THE IRON SHUTTER
"You come with us, Sher Jang?" asked Forrester.
"Sahib, I am your servant," the man replied, simply.
"And you, Hamid?"
The cook pulled nervously at his beard, turned up the whites of his
eyes, shot a savage glance at the shikari, then said in a voice which
all his resolution could not prevent from trembling:--
"Sir, I step out like a man. One volunteer is worth tons of pressed
beef."
"Which means that without these idiotic carriers we shall have to travel
light," said Forrester. "Just put up enough food for two days; we'll
carry it somehow among us. We must leave the tent with the Nagas. They
had better remain here until we return."
"Can't we take more grub?" Jackson asked.
"If we don't do it in two days we shan't do it at all, so it's useless
overloading ourselves. We risk losing the tent, of course, but that
can't be helped."
Their preparations were quickly made, and they set off while the morning
was still young. Hamid Gul carried his cooking utensils, plates, knives
and forks, and other articles; Sher Jang shouldered some blankets, in
which he had wrapped a quantity of ammunition, and the three white men
divided the food among them. Each of the party had his rifle slung
behind his back.
Their guides, a dozen of the villagers, harnessed themselves to tree
trunks, which they dragged through the wood and down the rocky slope
beyond. It had been arranged before they started that the white men
should follow at some little distance, so that the natives, in case of
need, might repudiate knowledge of them, and escape all responsibility
for bringing the strangers to the neighbourhood of the falls.
At the foot of the slope they came to a rivulet. Without the Naga
head-man Sher Jang could not hold any oral communication with the
villagers; but they managed to convey to him the information that the
smaller falls of which they had spoken were a little way down-stream;
the larger falls lay a much greater distance in the other direction.
Some minutes were occupied in forming the balks of timber into a raft.
When this was done half the party of natives swam to the farther bank,
carrying ropes attached to the raft, and then the two sections hauled
their wares against the sluggish current, tramping along towpaths which
must have been trodden by several generations of their forebears.
The view ahead was shut out by the trees that grew almost to the edge of
the winding stream; but it was not long before the white men, walking
about half a mile behind their guides, were aware of a dull rumble that
grew louder moment by moment as they proceeded.
"That's the fall!" cried Jackson. "We can't be far away."
"A pretty big one, by the sound of it," Forrester remarked. "Small
falls make a sort of crash--this is more of a roar. Perhaps we shall
find a second Niagara."
"I'm fair flummoxed!" said Mackenzie, inconsequently.
"What about?"
"About yon Eye. You see, these folks were terrified by the storm: 'He
speaks,' they said. Well, that was the thunder. By what the
philosophers call parity of reasoning, the Eye is lightning. Well,
lightning can take off a man's arm, and strike him daft or dead; but
what about the little men up yonder? Are they scunnered at the Eye,
too? What has the Eye to do with Beresford?"
"Trust a Scot to ask questions!" said Jackson. "But you won't reason it
out, Mac; you'll just have to wait, like an Englishman."
"Och, man! I want facts. Give me facts, and I'll draw my own
conclusions."
"Well, this row is a fact, and a stunning one," said Forrester. "It's
time we caught sight of the fall that's making such an uproar."
But they marched on for a couple of hours without seeing any sight of a
waterfall, or even any quickening of the current. The noise had
gradually increased to a stupendous din, and thoughts of their ultimate
errand were overborne by excitement as they looked eagerly ahead for the
mass of falling water. At last the belt of forest land came to an
abrupt end, and they gazed forth over a wide rocky plain, in the midst
of which was an immense lake that appeared to be considerably below the
level of the surrounding country. From it ran the stream whose course
they were following, and a larger stream far to the right.
Beyond the plain rose the mountains, towering up peak behind peak to the
summits of the snowy range in the remote distance. The three men halted
involuntarily, struck both by the majesty of the scene and by the
deafening roar which almost drowned their voices.
"Man, it's grand!" Mackenzie shouted.
"But where is it?" Forrester bawled in his ear.
They looked all around, but saw nothing to account for the thunderous
noise. The sky was overcast, and a layer of mist obscured the lower
foothills, though the heights beyond heaved their grey masses in clear
undulations miles above. As they stood, a sunbeam stole through the
clouds, and a rainbow flung its gay arch across the plain directly ahead
of them.
"There's rain over there," said Jackson, at the top of his voice.
"Only mist!" Forrester cried in reply.
For a few moments they gazed mutely upon a sight that never loses its
interest and wonder. Then Mackenzie smote his thigh, and cried like one
in ecstasy:--
"Man--it's the Fall!"
The mist was rolling away as the sun gathered strength, yet the rainbow
did not fade, but shone more brightly than ever over a space of perhaps
one-eighth of a mile. And then the onlookers saw that what had hitherto
seemed to them a part of the bank of mist was in reality a gigantic
torrent of water, mingled with spray thrown up hundreds of feet from the
unseen bottom. They watched it in silent awe. The villagers had
described it as falling from the clouds into the depths of the earth.
Their words appeared to be literally true. An eighth of a mile in
width, the torrent poured over the edge of a tableland--a single huge
step in the ascent to the plateaux of Tibet. Mist still hung above it,
the enormous screen of spray concealed its lower part, and at the
distance they still were from it the spectators could only just
distinguish the movement of the mighty volume of water.
It had been arranged with their guides that they should remain on the
spot where they first caught sight of the fall until the men had
delivered their timber and returned. The delay gave them an opportunity
of taking a meal. As they ate they amused themselves by guessing at the
height of the fall. Forrester suggested that it was as high as St.
Paul's; Jackson thought this estimate too low; and Mackenzie astonished
the others by declaring that he wouldna wonder but it was fully as high
as Ben Lomond.
It was three hours before the natives returned, and the white men,
setting forth impatiently at length to skirt the lake and reach the foot
of the hills on the western side of the fall, found to their amazement
that they had nearly two miles to go before they came level with it.
Then they were struck dumb by the full magnificence of the scene. The
spray itself, rising like steam from a gigantic cauldron, attained to
the height of St. Paul's. The two Englishmen were prepared to admit
that the top of the fall was even higher than the summit of Ben-Lomond;
but Mackenzie's calculating eye gauged more nearly to the truth.
"I would say it's two thousand feet, or a wee bit more," he said, and
his friends laughed at the incongruous use of the word "wee" in such a
connection.
They found that the scarp over which the torrent poured extended for
miles on each side. It appeared to be almost perpendicular, though away
to the left it became more broken. On the right, except for one or two
steep and rugged spurs, it was one continuous wall of rock.
The path they had followed round the western shore of the lake brought
them to a small wooden bridge spanning an inflowing stream. It somewhat
resembled the bridge delineated in the well-known willow pattern. To
this the raft of timber was moored. Evidently it was part of the plan
for maintaining the secrecy of the hill community that purchasers and
vendors should come into contact as seldom as possible; or perhaps the
woodcutters' own fear of the Eye kept them from approaching nearer to
the dwelling of the "little men." No doubt the timber would presently
be fetched, and drawn along the stream into the lake, and thence to its
destination.
The three men looked around for some signs of human habitation, but
discovered none. A rough roadway, however, led from the bridge along
the base of the precipice towards the fall, which appeared to be about
half a mile distant. After a brief consultation they decided to make
their way along this road. To be prepared for possible danger they
first laid down their impedimenta and unslung their rifles. Then they
set off, Forrester leading with the shikari.
After a while the path rose somewhat steeply on the face of the cliff,
and they soon saw that it passed underneath the fall itself, the torrent
of water forming a gigantic arch. When they arrived beneath this they
found themselves in a dim twilight, the glassy sea-green surface of the
watery arch reflecting a pallid hue upon their faces. They were
perfectly dry, except for some flecks of spray dashed upon them from the
base of the fall. At this spot they were three or four hundred feet
above the surface of the lake, which boiled and foamed like an angry sea
immensely magnified. The din was terrific; even the loudest shout would
scarcely have been audible.
At their first entrance into this segmental tunnel Hamid Gul shrank
back, appalled by the noise, the falling water, and the immense,
tattered sheet of spray that rose from the seething cauldron hundreds of
feet below. But seeing that his employers were pressing forward he
pulled himself together, and hurried on close at Mackenzie's heels. The
width of the path had diminished to a bare three feet, and as the party
crept along it they instinctively clung to the wall of rock on their
left hand. A strange attraction was exercised by the smooth arch of
falling water; on their right, inducing the same kind of vertigo which
most people experience when looking down from giddy heights.
So they passed through the furlong of tunnel. A hundred yards or so
beyond the eastern end the path began to slope downwards as steeply as
it had ascended on the other side, and within a short space the party
found themselves once more almost on a level with the lake. Then the
path came to an abrupt end, disappearing into the water that washed the
base of the perpendicular cliff. Here they halted; it seemed that they
could go no farther, that they must retrace their steps and explore in
the other direction.
They could not make themselves heard one by another, but Mackenzie
signed to the rest to stand fast; he remembered that beyond the bridge
behind them there was no road except that which skirted the lake, and
drew the reasonable inference that the path by which they had come must,
after all, lead somewhere. It occurred to him to test the depth of the
water. Finding that it was no more than two feet, he took off his
boots, rolled up his putties, and started to wade. In a few seconds he
turned and beckoned to his companions. They followed his example, and
on joining him found that he had come to a sharp corner of the
precipice, which was cut at this point by an extraordinary rift. At the
entrance it was perhaps forty feet wide. The sides were straighter and
even nearer to the perpendicular than the face of the cliff bordering
the lake. They gazed upwards in astonishment at the immense height.
The top was so far above them that the sides seemed almost to touch,
leaving only a narrow slit. Peering into the cleft, they saw nothing
beyond the first hundred yards or so. Little light filtered through the
opening at the top, and the floor of the rift was illuminated more and
more faintly as the sides converged.
Our party stood there in mute amazement. Mackenzie was the only one of
them who knew anything of geology: a Scot always knows something of
everything; and he surmised that the rift was the result of some Titanic
disruption of the earth in an age long past. It was as though the mass
of solid rock had been rent asunder by a gigantic wedge, impelled by a
Cyclopean hammer--such a hammer as Thor wields in the Norse myths.
It seemed of little use to enter the rift. No mortal men could make
that their abode. But on passing beyond the entrance they soon found
that further passage along the edge of the lake was impossible. The
water still came right up to the face of the cliff, and the pathway--if
it was a pathway--which they were treading sank ever deeper beneath the
surface. There was nothing for it but to hark back, unless they were
prepared to swim. Jackson suggested that possibly some side path
branched from the rift, leading by a steep zigzag ascent to the summit
of this strange precipice.
Retracing their steps accordingly, they turned into the rift, donned
their boots, and marched forward. The floor sloped gently upwards, the
walls converged until the space between them was barely half what it had
been at the entrance. Pressing on, they became aware that the rift was
not straight, as they had believed. A sharp bend brought them upon a
sight that caused them to halt, peer nervously upward and in front, and
tighten their grasp upon their rifles. Three canoes lay tandem against
the right-hand side of the rift--harmless objects in themselves, but
rather perturbing as indications that men were somewhere in the
neighbourhood. They were obviously intended for transporting persons
across the lake without the necessity of making the passage under the
fall. In the dim light they would scarcely have been visible from the
entrance, even had the rift been straight; the bend effectually
concealed them.
Once more the party halted. Shut in as they were by the high, close
walls, the sound of the waterfall came to them now only as a dull
rumble; but when they spoke it was in whispers. Apart from the risk of
being heard by an unseen enemy, there was an atmosphere of mystery and
awesomeness that weighed oppressively on their minds.
"What are we to do?" asked Jackson.
"Go on!" Forrester replied, firmly. "We can hardly be seen. The sides
are so smooth and straight that no one could perch anywhere to molest
us, except at the corners. We must be on our guard there."
"But surely no one can live here! Nothing could grow; there doesn't
even appear to be moss on the rock, and the air's as stuffy as in a
cave."
"Man, don't argufy!" said Mackenzie. "Straight ahead!"
They continued their course. Every now and again the rift turned
sharply to one side or the other, and the smooth floor, unimpeded by
loose rocks or boulders, always ascended, more and more steeply as they
advanced. Strangely enough, the higher they went the stuffier the air
became, and the deeper their sense of oppression, or rather, perhaps, of
nervous strain. Mackenzie, who had once been down a coal-mine in
Lanarkshire, suspected the presence of poisonous gases.
"There can't be fire-damp," he murmured, "but it may be carbonic acid.
Bide a wee while I strike a match."
But this fear was dispelled when the flame burned brightly for a second
or two. He extinguished it abruptly.
"Hoots! I'm an ass!" he said. "Someone may have seen the light; and if
there are men about, I'd rather see them first than they us."
"My skin is tingling just as if I'd got a grip of the terminals of a
battery," Jackson remarked.
"It's uncanny, and that's a fact," said Mackenzie. "But look, man!
What's that?" he added, in a startled whisper, clutching Forrester by
the arm with one hand, and pointing ahead with the other.
His comrades closed upon him, and peered into the semi-obscurity, their
heads almost touching. A little to one side of them stood Sher Jang,
impassive as ever, though he held his rifle with both hands, and his
muscles were as taut as a bent spring. Behind, Hamid Gul's one eye
bulged from its socket as he tiptoed to look over his master's shoulder.
A few yards to their front the rift made one of the sudden bends that
formed such strange features of its course. It struck to the right at a
sharp angle, so that the wall which had been on their left hand became
almost perpendicular to their line of march. On its smooth rocky face,
some eighteen or twenty feet above the ground, an extraordinary
procession was moving across their line of vision from right to left,
like shadows cast faintly upon a screen. The leading figure was that of
a skeleton, clothed about with a misty body shaped like a man in tourist
costume: a tall frame, the bones standing out in black relief from the
midst of a faint penumbra. Behind this trotted the skeleton forms of a
number of almost naked dwarfs, no more than four feet in height, each
bearing a spear upon his shoulder. At the rear came a second full-sized
figure, taking long strides, like a schoolmaster at the tail of a line
of boys. The shadowy surround of his skeleton widened towards the
bottom like an academic gown. The watchers held their breath, amazed at
the weirdness of the dim shapes, and still more at the manner of their
progress. There were no steps to be seen in the face of the cliff, yet
the gait of the procession was unmistakably that of men descending a
steep stairway. Foot by foot they moved downwards on their diagonal
path; one by one they reached the floor of the rift; then, instead of
walking along it towards the spectators, they seemed to descend into the
earth, and in a few moments disappeared from view. Not a sound had
accompanied them; no tramp of footsteps, no clash of weapons.
Drawing a long breath, the white men, tense and watchful, waited a
little for some sign of their reappearance, but nothing more was seen.
If the strange people had observed the group of onlookers, they had paid
no heed to them. At last, Mackenzie hurried forward to search for the
steps and the subterranean passage to which they gave access. The rest
of the party followed him, save Hamid Gul, who remained as one
transfixed, shivering with awe.
When they came to the wall they were thrown into a state of utter
consternation. The surface of the rock was wholly unbroken; there was
neither stairway nor passage into the ground--the cliff was as smooth as
polished granite. They looked upwards, to the right along the rift;
they passed their hands over the face of the rock, struck it here and
there, probed with their rifles the floor--all was apparently solid. An
uncomfortable feeling of creepiness stole over them. What mysterious
secret lurked in this gloomy cleft in the mountain?
None of them had yet uttered a word. When Forrester spoke, it was in a
whisper.
"Were they shadows?" he asked.
They turned about and looked back along the rift. There was no light
between the walls. Far above, the sunlight illumined their summits, a
bright streak in the gloom. But no shadow could have been cast so low.
"Och!" exclaimed Mackenzie, shaking himself. "We cannot get to the
bottom of yon. Come away!"
Every man of them, without confessing it to the others, was thinking of
the singular things they had heard in the forest village. Their minds
were oppressed by the villagers' superstitious dread; it required an
effort to proceed with the march, leaving this uncanny incident
unexplained. But they braced themselves at Mackenzie's words. Whatever
the explanation of the procession might be, it argued the presence of
beings other than themselves in the cleft or its neighbourhood; and the
remembrance of their errand nerved them to go on. If Captain Redfern's
unfortunate companion were indeed held captive in this mysterious
region, it appeared that they must look forward to something more than a
straight fight; but they could not allow themselves to be daunted by
apparitions, which, after all, might have a simple explanation.
When they resumed their march it was with more caution than before.
Despite themselves, they had a sense of being watched, of something
impending, almost of helplessness, strange though this sensation was to
their robust Western minds. Almost unconsciously they kept closer
together, holding their rifles ready in one hand, and unbuttoning their
revolvers with the other. Only Hamid Gul walked alone. He followed
with trembling knees some yards in the rear, wishing that he had courage
enough to run back to the entrance, where there were at least space and
air.
They turned to the right with the rift. Soon the walls began to
converge, and the twilight grew dimmer and dimmer. At one spot the
passage was scarcely eight feet wide. Beyond this it broadened again,
and the light improved. Then, with startling suddenness, the silence
behind them was broken by a harsh sound that caused them to jump round
in a tingle of apprehension. It was like the rattling of heavy chains,
followed by a loud grating squeak, and a second or two later by a
metallic clang that echoed ominously in the narrow rift. The echoes
died away; all was again silent.
Mackenzie had already started back, a vague inkling of what had happened
freezing him to the marrow. In the semi-darkness he collided with Hamid
Gul, who let out a yell and dropped his rifle, which fell with
resounding crash on the ground. The others hurried close on Mackenzie's
heels. He reached the narrow passage recently left, and here, in the
greater obscurity, he came full tilt against an obstacle that barred the
way. His rifle clashed against it, and when his friends joined him they
found that their escape was cut off by a huge iron shutter that filled
the whole width of the passage.
Mackenzie struck a match, and held it aloft. To their dismay they saw
that the shutter was at least twenty feet high. It fitted into grooves
on either side and in the floor beneath, which the darkness had not
allowed them to see when they passed a few minutes before. Its surface
was decorated with an elaborate and fantastic design, the prevailing
note of which was a monstrous eye, which glared with a singularly
sinister effect in several parts of the pattern. The upper part of the
shutter was attached to two heavy chain cables, one on each side of the
rift. These cables seemed to disappear into the walls another twenty
feet or so above; but from the position of the trapped party, with the
poor aid of match-light, it was impossible to see beyond the points at
which the chains appeared to enter the rock. Lighting several matches
together, however, Mackenzie held them high above his head, and the
flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering down upon them over
the top of the shutter. It was visible only for an instant, then it was
gone; but in that instant the three men felt the culminating shock of
amazement. In those features--the high cheekbones, the slanting eyes,
the long, thin, grey moustache--they thought they recognised the
countenance of the elder of the two Chinamen who had been the companions
of their march--the man whom the bemused lad had called Wen Shih.
[Illustration: The flame glinted for a moment upon a dark face peering
down at them from over the shutter. It was visible only for an instant,
but the three recognized with amazement the face of the man called Wen
Shih.]