"And echo circles in the air,
Is this the end--is this the end?"
--Tennyson.
September was drawing to a close. Every day the sun fought a losing
battle against the frost and bitter winds of the Pamirs, that pierce
even through sheep-skin coats to the marrow of the bones; and every
night the thermometer fell to zero, or below it. For winter begins
betimes on the "Roof of the World."
On just such a night of keen stars, and still, penetrating cold, Lenox
sat alone in his circular tent of felt and lattice-work--the one form
of habitation used by the nomads of the district--his coat-collar
turned up, a rug round his legs, his fingers numb and blue, writing up
the official and private records of his week's work. In the middle of
the floor a fire of roots flamed and crackled cheerfully enough, the
smoke, and most of the heat, escaping through a hole in the domed roof
above. A felt rug or two, a camp chair and table, and three sheep-skin
bags, laid out for sleeping, gave an air of rough comfort to the place.
But with the thermometer at zero, fuel scarce, and provisions running
very low, actual comfort was past praying for. Lenox shifted his chair
an inch or two nearer the blaze, drawing the camp table along with him,
and disturbing Brutus, who acted as foot-warmer in return for the
privilege of sleeping under the rug.
"Sorry to shunt you, old chap," he apologised aloud. "But you're a
deal better off down there than I am."
Sundry tappings on his left foot signified grateful acknowledgment of
the fact, as Brutus settled himself afresh and dropped back into the
land of dreams, whither Lenox would gladly have followed him. For the
week had been a hard one, and he was very tired. The frost seemed to
have gripped both body and brain, and too long a spell of
mountaineering at high altitudes was beginning to tell upon his
strength; so that he had been thankful for the flat expanses of the
Pamirs, which had made riding possible and pleasant once again.
His entrance into the brigand state, and his polite, but unequivocal
ultimatum to its insubordinate chief had been carried through, not
without moments of uncertainty and danger, yet with complete success,
and throughout the past six weeks he had been enjoying his first big
tour of that strange region of raised valleys and vast, wind-swept
spaces where the boundary lines of three Empires meet.
Since the night when he had flung away the cherished pill-box that now
lay regally entombed under fifty feet of snow, he had suffered no
collapse. His gradual method of unwinding the chain had averted that
final danger and degradation. Bat there had been days when all his
training in self-discipline had been needed to restrain him from
applying to Zyarulla, whose kummerbund held a perennial store of the
precious drug,--the more so since his Ladaki 'cook'--chosen mainly for
his powers of endurance--knew rather less about the primitive
requirements of camp catering than Lenox himself; and in spite of keen
air and exercise his appetite had steadily fallen away. There were
rare days, of course, when he could have eaten camel's flesh, and that
gratefully; but there were many more when the mere man yearned towards
the luxury of plate and silver, of varied meats, and the sparkle of an
iced peg. To-night his 'dinner' consisted of a large cup of cocoa,
some native biscuits, and a lump of milk-cheese made by the Khirgiz,
whose domed huts and scattered flocks are the only signs of human life
in this dry region of snow and sun and tireless wind.
On the table at his elbow, besides the steaming cocoa, were two camp
candlesticks, some closely written sheets of a letter to Quita, and her
last that had reached him outside Hunza five weeks ago. Each one he
had received showed more clearly how the mysterious influence of
absence was winning for him that volatile essence of her which had
eluded his grasp throughout six months of personal contact, and years
of unwearied devotion. Of the deeper, hidden forces at work on his
behalf, he guessed nothing. Only he was aware of subtle changes taking
place in her--of an indefinable softening and uplifting of the whole
woman, that increased tenfold his longing for a reunion which promised
to be closer, more consummate than the best that they had achieved as
yet.
But to-night, because body and spirit were flagging unawares, the miles
upon miles of inhospitable mountain country, that must be traversed
before he could regain the outposts of civilised life, overpowered his
imagination. To-night, for the first time, despondency and the ache of
desire magnified the very real dangers ahead--the lateness of the
season, the uncertainty of weather and supplies. Difficulties in
respect of transport had obliged him to cut down his commissariat,
despatching the remainder, with his heavy baggage, to await him on the
Indian side of the Darkot Pass--the last great obstacle that cut him
off from India, and from the dear woman, never dearer than at this
moment. It was a risk, of course, and a big one. But mountaineering
implies risks; and the man who is not prepared to face them and sleep
soundly on them, had better stick to his armchair and an office.
The original risk had been increased by the fact that his programme of
exploration had taken longer than he calculated, and now ominous
snow-clouds, a rapidly dwindling food supply, and his own importunate
heart, urged an immediate start for the terrible Wakhan Valley and the
Darkot Pass. It meant a race for life--that he saw plainly enough.
The chances were ten to one against the Pass being open after the 1st
of October--the earliest date by which he could hope to get across.
With a sigh, he closed his diaries, emptied the cup of cocoa at a gulp,
and took out of his breast-pocket a folded leather frame. It contained
a photo of Quita in evening dress--a photo so disturbingly alive that
in general he contented himself with the knowledge that it was there.
But now he sat looking at it long and intently, till the eyes seemed to
soften and speech hovered on the too-expressive lips. Almost the music
of her voice was in his ears, when the night's colossal stillness was
broken by voices of a very different quality--the deep tones of the two
Pathans and the interpreter, who, on this lightly-equipped expedition,
were sharing his tent; while the six little Gurkhas, packed like
sardines into a smaller one, seemed to find the experience as amusing
as they found the whole varied field of life. It takes more than mere
hardship to knock the spirits out of a Gurkha.
As the three men entered, Lenox slipped the frame back into his pocket;
and, with a few friendly words, gave them leave to retire into their
sleeping bags, while Zyarulla laid out his master's 'bed' on the
farther side of the fire. That done, he came forward, and, squatting
on his heels, held out fingers like knotted twigs to the blaze. Lenox,
under a pretence of reading, sat watching him spellbound, knowing
precisely what would happen next. Nor was he mistaken. Presently the
thawed fingers fumbled at his kummerbund, produced a discoloured twist
of paper, opened it, and taking out two familiar dark pellets, tossed
them down his throat. In the act he met his master's gaze fixed on him
with strange intensity, and at once two more pellets appeared upon his
palm.
"Will not the Sahib honour his servant by partaking also?" he asked,
proffering his treasure. "The cold increaseth every hour, and the
Heaven-born hath had too little food to-day."
It was a moment before Lenox could find his voice; not because
temptation mastered him, but because he could scarcely believe the
evidence of his brain. The sight of the forbidden thing within easy
reach no longer tormented him as it would have done two months ago.
The habit of resistance was beginning to take effect at last; and,
almost before Zyarulla had time to wonder at his silence, Lenox had
waved aside his open palm.
"No, no," he said quietly. "I have eaten enough, and thou wilt need
all and more before we set foot in a bazaar again. Opium is not for
Sahibs. For the Pathan people, who are made of wood and iron, it may
be very well; but for the white man it is poison."
The Asiatic shook his head, and a light gleamed under his grizzled
brows.
"Great is the wisdom of the Sahib; yet in this matter have I also some
knowledge. The Dream Compeller is no poison, Hazur, but Allah's
bountiful gift to man, bringing strength out of weakness, peace out of
turmoil, even as the rain draweth grass from parched earth.
Nevertheless, it is as your Honour wills."
And Lenox, still watching the man's movements with a strange mingling
of indifference and triumph, saw the miracle-worker--of whose powers he
knew far more than the Pathan--disappear unhindered into the folds of
the man's kummerbund; saw himself once more a free man,--captain of the
soul and body given into his charge.
"Now it is time to sleep," he said, pushing back his chair, and rising
so abruptly that Brutus stumbled on to his feet, and emerged from the
folds of the rug with an injured air. "All things are in readiness for
setting out?"
"Hazur, all things are in readiness."
"It is well. Scatter ashes on the fire, and call me at dawn."
And as he slipped into the sheep-skin bag, his whole heart echoed the
words, "It is well." Let him only win his way back to the wife whose
spirit called to him across the silence and the miles, and all would be
well indeed!
Ten minutes later, the candles were put out; the glow of the fire
quenched; while outside the temperature fell steadily, and a sky heavy
with threatening cloud brooded over the sleeping camp.
Lenox woke before dawn to find a creditable snow-peak piled above his
dead fire, while flakes as large as plucked feathers whirled and
fluttered down upon it through the generous hole in the roof. The
three natives had vanished, sleeping bags and all; and the Ladaki cook,
with the astounding patience of his kind, had coaxed into life a fire
large enough to make his master a cup of tea from the few remaining
spoonfuls of the magic leaf, more priceless to the mountaineer than
brandy.
It was a bad beginning. Even the Gurkhas looked grave, and shook their
heads. The sky, low and heavy with tumbled cloud, was a study in greys
and indigoes; the earth a still, uncharted waste. No whisper of wind
or trees; no sound of life; no break of colour anywhere, from the level
plain to the galaxy of peaks and rounded shoulders tossed aloft like a
frozen tempest. Only at intervals, far up the mountain-sides, black
specks--that were grazing yaks--suggested a Khirgiz encampment
cunningly hidden in the folds of the hills. Presumably the sun was up,
though the east showed as lifeless and unpromising as any other quarter
of the heavens.
A detailed investigation of the commissariat department--revealing a
serious shortage of tea, cocoa, and rice, to say nothing of minor
essentials--proved no less discouraging than the aspect of earth and
sky. Only by the most stringent economy could the little store be
persuaded to last out four days, by which time they hoped to be over
the pass. Lenox, as usual, blamed himself.
"Extra work on siege rations is about our programme!" he remarked with
grim humour to his devoted ally the little Havildar. "We must manage
the first three marches in two days if possible. But I'm sorry to have
let you all in for a risk of this kind."
"All right, Sahib," the Gurkha answered with a brisk salute. "We be
Frontier soldiers. It is not the first time. And 'when sparrows have
picked up the grain where is the use of regret?' If there be enough
for your Honour all is well. The black man can tighten his belt, and
forget that the stomach is empty!" He tightened his own on the spot;
and went off to bid his brothers do likewise on pain of dire penalties.
Stepping down, undismayed, from the voiceless, trackless Roof of the
World, they were met by a desolating wind; the feathered snow-flakes
changed to a storm of sleet,--stinging, saturating; and only the
knowledge that twenty-four hours delay might mean a blocked pass and
another six months of isolation from his kind, induced Lenox to urge
his men forward in the teeth of it.
As it was, they pushed doggedly on over snow-sodden tracks, that were
speedily converted into drainage rivulets; trailing single file along
the 'devil's pathways' that overhang the Wakhan river,--mere ledges cut
out of the cliff's face, where a false step means dropping a hundred
feet and more into the valley beneath; scrambling up giant staircases
of rock, and glacier _debris_; zigzagging down one or two thousand
feet, by the merest suggestion of a route, only to start a fresh
climb--drenched and weary--after floundering through a local torrent,
rushing full 'spate' from the hills. Such crossings, without bridge or
boat, through streams ice-cold as the glaciers that gave them birth,
formed the most exciting episodes of the day's march. They had at
least the merit of creating a diversion, if a damp and dangerous one.
For the Kashmir baggage ponies, battling helplessly against a current
strong enough to sweep them off their feet, could only be guided and
controlled by showers of stones, and a chorus of picturesque terms of
abuse from their distracted drivers. The Gurkhas, whose irrepressible
spirits kept the rest from flagging, enjoyed these interludes to the
top of their bent; plunging waist-deep into the icy water, shaking
themselves like terriers as they scrambled out on the far side, and
shouting incessantly to each other, or to the terrified animals, till
the cliffs echoed with ghostly voices and laughter.
Along tracks possible and impossible Lenox rode his tireless scrap of a
hill pony, who climbed like a goat, and whose unshod feet picked their
way unerringly even over rocks covered with new snow that gave no
foothold to man or beast. The rest walked; while the baggage ponies
slid and stumbled, and scrambled in their wake with the stupefied
meekness of their kind.
Journeying thus,--now drenched with snow and sleet, now heartened by
rare bursts of sunshine,--through the worst bit of hill country between
Persia and China, they camped at last in the grim Wakhan valley,
rightly named 'the Valley of Humiliation.' To Lenox, the name struck
home with a peculiar force. For his time-saving scheme had failed.
The three marches had not been accomplished in two days. Evil weather,
incessant delays, and the impossibility of hurrying baggage animals
over dangerous ground, had prevailed against him. The valley had
conquered: and for the man remained nothing but stoical acceptance of
defeat, and the 'half of a broken hope' that even in heaven and earth's
despite, he might yet win through in time.
On a night of intermittent moonbeams and racing cloud, the scene from
the little camp across the river had a sombre majesty--a suggestion of
impersonal, relentless power that crushes rather than uplifts; that
dwarfs man, with his puny struggles and aspirations, to a pin-point of
sand on an illimitable shore. Colossal ice-bound spurs walled them in;
their sides astonishingly steep, their embattled heads shattered by sun
and frost into fantastic peaks, from which masses of rock and stones
are hurled down into the valley, when rain and melting snow begin their
yearly task of modelling the face of the earth. And between these
threatening heights the Wakhan river hurried, a pale streak of light,
now grey, now silver, as the clouds, like great birds of ill-omen,
chased one another across the moon.
The sinister aspect of the place had its effect on Lenox,
hypersensitised as he was by anxiety over lost hours, and by the
premonitory chill of fever, strengthening that prescience of disaster
which saps spirit and courage more surely than disaster itself. But
they were on the march again betimes, next morning, breasting the
northern slopes of the Hindu Kush, which at this point can be crossed
without much difficulty. Before noon they were over the crest; and
Lenox, weary at last of his nightmare struggle with the mountains,
dropped thankfully into the Yarkhun valley, beyond which towered his
last great obstacle--the Darkot Pass.
It was late afternoon, and, come what might, he intended to requisition
a guide (no easy matter) and push his way across at daylight. But
neither earth nor heaven had a word of encouragement for the man who
scanned them with tired, desperate eyes. At his feet the Yarkhun river
whirled and foamed, a grey glacier torrent, thick with the milky scum
of ice-ground salt; beyond it the ink-black gorge leading to the summit
was shrouded in a scroll of threatening cloud; and the first natives
whom they questioned as to the state of the pass replied unconcernedly
that it had been closed four days; adding that no man who valued his
life would attempt to cross it in uncertain weather.
To force his little contingent forward in the face of such news seemed
nothing less than murder and suicide of an elevated type. But Lenox,
gritting his teeth on a curse, despatched Zyarulla in search of more
precise information, and ordered his tent to be set up without delay.
For even at times of despondency and ill-health, the man possessed his
full share of that 'outward-going force' which is the hall-mark of the
Scottish race; and the instant books and maps were available, he sat
down, filled a pipe from his dwindling store of tobacco, and proceeded
to look out possible alternatives should the worst befall.
There were two: desperate resources both, yet one degree better than
imprisonment in the Yarkhun valley till it pleased the snows to melt.
They could follow the course of the river to Chitral,--no Frontier
outpost then, but an independent Native State; or work their way, by
faith and courage, through the wild Swat country to the Punjab. The
state of both routes was unknown; the question of supplies a hopeless
one; and amid a chaos of uncertainties, bad weather was the one thing
that might safely be counted on in October. To crown all, their line
of communication must, in either case, be broken. They would be lost
to the outside world for many days, if not weeks; and apart from
consideration for his wife, Lenox was the last man to enjoy creating a
temporary excitement at headquarters.
None the less, after thinking himself into a blinding headache, he
decided to face the Chitral route, if snow fell, and if Zyarulla
brought no better news about the pass. Then, because his last cup of
tea was being held in reserve for breakfast, he contented himself with
goat's milk, a slab of chocolate, and native biscuits that served him
for bread.
It was late before Zyarulla returned, with a companion,--a native from
Yasin, on the Indian side of the Pass.
"This man, Sahib, hath even now crossed over from Darkot village," the
Pathan explained, indicating the wizened leader of a forlorn hope with
the air of a showman exhibiting a curiosity. "He came to fetch the
remains of his sister, who died in this valley, that she may be buried
among her own people. I have therefore engaged him as guide, to take
the Sahib over on his return."
"The thing can be done?" Lenox asked, with an eagerness not to be
repressed; and the small man bowed his head upon his hands.
"Allah alone can answer the question of the Heaven-born. For one man
to travel safely among glaciers and crevasses without number, it was no
easy matter--and as for a company of men and ponies, how can this slave
tell? Nevertheless, if the Sahib wills, and there is no snow before
morning, I go before, showing the way; and that which will fall--will
fall."
"Good. That is a bargain. Fulfil it, and thy reward shall be worth
the winning. Let yaks be ordered from the nearest _aul_; and at
daylight we set out."
The man from Yasin salaamed and departed; but at the tent door Zyarulla
paused, a glitter of triumph in his eyes.
"Captain Sahib,--was it well done?"
"Excellently done," Lenox answered, smiling. "Thou art worth thy
weight in tobacco of the first quality!"
And the Pathan, knowing that to his master the value of tobacco was
above all the rupees ever minted, went out to patronise lesser mortals,
and impress them with the fact that he was not as other men, since he
had rendered signal service to "the first-best Sahib in all India,
whose eyes pierce the earth, and whose feet tread upon the necks of
mountains even as those of common Sahibs scatter the dust of cities!"
That night, ominous pains in his limbs and a sensation as of cold water
down his spine drove Lenox to open his second and last bottle of
brandy. Stimulated by the kindly spirit, he wrestled with a fowl
tougher than india-rubber, and slept as a doomed man might sleep on the
night of his reprieve.
But he woke to hear the tread of his sentry muffled by new-fallen snow;
and hope died in him at the sound. Outside, the world was white with
it; the whole air thick with it; yet his men were striking camp and
loading up, confident in the white man's reputation for achieving the
impossible. Only the little guide demurred, trembling at his own
audacity.
"Hazur, look whether the thing can be done. I said--if no snow fell."
"And _I_ say, if it fall or no, we cross to-day," Lenox answered, with
more of assurance than he felt. "Bid the yaks go forward to prepare a
way for our coming."
The great shaggy beasts went forward accordingly, head downward,
ploughing a way through the snow, to make marching easier and disclose
hidden pitfalls or crevasses; and by the time Lenox had despatched a
travesty of a breakfast, a pallid light in the east hinted that the
storm might be local after all. Wet and draggled as they were, the
order was given to load up and start; and even as they crossed the
torrent to the foot of the glacier, earth and sky leaped suddenly into
light; broken streaks of radiance danced and sparkled on the river, and
the sun swept the shadows from hill and valley, converting their
deathlike shroud into a glittering garment, stainless as the soul of a
child.
"Inshallah!! Now all is well!"
It was the deep voice of Yusuf Ali; and Lenox heard his cheery little
friend, the Havildar, make answer, "True talk, brother; the gods favour
those who go forward!"
Cheered by the prospect of getting dry, and by the sun's mysterious
power to exhilarate all things living, the whole party quickened their
pace. But in less than an hour fresh clouds had rolled up, blotting
out the sun; and on the glacier they overtook the yaks and their
drivers, lumbering soberly through the snow-drifts with true Oriental
disregard for time.
The men chorussed voluble excuses; but since time meant life or death,
Lenox waved them aside impatiently, and ordered the guide to go on,
making his own tracks as best he might. The which he did, with the
help of two others, pressed into service by promises of liberal
backsheesh, stepping out valiantly at the head of the mixed procession;
his sister's remains--tied up in a wisp of turban--bobbing over his
shoulder; driving on before him a donkey followed by a goat. And the
unerring instinct by which this despised creature of God avoided hidden
fissures and crevasses must needs be seen to be believed.
The guides, keeping in the tracks of the animals, marked off dangerous
places with their sticks; and behind them rode Lenox, muffled to the
eyes in poshteen and Balaklava cap, his league of leg barely two feet
off the ground; his keen little pony--long since christened 'The
Rat'--almost as trustworthy on dangerous ground as the donkey himself.
And wherever he led, all self-respecting Kashmiri ponies would
follow,--even into a crevasse!
Through four mortal hours they plodded on, a strange procession of
muffled figures, leaving in their wake a dark, contorted track, as
though some wounded thing had writhed its way upward through the frozen
snow.
And by one o'clock the crest was in sight! "The gods favour those who
go forward!" Chundra Sen had spoken truth. Another half hour would
see them through the worst; and Lenox--scarcely able to believe in his
good fortune--urged The Rat to renewed exertion, and shouted to his men
to hurry on.
But the gods are nothing if not capricious; and the 'advanced guard,'
reaching the summit, found no promised land spread out below them, but
a mass of blue-black cloud, heavy with snow, surging up the valley,
with the rush of a tidal wave and the breath of an iceberg, blotting
out creation as it came; till it shrouded the little band of
men--'unconquering, yet unconquered'--in a sinister twilight, cold as
Death's own self.
There was nothing to be said or done. They simply stood still, and
waited for the end:--the Asiatics with the phlegm of fatalism; Lenox
with the stillness of despair.
"Checkmate," he muttered grimly. "Two hours of this will about finish
us off."
In two seconds his moustache was frozen to his face; his limbs numbed,
so that movement became imperative. Mechanically he dismounted,
stamped his feet, and beat his arms across his chest as the others were
doing; a proceeding about as effective as thimblefuls of water flung on
a fire. For every moment the iron clutch of frost tightened and
penetrated; even, it seemed, to the life-blood in his veins. But
through its deadening influence the thought of Quita struck like a
knife-thrust. "God help her!" his heart cried out in bitter rebellion
against his own helplessness to shield her from pain. "It will hit her
hard. But she has grit;--and her art. She will live it down."
For five awful minutes the darkness held; and the men waited;--free yet
helpless, like castaways on an open sea. Yet no snow fell.
Suddenly Lenox was aware of Brutus rubbing against his leg, plainly
demanding what was wrong. He stooped and caressed the ugly head of his
eight years' companion and friend. "Rough luck on you, old chap. You
never asked to come."
For answer Brutus licked his woollen glove. And as he straightened
himself, Chundra Sen came up and saluted.
"Captain Sahib, it is strange. No snow falls; and the darkness
moves--moves. May be it is not the storm itself; but a cloud that will
pass."
"I doubt it, Havildar," Lenox answered, smiling at the characteristic
suggestion. Yet his eyes, half-blinded with snow-glare, peered
anxiously southward, and detected a change; a faint hint of
transparency, as though light were struggling through.
The Gurkha detected it also.
"Hazur, behold!--The cloud _will_ pass." His teeth flashed out
exultant. "A good tale is not to be bought with cowries; and we shall
tell this one in India before many weeks be out."
Chundra Sen was right. With astonishing swiftness the twilight paled
from grey to white; a streak of spectral sunlight quivered through,
like life creeping back into the face of death; and the cloud rolled
harmlessly over into the Yarkhun valley behind them.
It was but a herald of the great battalion that billowed up an hour
later, enveloping glacier, peak, and crag, and sealing up the pass for
seven months to come.
But by then, they were clattering recklessly down the slope,
helter-skelter, like a pack of children let out of school; slithering
over fissured glacier and moraine, sending loose boulders flying from
rock to rock; the Gurkhas shouting and laughing, the Kashmiri coolies
breaking into weird snatches of song. Even The Rat lost his sober
little head, and in scuttling over a glacier slope sat suddenly down
upon his tail, dog fashion, landing Lenox on his feet, and sliding away
from under him, to the vociferous delight of every one but himself.
Only the two Pathans and the Scot accepted reprieve as imperturbably as
they had accepted sentence of death; suggesting by their silence, in
the midst of excitement, the large reserves of strength common to the
natures of both.
Before five they had sighted the willows and poplars of Darkot; and by
sunset they were encamped outside the village, walled in with a rugged
amphitheatre of granite and limestone cliffs. Here they found the man
in charge of the welcome caravan of supplies and heavy baggage, taking
his ease, a little puzzled, yet in no wise troubled at the Sahib's
delay.
Lenox, broken with fatigue, relief, and incipient illness, realised, as
he sank into his camp chair, that throughout the past week he had kept
himself going by pure force of will. And his record was a fair one,
even as Frontier records go:--incessant marching in wet clothes, on a
minimum of food, culminating in ten hours of severe exposure and the
acutest anxiety he had ever known. And over and above all such
incidentals of the day's work,--achievement, in full measure, of that
which he had set out to do; not merely in respect of his mission, but
in respect of that hidden struggle and victory, 'that weighed not as
his work, yet swelled the man's amount.' For he knew now that by the
God-given power of sheer, unwearied resistance he had vanquished an
evil the most insidious and alluring that can assail a man; knew that
he had put the accursed thing under his feet; and he meant to keep it
there.
But the struggle, combined with hardship and privation, had left its
mark on him. The protests of Nature had been disregarded; and now she
took her revenge in the sledge-hammer fashion that is hers.
By next morning the man's skin was like hot parchment, his limbs rigid
with pain, his brain verging on delirium; and before evening it was
clear that rheumatic fever had him in its relentless grip.
The Gurkhas and Zyarulla were in despair. Chundra Sen, goaded by
responsibility for the safety of his officer, set out, straightway, by
double marches for Srinagar, determined to cover the distance in ten
days; while the Pathan, commanding a _charpoy_[1] from the headman of
the village, remained to exorcise the 'fever devil' with the rude skill
and limitless patience of his kind.
But he reaped small reward for his pains. Racked with rheumatism and
burnt up with fever, Lenox had almost reached the end of his tether;
and through the awful hours of delirium, Zyarulla could only crouch,
helpless, by the bedside; listening, listening to the hoarse, hurried
mutterings, of which he could understand nothing beyond the frequent
recurrence of the Mem-sahib's name.
Each day life flickered more uncertainly in the great gaunt frame; and
on the morning when Chundra Sen, with a dapper little doctor, set his
face towards Darkot, Zyarulla, kneeling beside his unheeding master,
bowed his head upon his hands.
"It is the will of God," he muttered. But the formula carried no
conviction to his heart, that whispered rather: "It is the work of
Sheitan, the accursed."
[1] String-bed.