Peaks--jagged and lofty, peaks--stark and pointed, cleaning up into the
unclouded but somewhat brassy blue. Rock-sides, cleft into wondrous,
criss-cross seams; loose rocks again, scattering smoother slopes of
shale, where the white gypsum streaks forced their way through.
Beneath--far beneath--winding among these, a mere thread--the white dust
of a road. Of vegetation none, save for coarse, sparse grass bents, and
here and there a sorry attempt at a pistachio shrub. A great black
vulture, circling on spreading wing, over this chaos of cliff and chasm,
of desolation and lifelessness, turns his head from side to side and
croaks; for experience tells him that its seeming lifelessness is but
apparent.
"Ya, Allah! and are we to wait here until the end of the world? In
truth, brother, we had better seek to serve some other chief."
Thus one dirty-white-clad figure to another dirty-white-clad figure--
both resembling each other marvellously. The same bronze visage, the
same hooked nose and rapacious eyes, the same jetty tresses on each side
of the face, and the same long and shaggy beard, characterised these two
no less than the score and a half other precisely similar figures lying
up among the interstices of this serrated ridge, watching the way
beneath. The dirty-white turbans had been laid aside in favour of a
conical dust-coloured _kulla_, the neutral hue of which headgear blended
with the sad tints of the surrounding rocks and stones.
"I know not, brother," rejoined the second hook-nosed son of the
wilderness. "Yet it seems that since the _Sirkar_ [Note 1] has been
changed at Mazaran, a great change too has come over our father the
Nawab."
"Nawab!" repeated the first speaker, with disgust. "Nawab! How can our
chief take such a dirty title, only fit for swine of Hindu idolators.
It is an insult on the part of the accursed Feringhi to offer such a
title to a freeborn son of the mountains; and such a one as the chief of
the Gularzai. Nawab!" and the speaker spat from between his closed
teeth, with a sort of hiss of contempt.
"Yet, if it serves to place him higher in the estimation of the Feringhi
and of the tribes our neighbours, what matter?" returned the other.
"The Nawab Mahomed Mushim Khan sounds great in the ears of such."
The sneering laugh which rattled from the other's throat was checked,
for now the attention of all became concentrated on a cloud of dust
coming into view, and advancing along the thread of road winding
beneath. Eagerly now, thirty pairs of fierce eyes were bent on that
which moved beneath their gaze--a passing of men, mounted and armed, to
the number of about three score; and fierce brows bent in hatred, as
they scowled upon the representative of that irresistible Power, which,
with all its failings and errors of judgment, yet in the long run held
in salutary restraint the excesses of their wild and predatory race.
For this was the escort of the British Political Agent, returning from
an official visit to their tribal chieftain.
A squad of Levy Sowars rode in front, and a larger one of Native
Cavalry, the official himself, with two or three attendants being
between; the servants with camp necessaries and furniture bringing up
the rear, yet taking apparent care to keep somewhat close upon the heels
of the armed escort. Upon this array the wild hillmen gazed with many a
muttered curse. The time for that might come, in the orderings of Allah
and His Prophet; but it was not to-day--was the thought that possessed
several of their minds.
The cavalcade held on its way, winding round a high precipitous spur, to
reappear again further on, small and distant, then to vanish entirely
where a great _tangi_ cleft the heart of the mountain. And look!
Below, once more, in the direction whence it had first appeared, whirled
another cloud of dust, insignificant this time compared with before.
The eyes of the marauders gleamed from beneath shaggy brows, and a stir
ran through their numbers. Brown, claw-like hands gripped the barrels
of firearms--no antiquated, if picturesque jezails these, but
Lee-Metford magazine rifles up to date, save for a few Martinis--while
tulwars were half drawn from their scabbards, and gazed at with lovingly
murderous graze ere being replaced again. Yet the group of figures
which emerged into view on the road beneath was not formidable,
consisting in fact of but four human beings.
Two were mounted, and two on foot, and between them they were driving
several pack animals, laden to their fullest capacity. At sight of
these, the band, all its tactics prearranged, moved down from its
eyrie-like lurking place, dividing, as it did so, into three.
Chand Lall, general trader, who was mounted, and his two assistants who
were afoot, were uneasy, and the former was secretly cursing his own
avarice which had prevented him from purchasing an extra pack animal or
two, which would have enabled him and his possessions to have kept
beneath the wing of the Political Agent's escort, whereas now he was
very considerably behind the tail of the same. But the fourth of the
group, the other mounted man, was quite cool; indeed, it looked as
though he actually preferred the solitude of their wild surroundings--
and perhaps he did.
"Be at peace, brother," this one was saying. "Are we not safe, for we
are in the hand of Allah? Wherefore then this hurry? Nothing can be
but what is written. But there, I forget, my memory groweth old with
its owner. Thou art not of the number of true believers." And he
deliberately and leisurely dismounted, as though discovering a sudden
lameness in the near foreleg of his horse.
"That is all very well, Ibrahim, who art a Moslem," said the fat Hindu,
whose distressed impatience was painfully manifest. "None will harm
thee. But I--"
The words died in his throat, choked there by the sight of a number of
stealing figures, flitting down from rock to rock. The countenance of
the unfortunate trader grew a dirty leaden white. Already the road
before him was barred. Wildly he gazed around. That behind him was
barred too. His companion, quite unmoved, was still examining the hoof
of his horse. High overhead, a speck in the ether, above the gnomelike
crags, the black vulture still turned his head from side to side and
croaked.
Already the marauders had seized the pack animals. The two young men
who drove them had fallen flat and were grovelling and wailing for
mercy. Rough hands had flung the Hindu from his saddle, and he lay on
the ground, moaning with fear, and quaking in every limb, as he stared
frantically at the dull flash of razor-edged tulwars, brandished over
him, the savage, hairy faces glowering down upon him, fell and
threatening with religious hate and racial contempt.
"Rise up, fat dog," said one of the marauders, kicking him. "Rise up,
and come with us."
"Mercy, Sirdar Sahib, and suffer me to go my way," whined the terrified
man, as he tremblingly obeyed the first clause of the injunction. "I am
but a poor trader, but have ever been generous to such as ye. Take
therefore of my poor store, yet leave me a little that I may begin life
again."
The leader of the band laughed evilly and spat.
"Thy poor store! Ha! We will take all and afterwards skin thee of yet
more, thou usurer, who comest into our country but to leave it poorer."
"Not so, Sirdar Sahib," expostulated the trader, plucking up a little
courage by virtue of the name he was about to invoke. "What I have, I
have from the Nawab--the Nawab Mushim Khan--given in honest trade.
Shall I then suffer ill-treatment at the Nawab's very gates?"
"The Nawab. Ha--ha!" jeered the leader, spitting again. "Walk, fat
infidel dog. Dost hear?"
And a buffet on the side of the head, which nearly felled him, convinced
the unfortunate trader that this was no time for further expostulation;
and, accordingly, panting, wheezing, stumbling, he strove his painful
utmost to keep pace up the steep hill with his perilous and unwelcome
escort. His attendants were undergoing but little ill-treatment. They
were young and lithe, and gave no trouble; moreover, they had little or
nothing to lose, so feared nothing. Ibrahim, who happened to be a
_mullah_, and whom the other had subsidised for the supposed protection
of his own company, to whom no violence whatever had been offered, was
leading his steed tranquilly over the rough, stony slope, chatting and
laughing familiarly with the band; and at the sight the unhappy Chand
Lall's soul grew more bitter within him. Why had he been so ready to
accept this plausible rogue's benevolent sanctity, he thought, as now
fifty instances occurred to him of delays, slight at the time, but on
colourable pretext, to retard him more and more--to increase subtly and
imperceptibly more and more the distance between him and the armed force
with which he had obtained permission to travel. Bitterly he reproached
himself. He saw through it now--in fact, he did not believe that
Ibrahim was a _mullah_ at all; but _mullah_ or not, certain it was that
he was the confederate and decoy of the ferocious and predatory gang who
had so daringly swooped down upon himself and his goods, almost within
call of the Political Agent's armed escort.
On they fared, higher and higher, until at length, utterly exhausted,
Chand Lall realised that he lay powerless and beyond all reach or hope
of aid in one of the fastnesses of his captors, away in the most savage
and frowning recesses of the mountain world. And then something in the
very hopelessness of it all as he saw the fruits of a long and toilsome
expedition utterly thrown away, moved the wretched man to a sort of
desperation. He threatened.
"See you," he said, "I am not a man who can be smuggled away and no
inquiries made. I am not a man who can be ill-treated with impunity. I
am a man of consequence, and of importance to the _Sirkar_. I am a
friend of the Nawab--"
He stopped short. There was that in the look of the leader--to whom he
had addressed these words--which seemed to freeze the half delirious
desperation within him.
"A friend of the Nawab! Ha--ha! Hearken, O man of consequence and of
importance to the _Sirkar_," bending down a savage face to note and
revel in the terror he was about to strike into his victim. "Is it
possible that thou hast never yet heard the name of Murad Afzul? Is it
possible, I say? Ya, Allah! is it possible?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. Government ordinarily. In this instance the representative of
Government.