MORE MYSTERY
Forrester's attention was diverted from the Chinaman by the appearance
of his friends, whom the sound of his lucky shot had drawn through the
copse.
"By Jinks!" Jackson cried as they came up, "you killed him!"
"I never made such a fluke in my life," Forrester replied. "Come and
have a look at him."
They found that the bullet, entering behind the ear, had passed clean
through the animal's brain.
"You _must_ take his tusks," Jackson went on. "It would be simply
idiotic not to carry home the trophies of your first elephant. That's a
job for Sher Jang."
"Where is he?" Forrester asked.
"Ay, where?" Mackenzie echoed. "He's a queer sort of shikari to run
from an elephant."
"We can't fling a stone at him over that," Forrester remarked, with a
laugh. "Let's get back to camp, and send him up. I dare say the men
would relish elephant meat for supper."
As they turned towards the camp, the Chinaman's strange words recurred
to Forrester's mind.
"I say, you fellows, there _is_ something mighty queer about those
Chinamen," he said. "The youngster was running with me, and after I had
shot the elephant he began to tell me things--not in what Bob calls his
snivelling style; he seemed a new man altogether. He said they're not
political refugees at all."
"Eh! I thought as much," Mackenzie put in. "They're criminals."
"I don't know. He said the elder man was a servant in his father's
house, and his father is a mandarin, governor of some place or other.
The servant has some sort of a hold over the fellow. But just as he was
getting to the most interesting part of his story, he suddenly broke
off, whispered that the man was calling him, and looked as terrified as
if he'd seen a ghost. I asked him to go on, but he turned away,
stretched out his hands like that," he illustrated the gesture, "and
began to stumble back like a blind man. Didn't you see him as you came
through the copse?"
"I caught sight of him, but didn't notice him particularly," said
Jackson. "What do you make of it? Is he cracked?"
"Upon my word I should have thought so, only he spoke sensibly enough.
I'll see if I can get more out of him presently. The other man doesn't
know English, so the young one can tell us anything he likes without his
being any the wiser."
On emerging from the copse they saw that the Nagas had collected in a
group up the hill, evidently awaiting assurance that all danger was
past. Hamid Gul was helping Sher Jang to re-erect the flattened tent.
Near by, the elder Chinaman sat cross-legged on a rock, and the younger
stood before him in the attitude of a suppliant.
As the three men approached the tent, Sher Jang came to them.
"I have shot the elephant," Forrester said to him. "Go up presently and
cut him up. We'll keep the tusks. Why didn't you come with me?"
"I watched, sahib," the man replied.
"But watching is not work for a shikari."
"Sometimes it is, sahib. Why did not the stranger yonder run with the
rest?"
"What do you mean?"
"He sat on the rock where he sits now, sahib. The elephant passed
within a few feet of him, but he did not move. He sat there, and his
eyes were fixed like glass. I thought: why is he so still, like a
Buddha in stone? And I stayed to watch him; it seemed good to me,
sahib."
"And what did you see?"
"No more than I have said, sahib, except that presently the young
stranger came back like a blind beggar feeling his way through the
bazar. Then the elder man smiled, and his smile was like the grin of a
tiger. That is all, sahib."
"Well, get the tent up. Is the pole broken?"
"We have spliced it with rope, sahib. That simpleton," indicating Hamid,
"wrung his hands and declared the pole useless, but I showed him the
way."
The three men went on towards the Chinamen. At their approach the elder
man rapped out a few words in a stern and peremptory tone to his
companion, then rose to his feet with a respectful salutation to the
white men. Forrester acknowledged it, and, turning at once to the
younger man, asked him to continue the story he had so abruptly broken
off. A pitiful look of distress came into the lad's eyes; his lips
moved, but not a sound issued from them.
"Come, there's nothing to be afraid of," Forrester urged. "You may
speak quite freely."
"Forget what I said, sir," the lad muttered. "It was false. I beg you
think no evil of my kind friend."
His voice hardly rose above a whisper; every word seemed to be wrung
from him.
"But surely there is something in it," Forrester persisted. "Was your
friend a servant in your father's house? You did not invent that?"
The lad cast a look at his companion that might have been interpreted as
terror or anxiety. The elder man did not return the glance, but stood
beside him with a mien suggesting patient forbearance or even absence of
mind.
"I do not know what I said," the young man replied slowly, like one
talking in his sleep. "I was excited after the great peril I had
escaped, my mind was troubled, and my tongue spoke foolishness. Pardon
me, I pray you."
Seeing that nothing more was to be got out of the lad, Forrester turned
away with his companions.
"There's some mystery here," he said, when they were out of earshot.
"What's the matter, Bob?" he asked, noticing a strange look in Jackson's
face.
"I don't know: I feel as if this were all a dream--a queer sort of fuzzy
feeling in my head."
"I feel puzzled enough," said Forrester. "Why should the fellow make out
that he was telling lies? It looks as if he's mortally afraid of the
other man, but I can't make it out, for the chap doesn't know English,
and wouldn't understand, whatever was said. What do you say, Mac?"
"There's no call to say anything," Mackenzie replied.
"There's the canny Scot," Forrester said with a laugh. "You'll think
all the more, I suppose."
"I'm thinking they're worth watching," was Mackenzie's answer.
Next morning a slight change was made in the order of the march.
Mackenzie asked Jackson to go ahead with Forrester, while he brought up
the rear.
"I don't mind, but what's your reason?" Jackson asked.
"I just wish to contemplate the Chinkies from the rear," was the reply.
Whatever the result of his examination was, Mackenzie said nothing about
it.
Towards mid-day the snow-clad peaks of a mountain range opened up ahead
of the party; although in the clear atmosphere they seemed to be only a
few miles distant, the nearest was probably fifty miles away. The
intervening country was a series of undulations, bare stretches of rock,
here and there deeply fissured, alternating with thickly wooded valleys
and dense jungle. Ever since they left Dibrugarh the party had been
steadily climbing, and the higher they rose, the less their progress was
impeded by undergrowth; and the lower temperature made their exertions
less fatiguing. But the white men were more and more impressed with the
courage and endurance which Captain Redfern had shown in traversing this
wild region.
They kept a keen look-out for hills answering to the names he had given
them, for they had no other landmarks by which to direct their course.
It was impossible to believe that they were peaks of the snowy range so
far ahead: four days would not have sufficed for the covering of so
immense a distance. Forrester was already feeling very doubtful of the
possibility of distinguishing the hills, when Sher Jang suddenly pointed
to the eastern end of a smaller range that crossed the prospect perhaps
twenty miles away. It was a precipice falling away abruptly to the
general level from a height of two or three thousand feet, and the
contours of the scarp bore a strong resemblance to a monkey's face.
Forrester swept his eyes along the range from east to west, and gave a
cry of delight when he distinguished at the western end a rounded
eminence shaped like the hump of a camel.
"We're on the right track," he said. "We shall have to round that range,
then cut away northward to find the falls. Probably they won't be so
easy to discover."
"It will be to-morrow night before we reach the Camel's Hump," said
Jackson. "The falls can't be more than a day's march farther, or Redfern
couldn't possibly have done it in four days."
"We go slower than he did, owing to our baggage. If we only came across
some natives we might ask them the way, but the whole country seems to
be uninhabited."
When they halted to form camp, Mackenzie said:--
"Just now I caught the young Chinky talking to Hamid Gul, and I stopped
it. Hamid told me the fellow asked where we were going, and why we
didn't look for game. I got up to them in time to prevent the answer."
"They were very natural questions," said Forrester. "We are supposed to
be a hunting party."
"Ay, and the Chinkies are supposed to be political refugees, but I have
my doubts. I would like well to see the back of them. Have you had any
return of that fuzzy feeling, Bob?"
"No. You haven't had it?"
"Not I. What about you, Dick?"
"D'you think it's catching?" Forrester asked with a laugh. "My head's
perfectly clear, thanks."
But a couple of hours later, when all three were sitting smoking at the
door of the tent, Forrester suddenly stood up, looked round him with an
air of perplexity, then took a step in the direction of the spot where
the Chinamen were reclining. Mackenzie grasped his coat, and pulled him
back into his seat.
"What are ye about, man?" he asked.
For a moment Forrester was silent, then he said:--
"It's very queer. I felt as if I must walk over there, goodness knows
what for. The feeling has gone now. What's wrong with me?"
"Malaria, as like as not," said Mackenzie. "Here, take a stiff dose of
quinine. We don't want an invalid on our hands."
Forrester had no return of his strange vertigo, if such it were, and
after supper he laughed at himself for his momentary weakness.
By the afternoon of the next day they had worked round the Camel's Hump,
and, turning northwards, saw stretched out before them a tract of dense
scrub, beyond which in the far distance towered the peaks of the snowy
range. They decided to continue their march until sunset, hoping that
somewhere amid the scrub a suitable camping place would offer itself.
So difficult was the passage now, that the party became more split up
than had hitherto been the case; but there was no danger of anyone
straying, since the order had been given that those behind should not
turn aside from the tracks of those who had preceded them.
In course of time Sher Jang reached a fairly open space, and a halt was
called. The Nagas straggled in, Hamid Gul followed them and Mackenzie
appeared last of all. For a few moments his companions were too much
occupied to notice a diminution of their party, but presently Forrester,
after a look around, cried:--
"Where are the Chinkies, Mac?"
"Aren't they here?" Mackenzie asked in return.
"You ought to know--you were contemplating their backs," Jackson
remarked.
There was no sign of them. Forrester called up their Naga carriers, and
Sher Jang questioned them. The men could give no information. Once or
twice they had lost sight of the Chinamen as the scrub hid them from
view. They had thought nothing of that.
The three white men looked at each other.