THE GATE
“Look, sahib, the hills open in front like a Waziristan _tangi_,” said
Payindah, pointing.
It was getting on for midday, and we had nearly reached the wall of
hills, which now towered, grim and threatening, above us, a long line
of sheer cliff, incredibly high; and, though the face was scarred and
furrowed, there seemed to be no place where it could be ascended except
in true mountaineering fashion with ropes and other aids.
Nor was there any sign of life in all the expanse of bare brown rock
that rose before us, not even a wheeling kite in the sky. If life there
were ahead, it must lie all on the other side of this great barrier
that stretched away on either hand as far as we could see, merging from
dead lifeless brown to warmer reds and madders and purples, and then
finally to hazy blues as the distance softened the hard outlines.
We two were standing on the edge of the sand looking up a short slope
of rock, tumbled with big boulders and smaller stones that ended
abruptly at the foot of the wall-like cliff. Some half a mile or more
behind us our string of camels plodded slowly along over the low sand
ripples, here only a foot or two in height.
The whole scene rather reminded me of the Derajat--the plain that lies
between the Indus and Waziristan--save that the hills here were far
more formidable. Behind us, the expanse of yellow sand, not unlike the
sun-dried soil below the frontier hills. In front, those frowning walls
of rock, and just ahead of me in the white sunlight, Payindah with his
short _poshtin_, his loose tied khaki _pagri_ round his bobbed black
locks, his baggy khaki breeches and worn _chaplis_, for all the world
like any tribal levy man of the Indian border, save that his rifle,
even now after the long march, was spotless, and his bandolier had
been new-cleaned overnight. Evidently Payindah, like Forsyth, believed
in first impressions.
Ahead of us, as he said, the little stream--now somewhat wider--ran
into the rock wall in a narrow cleft, where it vanished.
“Wouldst like to picket the top?” I asked, pointing up.
“Wah, what could get up that save a fly?” said he; and, indeed, I
think he was about right. It was not often that Payindah admitted
that anything was out of his power, for he possessed to the full that
boastfulness so characteristic of the Punjabi, a relic, perhaps, of the
old Greek strain from Alexander’s time that the Punjab talks of even to
this day.
Travel along the Punjab frontier, yes, and right down into Baluchistan,
and any old ruin, any disused water-channel faced with big stone
blocks, any uncommon feature that might be the work of men, and local
fable will tell you that it was built by the great Sikandar.
“Well, let us push on to the mouth, and then, if we see naught, we will
halt the camels here,” said I.
We went on forward right up to the mouth of the cleft--a narrow
sword-cut such as one meets all along the Indian frontier, but narrower
than most, perhaps a bare thirty feet from rock wall to rock wall, with
the babbling stream running in the stony bed between.
But the height of it was more than any _tangi_ I had ever seen,
comparable only to a Doré picture. On either hand the walls of bare
rock shot up straight, hundreds of feet above us, striated lime rock,
splintered and cracked and twisted, but offering neither foothold nor
hand-hold for any but the boldest and most experienced climber equipped
with every aid. At the foot were little whitened rock plants, and
clumps of coarse grass.
A couple of hundred yards farther on and we could see the valley
turning, but when we reached the turn, lo! another again in front. And
a silence that was eerie, naught save the murmur of the water, here
perhaps three or four feet wide and a foot or more deep in places,
running fairly fast.
We went back to the entrance, and, seeing the camels just approaching,
signalled to Wrexham to stop.
“Here we are, and I think the thing is to halt now and make camp.
Afterwards, we can explore the valley. If it’s your great-great-uncle’s
one, it runs in about three miles according to the diary. It’ll
probably take nearly an hour going up and as much coming back, and say
an hour pottering round, and by that time there’ll not be much point
in going on. So we might as well stop now, and look for a camp. There
are some overhanging rocks there that would give a certain amount of
shelter from the wind if it gets up. In this sort of place one often
gets howling gales, and a bit of shelter is welcome. What do you think?”
“Yes; I never thought we should get beyond the foot of the hills
to-day,” said Wrexham. “I’m with you in the matter of getting a
camp-site before we start exploring. There doesn’t seem to be much
grazing here for the camels, worse luck.”
“There’s a little scrub stuff inside at the foot of the cliffs, but I
think we’d be wise not to let the animals touch it to-day. Remember
your old uncle’s beasts. The stuff may be poisonous. It seems a new
kind to me. Payindah will stop in the valley entrance and do sentry
while the rest of us fix up camp.”
Another hour saw us settled in, the camels unloaded, and our little
tent snuggled under the lee of a big rock. We made a hasty lunch,
and then, leaving the men to set up things, we three started up the
valley, rifles very much at the alert. As we entered the _tangi_ mouth,
Wrexham, who had been thoughtful during lunch, turned round to Forsyth
and me just behind.
“Look here, you fellows, I’ve been thinking about what we ought to do
when we get to the far end if we find the gate my great-great-uncle
wrote about.
“It’s not exactly a suburban villa where you can walk straight up and
ring the bell. The people who live here are presumably not accustomed
to strangers, and they might be nasty. One is not at one’s best
standing outside a fort gate trying to induce the people inside--who
may not even know any language we speak--to let us in. My idea is that,
if this _is_ the valley, and if we come across that stone gate, we
should hang about a bit under cover and see if anything materializes.”
“I was thinking of that, too,” put in Forsyth. “We’ve plenty of water
now, and so there’s no immediate hurry, though the camels could do
with some grazing. I’m all for trying to get to know the inhabitants
somewhere out in the open. From the diary the place sounded what you
might call average inhospitable, and I should prefer to try my Greek
on some bloke out in the open rather than have to shout it at a narrow
loophole with the tip of a three-foot arrow wavering about just inside.”
“We all seem wonderfully unanimous in our thoughts,” said I; “the same
thing occurred to me as we were starting. I suggest, further, we don’t
even show ourselves at first. Let’s see if they materialize before we
sound a tucket, or whatever the mediæval wanderer used to do when he
struck a strange fortress and observed the occupants getting handy with
the boiling lead in case they didn’t like his face.”
So we decided--and, as it turned out, it was well that we did so--to
reconnoitre as carefully as if the inhabitants were Huns and we a
bashful trench crawling party, and, if we found the gateway, not to go
out of cover until we saw some chance of meeting the owners on more
even terms.
As we went on, Forsyth remarked on the fact that the valley was getting
still narrower. We had gone about a mile, and it was now not much above
fifteen or sixteen feet wide. The bottom was of rounded stones and
pebbles, obviously water-worn, but whether the whole valley was due to
water action it was hard to say. It must have taken æons and æons for
the stream to cut down those many hundred feet, unless at some time it
contained a far greater flow of water than existed now.
Wrexham opined that originally it must have been a fault in the rock,
and pointed out that the strata here were tilted up vertically on edge.
He said that probably the valley we walked in had once been a layer of
very soft rock--easily decomposed--between two harder ones, and that
when the rocks had been tilted up the gradual percolation of water had
started a groove, and then the stream had done the rest.
The walls were of a grey-green limestone here, though at the entrance
the general tinge had been brown. There was practically no vegetation
save for here and there, just at the foot, blanched shrubs and small
plants of the type common in rock country over middle Asia. Just now
the sun was nearly overhead, and some stray sunbeams filtered down, but
for the greater part of the day the valley must have been--indeed, we
soon found out that it was--shrouded in a grey gloom. By the time we
had gone another mile, the walls had closed in to barely ten feet apart.
“I wouldn’t like to be caught in a spate here,” said I. “The place
would be a seething torrent fifty or sixty feet deep in a few minutes
if there was a heavy fall beyond. It rather makes me think of the
Narrows on the Wana road from Jandola, only on a bigger scale.”
“Never been up there,” said Wrexham; “but, if you birds had to fight in
stuff like this last year, I’m glad I wasn’t there. One thing here is
that it’s so high above that, short of heaving over rocks blindly, the
other side couldn’t get at you at all if you had command of the end.
If the inhabitants are unpleasing, we could manage to hold them up in
this pretty easily with rifles, and if we couldn’t get in, at least
they won’t be able to get out at us. What a topping entrance for a real
mediæval fortress!”
“Or even for a modern one. You couldn’t get guns up the cliff anywhere
near here, and so you’d have to fight through this in pure primitive
fashion; and if, as it must, it opens out in front, all they’ve got to
do is to stick a few men with rifles, or even with bows, a little way
beyond under cover to prevent you ever getting out at all.”
We were just rounding a turn as we spoke, Forsyth leading. We heard him
exclaim suddenly, and then, coming round the corner, saw him standing
staring at the rock walls.
“Well, I’m d----d!” was all he said.
It took us a second to realize about what he was exclaiming. The stream
split into two branches, and twenty yards farther on these two branches
disappeared into tunnels in the rock, low, square tunnels, perhaps
three feet high by two broad, obviously the work of man, cut foursquare
out of the solid limestone.
“Now I wonder what they did that for?” said Wrexham. “It doesn’t look
as if these were springs. It seems rather as if somewhere higher up
they had deliberately diverted the water.”
We studied the little tunnels, but there was nothing to show who had
made them. Unornamented, they might have been of any date. Just plain
tunnelling through the rock much as you can see in Northern India
to-day, where the tribesmen tunnel along in the river-banks to lead
water off to fields lower down, up above the natural water-level of the
stream.
In front the valley continued its sinuous course, but dry now. We
followed for about one hundred yards, and then Wrexham stopped and
sniffed. He has a keen nose.
“Something dead about these parts,” he said at last.
There was just a faint movement of air, and undoubtedly, as Wrexham
said, it was bringing down to us odours that evoked other scenes back
in the war years. Two minutes later, rounding another bend, we were
aware of brighter light in front.
“Steady,” said I; “I think we’ve come to the end. Stop here a minute
while I look ahead.”
Another fifty yards round a still sharper and narrower bend, and then
I drew back quickly into the shadow of the valley, which had suddenly
widened, and was partly filled with some masses of fallen rock. I drew
in my breath as I looked, and then, stepping back, waved up the others,
signalling silence as I did so. When they came up, I motioned them
behind the rocks and pointed. As they craned their heads cautiously up,
I heard Wrexham give a low whistle of surprise.
For there, straight in front, was the open clearing and the rock gate,
cut into the solid face of the cliff just as the old diary described
it. And on the white stones of the clearing were bones, in large
numbers--gaunt ribs and rounded skulls--and a pervading smell of death.
While, most ominous of all, in the centre of the clearing a huddle of
draggle-winged vultures jostled and flapped and writhed their foul
necks about something hidden beneath them.
We crouched there, staring breathlessly across the clearing at the gate
on the far side.
Imagine a sheer rock wall just like the cleft we had come up, but rock
of a darker colour, that surrounded with the same unscaleable sides the
little open space, about two hundred yards in diameter, at whose edge
we were hidden in the valley mouth. On the far side of it, and facing
us, the rock had been carved for some hundred feet across and sixty
feet up into the semblance of a fort gateway.
There was the big central gate, with its massive pillars and great
lintel carved after the fashion of a huge beam. Under this two great
stone doors, embossed with stone spikes and square heads of nails in
stone. On either side a small gate with similar stone-fashioned doors,
each a single leaf, and on these again--worked in stone--the replicas
of iron bar and spike and nail.
The big gate and the two small side doors were again all three enclosed
in a frame fashioned like the projection of a fort, rounded towers on
either side and crenelated bastions above. And in these bastions were
long arrow-slips--real, these seemed, though showing dead black shadows.
On the long stone block that ran under the bastions were carvings
of twisted serpents, whose heads met in a fan in the centre, above
which was the full-rayed sun. This last, I think, had been gilded at
some time, for it was brown and discoloured in places, as if at some
earlier date it had been covered with colour, though now no trace of it
remained.
Below that, and just above the main entrance, was lettering, standing
up clear from the background.
“Can you read that?” I whispered as Forsyth focused his glasses.
“Too far,” he whispered back. “Pass me the telescope.” We had brought
the telescope along with us luckily.
I passed it to him, and he undid the strap, fitted in the high-power
eye-piece, and slid it into position with as much care as though
stalking a markhor. He studied it a minute, and then turned to us.
“_Greek_, and it’s more like the old Greek than what’s on the picture,
though not quite the same,” he said. “It runs like this: ‘To those to
north, the gate of life; but to those to south, the gate of death.’”
“It seems to be that, all right,” whispered back Wrexham; “this is
the south side of the gate, and there are plenty of poor devils who
have looked their last on life the last time they looked up at the
arrow-slits. There’s a man there under the birds--foul beasts--or
rather it _was_ a man some time ago. They pulled his foot up just now
while I was watching through my glasses. He’s not new.”
“Wish I could smoke,” muttered Forsyth; “not safe now, I suppose. This
is foul!”
“Guess I know now why they diverted the water,” said Wrexham. “The
stream probably comes down on the far side of that gateway, and they
diverted it to keep the entrance clear. Any one seen any movement in
front?”
“Not a sign,” said Forsyth. “I’ve been putting my telescope on the
loopholes. I should say they were real, not fakes like the rest of the
carving.”
We lay there for perhaps three quarters of an hour watching, but never
a sign of life in the gateway. At last I said to Wrexham, “Well, what’s
the next move?”
He turned over and slid back down the rock.
“‘When in doubt put out pickets.’ Isn’t that what your frontier experts
say? We must have some one always here in case any one appears. One
of us three with one of the men. I propose that we do three shifts
during the day, say six to ten, ten to two, and two to six. They may
not use this place often; depends on the number of people they have to
kill off, and we don’t want to miss a chance of seeing what sort of
creatures they are. It’s after two o’clock now, and, if you two will
stay here, I’ll scuttle back and get one of the men and then come and
relieve you for the evening watch. Then to-night we can talk over the
future.”
“What’s the programme if anything turns up?” asked Forsyth.
“Question of discretion, I think. Have a good look, and if they’re
peaceful you might venture conversation. If not, don’t, but at least
we shall know something about what they’re like. I’ll be as quick as I
can.” And, picking up his rifle, Wrexham trotted off down the valley.
“Well, of all the d----d family graveyards I’ve ever struck,” said
Forsyth as we settled down to our watch. “I wonder if it is a
graveyard, by the way, in spite of Wrexham’s theory about killing
people. We may have found the back entry into a sort of Parsi Tower of
Silence place, where they put their dead because earth and fire are
sacred elements and mustn’t be contaminated by corpses.”
“By Jove! I never thought of that,” I answered. “It might very well be
that, after all. One can imagine this is rather like what the inside
of one of those places on Malabar Hill would be, for instance. Only,
if the diary is true, it knocks the cemetery theory out of count. And
everything in it has panned out so far.”
“Yes, that’s so. Old Wrexham would have found a nicely laid out corpse
and not a fellow with his hands tied and an arrow in him. Phew! When I
come on a job like this again, I’m going to bring a gas-mask.”
It must have been nearly four o’clock when Wrexham, accompanied by
Payindah, came up behind us. The latter grimaced a bit as he took up
post.
“This is like Farance again, sahib,” he whispered to me. Evidently
Wrexham had told him that it was sentry duty in the front line, and
that he was not to make a noise.
We left them there, and went back down the valley to camp. Wrexham said
he would come back as soon as it was dark.
On arrival in the camp, we found Firoz had some tea ready for us, and
after that we checked through some of our stores, took photos of the
_tangi_ entrance, and did various odd jobs of overhauling.
We also got out the twelve-bore, an old hammer-gun of mine. I thought
if Sadiq was to take a hand in the lookout work he had better be
armed, but it was no good giving him a .303 rifle. But he did know
enough about a hammer-gun to work it, and there are worse things than
a twelve-bore with buckshot at close quarters. I dropped a charging
panther once with that same old gun and a charge of buckshot, and it
stopped him as no high-velocity rifle would ever have done.
It was dark by six, and we expected to see Wrexham by seven. But he did
not come, and about eight o’clock we began to get anxious, and Forsyth
suggested going up the valley to look for him. I counselled waiting a
bit, as I did not see how he could well come to grief. He had Payindah
with him, and both were armed, and nobody could get into the valley
except at each end; of that I was sure. And I was equally sure that
no one could get in at the far end with two shots like Wrexham and
Payindah waiting for them.
But when half-past eight had gone and there was no signs of them, I
began to agree with Forsyth. We had just started into the _tangi_ when
we heard footsteps ahead on the stones, and Wrexham and Payindah loomed
up out of the gloom.
“What happened to you?” I said, as we turned back toward the tent.
“It’s been dark for hours.”
“I know; that’s why I wanted the evening watch. I’ve been doing trench
crawls quite in the old style with Payindah as covering party.”
“What on earth for?”
“Wanted to see what was on the far side of the clearing by the gates.
Shout for food; I must go and wash first. I feel like a cemetery at
present.”
He put down his rifle, and now, by the light of the lanterns, I saw
that he had what looked like a thin bundle of sticks.
“What have you got there?” I asked.
“Show you after dinner,” was all he vouchsafed, as he made for the
stream with a towel and a piece of soap.
During dinner he expanded. Nothing had happened during his watch, but
the moment it got dark he left Payindah in position, and crept off in
the gloom across the clearing. He has no nerves has Wrexham. I should
have wanted very good reasons to take me out among that tangle of
smelly bones. The first thing he had made for was the corpse we had
seen. With the darkness the vultures had left it.
“I crawled up to him first. I was right this afternoon when I said
he wasn’t new. He wasn’t by a long chalk. But in the faint light
I could see that he had had no clothes, and also that his hands
were tied. I expected that, because I’ve got a great respect for my
great-great-uncle’s accuracy after all we’ve found. What I was looking
for was the arrow, which was a messy job to get away. But I did it, and
it’s there. There were two in this bloke as a matter of fact, but one
was broken. I suppose he pitched on it as he fell.
“I did a circular tour after that, and found nothing much except
bones, or what you might call ‘nearly’ bones. Once I caught my hand
in something that I thought was string, and then realized that it
was hair, long hair. They’re not only man’s bones there, unless some
of them wear long hair like Baluchis or Sikhs, which I should think
unlikely. I also picked up another arrow or two.
“It was practically pitch-dark now, but I headed for the gateway. I
crawled up to it d----d quietly, and got right up against the central
door. They’re real gates, all right. I pushed my knife its whole length
into the crack between the two bits of the centre one.
“I glued my ear to the cracks, and listened for quite a long time, but
nothing stirred inside, so far as I could hear.
“I tried the little doors after that, but they seemed to slide in the
rock and fitted jolly tightly. They’re real, all right, too.
“The big one hasn’t been opened for a long time, I fancy, because the
crack was packed with sand and grit. The grooves round the little ones,
on the other hand, seem fairly clear.
“On my way back I stubbed my toe on another arrow sticking up in the
ground, and brought that along, too. There’s no other entrance except
the gate and the valley mouth where we stopped. It’s smooth rock wall
all round like the sides of a well.
“After a last look in case we might see a glimmer of light in the
loopholes, we came back. I’ve got the arrows tied up there. Pass ’em
over, Alec.”
He spread them out on the top of the _yakhdan_[4] that served us as
a table. “I cleaned ’em up a bit on the way down. Look, just as the
diary said, there is writing on them.” He pointed to the stem below the
draggled feathers. “What do you make of it?”
“They’re not the same, anyway. And they’re very indistinct. Here, put
the light nearer,” said I.
“One thing, they’ve all got the same coloured shafts. See, they’re all
black.”
“This one’s different,” said Forsyth. “Look, there’s a red ring round
under the feathers.”
“Well, what’s the writing?” queried Wrexham.
“I’ve got mine,” said I. “It’s ‘Freedom.’”
“And I’ve got mine, too, now,” said Forsyth. “It runs ‘A little time.’
What on earth does that mean?”
“The Lord only knows,” said Wrexham. “Why on earth any one should want
to paint things like that on an arrow beats me. Look at this one.
It’s rather obliterated, an oldish one, I should say. But isn’t that
‘to-morrow’?”
“It is,” said Forsyth. “They’re a queer crowd with their mottoed
arrows. Any one see a glimmering of sense in them? Let me see the other
two.” He looked at them. “Duplicates. See; there’s another ‘Freedom’
one, and this is again, ‘A little time.’ Well, I give it up.”
We did, too.
“Anything else?” I asked Wrexham.
He shook his head. “Nothing else I could see. It was practically dark
in there, just a faint glimmer of moon which hardly did anything except
make the darkness darker. Well, now, about to-morrow. Whatever happens,
we’ll stop here for a day or two. In the first place, we want to know
if there’s anything to be seen, and in the second, we must give the
camels a rest. I propose we watch in turns during the day. I’ll take
first shift with Sadiq, then Forsyth and Firoz can relieve us. That’ll
let Firoz get breakfast, and also be back in time to get evening food.
You, Harry, with Payindah, can relieve Alec and Firoz. That suit every
one?”
We both agreed that it would do.
“I think,” I said, “that we ought to have a sentry all night. You say
you’ve seen nothing, but there may be people moving at night, though
it’s not likely. Still, it’s best to prepare for the worst, even while
firmly expecting the best. If we each do a two-hour shift, it won’t
come very heavy.”
The others agreed it might be sound, so we arranged that we three and
the two sepoys should do two hours each at the entrance to the _tangi_.
Wrexham went on first, followed by Firoz, who was relieved by Forsyth.
Payindah took over from him, and I had the dawn watch. However, nothing
happened all night, and none of us heard a sound.
Shortly after the first dawn, Wrexham and Sadiq started up the _tangi_,
and I went back to my blankets for another hour’s sleep, feeling very
chilled, for the dawn air was biting. About half-past nine, after we
had had breakfast, Forsyth and Firoz started off, and an hour and a
half later Wrexham and Sadiq, who looked rather as if he had been
seeing ghosts, came back with nothing whatever to report.
At a quarter-past one, I turned out Payindah, and the two of us went
off to relieve Forsyth and Firoz at the mouth of the clearing. All was
just as it had been the day before. The same heavy smell, the same
litter of bones, the same filthy vultures, the same frowning, lifeless
gateway in front.
“Cheerio,” said Forsyth as he went off. “Hope you’ll enjoy the family
vault as much as I have. I’ve taken some photos, and I don’t believe
any one ever comes here except, perhaps, once a month or so.”
Payindah and I settled down to our monotonous watch, and nothing moved
before us save the obscene birds.