"Are you superstitious, Miss Clive?"
"Well, I don't know. Not more than other people, I suppose."
"That is tantamount to an answer in the affirmative," rejoined Raynier.
"Believer in `luck.' Observances connected with the new moon--the
finding of a horse-shoe. Things of that kind."
"Oh no, I'm not," she answered decidedly.
"What? You would really upset the salt, and omit to throw some over
your shoulder--or walk under a ladder?"
"As to that, I'd make sure there was no one on it with a paint-pot
first."
"That's better. And you're not afraid of ghosts, eh?"
"Well, I've never seen one," she answered, demurely mischievous. And
then they both laughed.
It was near sundown--also near the camp. They were returning from an
afternoon ride, and the rest of the party, Haslam and the Tarletons to
wit, were some way on ahead. These two were alone together.
This they had frequently been, since accident had thus thrown them
together, and in that brief period of time Raynier had fallen to
wondering more and more what there was about Hilda Clive that already he
had begun to think how he would miss her later on, and how on earth they
could have been shut up together on board a ship all the time they had,
and yet that he should hardly have taken any notice of her. Now in
their daily intercourse she was so companionable and tactful--and withal
feminine. She was really attractive too, he thought, not for the first
time, as he looked at her and noticed how well she sat her horse. As an
actual fact she really had improved in the point of appearance, and that
vastly; for the healthy outdoor life in that high climate had added a
colour to her face which gave it just that amount of softness in which
it had seemed lacking before.
"If you are absolutely sure you are free from superstition," went on
Raynier, "I'd like to show you something that's worth seeing."
"What is it?"
"There's a real thrill of curiosity in that question," he laughed.
"It's a _tangi_--and a haunted one."
"Oh, I must see it. Where is it, Mr Raynier?"
"Close here. But before you venture you had better think over the
penalty. The belief is that whoever enters it meets his death in some
shape or form before the end of the next moon."
"That's creepy, at any rate. But is the idea borne out by fact?"
"They say it is, without exception. You would not get any of the people
here to set foot in it on any consideration whatever."
"Then none of them ever set foot in it?"
"I should rather think not."
"Then how do they know what would happen if they did?"
"They know what _has_ happened--at least, they say so. This is the
place."
They had been riding over a nearly level plain, sparsely grown with
stunted vegetation, and shut in by hills, stony and desolate, breaking
up here and there into a network of chasms. Under one of these and at
the further edge of the plain was pitched their camp, and from where
they now halted they could distinguish the smoke of the fires rising
straight upward on the still air, could make out the glimmer of a white
tent or two. Right in front of them reared a mountain side, steep and
lofty, rising in terraced slopes--and, cleaving this there yawned the
entrance of a gigantic rift.
"I'm not surprised they should weave all sorts of superstitions about
such a place as this," said Hilda Clive, as she gazed up, with
admiration not unmixed with awe, at the sheer of the stupendous rock
portals, so regular in their smooth immensity as almost to preclude the
possibility of being the work of Nature unaided.
"Well, now, I've warned you what the penalty is," went on the other.
"Do you still want to go in?"
"Why, you are so solemn over it, Mr Raynier, that anyone would think you
believed in it yourself."
"They could hardly think that, could they, seeing that I've been through
it already."
"Been through it? Have you really? How long ago?"
"From end to end. A couple of days after we came up here."
"But did you know the tradition?"
"Yes. Haslam told me. I questioned Mehrab Khan about it, and he is a
firm believer in it. In fact, all the people are. That's the reason I
sent him on to the camp now. I didn't want him to know what we were
going to do, if only that there's nothing to be gained by jumping with
both feet upon other people's prejudices, especially natives'. And
these might look upon it as a desecration."
"Has Mr Haslam been through it himself?"
Raynier whistled, then laughed.
"Haslam! Why, he'd about as soon go into it as Mehrab Khan."
"Really, Mr Raynier, I couldn't have believed you people out here were
so superstitious. You are as bad as the natives themselves. I suppose
you get it from them."
"`You'? Count me out, please. Didn't I just say I'd been through the
place? I'm doomed anyhow, you see," he added banteringly, "but there's
no reason why you should be. So now we'll get back to camp."
"No. I want to go through it too."
"Quite sure you won't feel uncomfortable about it afterwards?" he said.
"You might, you know."
But a strange expression had come over her face, the set, far-away look
of one whose thoughts were not with her words. In after times that look
came back to him.
"I want to go through it too," she repeated.
"Very well, then--you've been warned."
As they entered the grim portal the sun was just touching the horizon,
but it occurred to neither of them that it might be pitch dark before
they emerged. At first the slant of the rock walls caused one of these
to overhang, shutting out the sky, but the rift gradually widening, they
could see the brow of these stupendous cliffs, far above against the sky
at a dizzy height. Unconsciously the tones of both were lowered as they
conversed.
"It isn't healthy taking too long to get through a _tangi_ like this
when there are rain storms going about," Raynier was saying. "It makes
a most effective waterway for ten, twenty, forty feet of flood. Ah, I
thought so. Look."
High over their heads, caught here and there in a crevice of the rock,
was a wisp of withered grass or a few sticks. There was no mistaking
how these objects had got there, and the awful magnitude of the flood
which at times bellowed through this grisly rift.
"Why is the place supposed to be haunted?" said Hilda Clive. "You
didn't tell me."
"The usual thing--a curse. There was a man killed here by the people of
the neighbourhood--not an incident of very great moment in this country,
you would think. But this one was a great character in the sanctity
line of business--a Syyed or a Hadji, or something of the sort--and so
his ghost appeared and took it out of the neighbourhood, and indeed the
human race in general, by planting a rigid embargo on the place. And it
was a pretty practical way of taking it out of them too, for they used
this _tangi_ as a thoroughfare--it's scarcely a mile long, you know--
whereas now they've got to go round the mountain instead of through it,
which makes a difference of at least eight."
"It's an eerie place, anyhow," said the girl, looking up a little
awe-stricken at the immensity of the cliff walls. The sun had gone off
the world now, and a tomb-like twilight prevailed here in the heart of
the mountain. It was chilling enough to have begotten a whole volume of
grim legends.
"Wonder if the old Syyed's ghost is on hand now," said Raynier, who was
cynically and frankly sceptical in such matters. "We'll give him the
salaam anyhow." Then, raising his voice but very slightly, he
exclaimed,--
"Salaam, Syyed!"
What was this? The whole of the immense vault was roaring and bellowing
with sound. In waves it rolled, now running along the ground at their
feet, now tossed on high as though escaping into outer air. "Salaam,
salaam, salaam!" it replied in every conceivable tone and key, then
roared along the cliffs again as in a peal of thunder, the whole
accompanied by a mighty rattling. The noise was simply appalling.
Raynier, the sceptical, was more than startled. Not to put too line a
point on it, he was just a little bit scared, though no manifestation of
it escaped him. The horses of both, too, were backing and snorting,
evincing a degree of terror not at all calculated to soothe the nerves
of their riders. The suddenness of it all, the booming of the spectral
voices here in the grisly depths, was rather startling.
He looked at his companion somewhat apprehensively, expecting to see her
pale and shaking, perhaps hysterical. To his surprise she was laughing.
His first thought even then was that this was a form of hysteria.
"Don't you see?" she said.
"Don't you see? Don't you see?" boomed the vault around. "Don't you
see? Don't you see?" shrieked and wailed the heights above. And then
Raynier felt secretly more than a little ashamed of himself--for he did
see.
As they were talking they had rounded a sudden bend in the defile, and
the salute he had jocosely directed to the dead Syyed--if such a person
had ever existed in fact--had been caught up by a most astounding echo,
which, for no apparent reason, was given forth precisely at that spot.
Still, it was not a little curious that they should have entered within
its scope simultaneously with the utterance of the half-mocking words,
which, mingling with the rattle of the horses' hoofs upon the loose
stones of the _tangi_, had produced the horrible din.