Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: "STOP! STOP!" HE CRIED, RAISING HIS HANDS ALOFT. _See
page_ 154.]
THE OLD MAN
OF THE MOUNTAIN
BY
HERBERT STRANG
_FRONTISPIECE IN COLOUR BY CYRUS CUNEO_
_BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS BY RENE BULL_
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
_First printed in 1916_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD.,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
OUT OF THE NIGHT
CHAPTER II
A COUNCIL OF WAR
CHAPTER III
THE REFUGEES
CHAPTER IV
MORE MYSTERY
CHAPTER V
THE EYE
CHAPTER VI
THE IRON SHUTTER
CHAPTER VII
EUTHANASIA
CHAPTER VIII
THE LAW OF THE EYE
CHAPTER IX
THE MONSTER ON THE WALL
CHAPTER X
THE UNDERWORLD
CHAPTER XI
ALCHEMY
CHAPTER XII
EXPLANATIONS AND DISCOVERIES
CHAPTER XIII
A DRY BONE
CHAPTER XIV
HEAD COOK
CHAPTER XV
THE MOLES
CHAPTER XVI
THE HOLE IN THE WALL
CHAPTER XVII
THE CARNIVORE
CHAPTER XVIII
UNDER THE STARS
CHAPTER XIX
THE FIGHT IN THE PAGODA
CHAPTER XX
BURSTING THE BONDS
CHAPTER XXI
DOOM
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_COLOUR FRONTISPIECE BY CYRUS CUNEO_
"STOP! STOP!" HE CRIED, RAISING HIS HANDS ALOFT (See p. 154)
_Frontispiece_
LINE DRAWINGS BY RENE BULL
THE MAN DANGLED A FOUR-INCH CENTIPEDE BEFORE HIS EYES. "IT HAD CHEEK TO
CRAWL UP HONOURABLE BACK!" HE SAID
AS THEY APPROACHED, THE MAN TRIED TO RISE, UTTERED A FAINT CRY, THEN
FELL FORWARD WITH A MOAN
THE TERRIFIED CHINAMAN RACED UP THE HILL, THE ELEPHANT, SCREAMING
SHRILLY, CLOSE BEHIND HIM. FORRESTER THREW UP HIS RIFLE AND FIRED, BUT
ON THAT TOUGH HIDE THE BULLET HAD NO EFFECT
AS THE OLD MAN WAS LED FORWARD, THE NAGAS POINTED TO HIM WITH WILD
EXCITEMENT, CONTINUALLY EXCLAIMING, "THE EYE! THE EYE!"
THE FLAME GLINTED FOR A MOMENT ON A DARK FACE PEERING DOWN UPON THEM
OVER THE TOP OF THE SHUTTER
A FEW YARDS AWAY, THEY CAME UPON HAMID GUL, LYING WITH RELAXED LIMBS ON
THE GROUND
HIS LIPS MOVED, AND IN SPITE OF THEMSELVES THEY STARTED AS THEY HEARD
HIS FIRST WORDS: "WHAT BRINGS YOU STRIPLINGS HERE?"
"IT SAVES FROM THE EYE, SAHIB"
THE MUTE IMMOBILE FIGURE MERELY RAISED AN ARM AND POINTED DOWNWARDS AT
THE STAIRWAY
A SHAFT OF PALE GREEN LIGHT, BLINDING IN ITS BRILLIANCE, SHOT UP TO THE
ROOF
FORRESTER MET HIM AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE CAVE
HE SHOOK IT: SOME OF THE POWDERY CONTENTS FELL TO THE FLOOR
MACKENZIE MET HAMID IN THE ENCLOSURE WHERE HE WAS DIGGING TRUFFLES
ON LIFTING HIMSELF, HE SAW HAMID CROUCHING BENEATH THE SHELTER OF THE
EMBANKMENT
THERE HE SAW THE PRIEST, PEERING UP TOWARDS THE HOLE IN WHICH THE LADDER
RESTED
A RUSH OF HOT BLOOD MADE HIM DIZZY, AND HE ALMOST SWOONED WHEN HE HEARD
A WHISPER IN OLD MAC'S WELL-KNOWN VOICE
HE SPRANG TO THE WALL, AND RAISED HIS SPEAR TO MEET THE EXPECTED ATTACK
FORRESTER STOOD IN THE DOORWAY, IN FULL VIEW OF THE PRIESTS
TAILPIECE
CHAPTER I
OUT OF THE NIGHT
"Jolly good curry!" said Bob Jackson, looking up over his spoon. "What
do you say, Mac?"
"Ay," responded Alan Mackenzie, in a drawl. He was a man of few words.
"Your Hamid is certainly a treasure of a cook," Jackson went on. "Has
he done you yet, Dick?"
"Probably, but I haven't found him out, so it doesn't matter," answered
Dick Forrester, the third of the party. "It shows you!"
"What?" asked Mackenzie, who always required statements in full.
"Why, you owl, that it's sometimes better to rely on your instincts than
on the advice of kind busybodies. When I came through Calcutta,
everybody advised me to wait till I got up country before engaging a
man, told me the casuals of the Calcutta hotels were sharks ready to
prey on any griffin, and so on. But I came across Hamid, liked the look
of him----"
"You've a rummy taste in looks," interposed Jackson, with a laugh.
"What with his crooked nose and his one eye, he can't pass for a
beauty."
"And that's a fact," said Mackenzie, solemnly.
"Well, anyway, I took him on, and that's three years ago, and I've had
no reason to regret it."
"He's a champion cook, at any rate," said Jackson.
"He is that," added Mackenzie, with emphasis.
At this moment the man in question entered with the next course, and
further discussion of his qualities was impossible.
The three young fellows were taking their evening meal in a tent pitched
near the bank of a stream some twenty miles north of Dibrugarh on the
Brahmaputra. They were almost the same age, Mackenzie, the eldest,
having recently completed his twenty-first year. Three years before,
they had met as strangers on the deck of the liner conveying them to
Calcutta, and had struck up one of those shipboard friendships which
seldom last. In their case it was otherwise. All three were learning
tea-planting in Assam, and, as the "gardens" on which they were
severally engaged were many miles apart, their opportunities of
foregathering were not very frequent. But they met as often as they
could for sport in the form of snipe-shooting, boar-hunting, and other
avocations that diversify the monotony of a planter's life, and they had
become good comrades, knit one to another closely by the bonds of mutual
trust and knowledge.
Three months' leave was now due to each of them. Forrester intended to
go home: the others had arranged to make an extended tour in Northern
India, and see Delhi, Lahore, and other cities of old renown. But it
happened that, a few days before they were to start, they heard that a
tiger had been doing mischief in a village some thirty miles from their
stations. Fired by the news, they got permission from their managers to
make a dash for the scene. Elephants were out of the question. They
made the journey on foot, with four coolies to carry the baggage,
Forrester's bearer, Hamid Gul--the man whom he had picked up in
Calcutta, and who added to his many accomplishments a considerable skill
in cooking--and a veteran shikari named Sher Jang, whose services they
had often employed in their sporting expeditions. Sher Jang, with the
aid of local talent, tracked the animal to its haunt in the jungle;
after a few crowded moments it fell to the white men's guns; and its
skin, already stripped from the carcase by the deft shikari, now lay
stretched on the sward near the tent.
"Excuse, sahib!" said Hamid Gul, as he passed behind his master's chair
after handing round the cutlets. He had been so long accustomed to use
English of a sort with globe-trotters that he seldom spoke Hindustani
with his master, like the average native servant.
"What is it?" asked Forrester.
The man's reply was to dangle a four-inch centipede before his eyes.
"It had cheek to crawl up honourable back, sahib," he explained.
[Illustration: The man dangled a four-inch centipede before his eyes.
"It had cheek to crawl up honourable back!" he said.]
"Kill the beast!" said Forrester.
Hamid dropped the centipede, settled it with his heel, and moved
silently out of the tent.
"I can stand mosquitoes, but centipedes make me squirm," said Forrester.
"If you know any sound more horrid than the plop of a centipede falling
from the roof to the floor, tell me."
"To me the drone of a mosquito is ten times worse," said Jackson.
"Apparently they don't like you, but they can never have enough of me,
the brutes!"
"Soft and sweet!" murmured Mackenzie.
"What's the tiger-skin worth, Dick?" asked Jackson, ignoring the
Scotsman's jibe.
"I don't know; but a goodish sum, probably. A man-eater's skin is
usually mangy, but old Sher says that this is in good condition. Look
out, Bob!"
Jackson ducked his head, already warned by a booming noise like the hum
of an aeroplane engine that a beetle had flown in at the door. They
watched the insect whirling about, until it came blindly in contact with
the tent pole, and fell to the ground. There it lay on its back,
spinning round and round with ever-increasing uproar, until Mackenzie
picked it up, and flung it out--into the face of Hamid, approaching with
the dessert.
The three men soon finished their meal, and, taking their camp chairs,
went out into the open. When they were seated, Hamid came up with a
brass salver filled with glowing charcoal, and presented to each a pair
of small silver tongs with which to lift a ruddy chip for lighting his
pipe. He prided himself on keeping up old customs. Then, with a
good-night salaam, he passed into the tent to clear away.
It was a glorious night. The candlelight from the open tent paled in
the rays of the moon, soaring aloft in a cloudless sky. A faint breeze
stirred the feathery tops of the jungle grass, and ruffled the glassy
surface of the rivulet. From the distance came the piercing lugubrious
notes of bull frogs; the air sang with the hum of innumerable insects;
ever and anon a bat flitted past like a shadow. At one side of the
tent, on an upturned tub, sat Sher Jang, the shikari, smoking a long
pipe, and gazing solemnly into space. A few yards away the coolies
squatted round their camp fire, replete from their unaccustomed meal of
tiger's meat, which they had devoured in the joyous belief that it would
endue them with a ferocious courage.
The white men puffed away in silence, thinking over the day's sport,
dreaming, maybe, of the anticipated delights of the approaching holiday.
Hamid noiselessly finished his work, and then crouched with his pipe on
a mat by the tent, studiously ignoring Sher Jang, as a cat ignores the
dog on the hearthrug.
Thus half an hour passed. Then Mackenzie's cutty dropped from his
mouth, and he snored.
"Hullo, Mac, it's time you turned in!" said Forrester, shaking him by
the arm.
"Ay," said Mackenzie, sleepily. "Where's my pipe?"
"At your feet."
The Scotsman picked it up, stood erect, yawned, stretched himself, then
suddenly dropped his hands to his sides.
"What's yon?" he said.
His companions sprang up. They, too, had heard a rustling in the jungle
close at hand--a sound louder than the swish and scrape of the grass in
the breeze. Sher Jang came up to them silently, and handed them their
rifles. They heard the sound again, and stood in line, peering into the
thicket up-stream, their fingers on the triggers.
The rustle ceased.
"Is it a tiger?" Forrester whispered in Hindustani to the shikari.
"No, sahib; tigers make no noise. It may be a bear."
"Or a native?" suggested Jackson.
"No, sahib; _badmashes_ might prowl at dawn, but not in the night. I
think it is a bear."
The rustle recommenced, and drew nearer and nearer. The white men
waited with bated breath, ready to fire the instant the beast showed
itself. Hamid had not moved; he was no sportsman, and trusted the
sahibs to preserve him from harm. The coolies had run behind the tent.
Moment by moment the sound grew louder. Sher Jang gazed impassively
into the jungle; he was too old a hand to show any feeling; but the
young planters were tingling with excitement, drew quick breaths, and
itched for action. All at once the long grass parted, and in the
flicker of the firelight they saw a form emerge.
"Great Scott!" ejaculated Forrester.
They lowered their rifles, and stood for a moment in hesitation. Then
all three hastened forward, wondering, alarmed. The form was that of a
man, clothed in European style. But he was not walking erect, as men
walk. He was creeping slowly, painfully, on all fours. Seeing them
advancing towards him, he uttered a faint cry and tried to rise, only to
fall forward with a moan. They came to him, and lifted him to his feet.
[Illustration: As they approached, the man tried to rise, uttered a
faint cry, then fell forward with a moan.]
"Pull--yourself--together--man!" he murmured, brokenly.
"Pull--yourself--together!"
"What is it, sir?" asked Forrester, feeling the man shiver in his sodden
clothes.
"Hoots, man!" exclaimed Mackenzie, "get him to the fire. He's fair
wandered."
Acting on this practical suggestion, they led the stranger to the fire.
The shikari meanwhile remained fixedly on guard, his eyes never quitting
the jungle, his ears alert for further sounds.
"A blanket, Hamid!" Forrester shouted.
The man brought a blanket from the tent, and in this they rolled the
stranger, setting him as close to the fire as they dared. Mackenzie
unscrewed a brandy flask, and poured a little of the liquor between his
lips. He gasped and lay quite still, his eyes staring without seeing.
Every now and then his body twitched convulsively.
"The fever, sahib," said Hamid.
"A bad attack, too," said Forrester. "Quick! A rubber sheet, a pillow,
and my bottle of quinine."
In a few minutes the stranger had been dosed with quinine and made
comfortable. As yet he was unable to talk. Enveloped in the blanket,
only his face was now visible--the face of a man about thirty-five,
refined of feature, with thick brown beard and moustache, matted with
damp and dirt. The sun-tanned cheeks were sunken, the eyes within their
hollow sockets blazed with the fire of fever. They watched him
anxiously, their concern for his pitiable condition mingled with
curiosity. How came this man to be wandering alone and unarmed in the
jungle?
"Poor body!" muttered Mackenzie. "Did you notice his hands?"
"They shook like a leaf," replied Jackson.
"Ay, but the blood!"
"Was there blood on them?"
"Ay, on the palms."
"Torn by thorns as he crawled along," said Forrester. "He saw the glow
of our fire, no doubt, and staggered towards it; you remember he said,
'Pull yourself together!' He has been pulling himself together for
days, by the look of him--and it came to crawling at the last! No sign
of pursuit, Sher?" he asked, as the shikari came up.
"No, sahib, there is no sound."
"Give him another dose," said Mackenzie.
After the brandy and quinine had been poured between the sick man's
lips, his eyes closed and he seemed to sleep.
"We must take turns to watch him during the night," said Forrester, "and
get him to my bungalow as quickly as we can to-morrow."
"If he's not away!" said Mackenzie, gloomily. "I'm no liking the looks
of him."
"We'll hope for the best. Malcolm has pulled through many bad cases.
We'll dose him every hour or so. I'll take first watch; you fellows
turn in. I'll call one of you in three hours."
Soon the camp slept; only Forrester remained awake. He sat beside the
invalid, bending forward to catch any sign of change upon the
fever-flushed countenance. He rose once to replenish the fire, and once
to brush away a small beetle that was crawling on the blanket. The
eerie wail of a jackal broke in presently upon the lesser sounds of the
night; but that was so commonly heard in Assam that Forrester scarcely
noticed it.
In an hour he repeated the dose of medicine, and started involuntarily
when the sick man, opening his eyes, uttered a name.
"Beresford!"
Feeble as his voice was, there was in it a note of eagerness and relief.
For a moment Forrester thought of encouraging the delusion, but it
flashed upon him that the man might not have been alone after all. Was
his companion lost in the jungle? Leaning forward, he said, quietly:--
"My name is not Beresford, it is Forrester."
At first the man appeared not to have understood, but after a few
moments a look of dread gathered in his eyes, and he struggled to get
up. Gently pressing him down Forrester said, in slow, clear tones:--
"You are with friends. You came towards our light, you remember. Won't
you lie still and collect yourself, and tell me about it? 'Pull
yourself together,' you know?"
"Pull yourself together!" the man repeated, like a child.
He lay back and closed his eyes, reopening them presently and turning
them upon the fire.
"A light!" he muttered, eagerly. "My last chance! Pull yourself--ah!
they've got him!" He shuddered, then with a sudden lapse into partial
consciousness, he went on: "There's no time to lose. They've got him!
Don't you hear? They've got him! The shutter! I came on for help. One
company will do it; but hurry them, for heaven's sake! Take your hand
off me, you hound!"
Then followed a bewildering jumble of Hindustani and a language of which
Forrester was ignorant. Taking a cup, Forrester hastened to the stream,
filled it with water, and, returning, bathed the stranger's burning
brow. The raving ceased. After a brief silence the weak voice again
spoke coherently, though the speaker, as the words showed, did not
realise his position.
"Don't wait for me. In the hills--four days; nights are better; you
won't meet men by night. But march day and night; there's no time to
lose, I tell you."
"How shall we find the way?" asked Forrester, in the quiet tone he had
employed before.
"I'll show you," said the man, eagerly, trying again to rise. "No, I'm
dead beat," he added, falling back. "I'll follow you up. I made a
jotting; you can't miss them. What are you waiting for?"
"The paper. Where is it?"
The man wriggled within the blanket, and a look of agony distorted his
face as he felt his helplessness.
Forrester quickly loosed the wrappings.
"Which pocket?" he asked.
But a stream of incoherent babbling poured from the exhausted man's
lips. He lay passive as Forrester felt in his breast pocket and drew
forth a small leather case. Opening it, Forrester discovered a folded
paper lying loose. He spread it out, and saw what at first seemed to be
nothing but a smudge. But when he held the paper nearer to the
firelight, he distinguished a design. It was disappointing, puzzling.
A pencil line slanted from the left-hand top corner to the middle of the
sheet, then branched horizontally to the right. The pencil marks had
rubbed and smudged in the man's pocket, but looking at them closely,
Forrester made out a few words in addition to the line. At the angle he
read "Camel's Hump," at the end on the right, "Monkey Face." There was
nothing more.