
"Anywhere _you_ like, dear. It's all the same to me."
"H'm! How should you like to go to--India?"
"To--India? Oh, Uncle Seward, I should just love it," and all the old
animation returned, as if by magic.
"Very well. Pack up to-morrow and we'll start the day after," he had
answered, with characteristic promptitude.
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And so--here they were.