Their hope was to gain shelter in the Government woodsheds, two miles ahead, before the inevitable downpour came to drench their bodies and impede their progress. But fate was in a merciless mood on that June morning.

The third flash split up the sky as a stone splits a window pane.

Pulsating streaks of fire, red, green, and blue, radiated in all directions, half-blinding them with the brazen glare. And before it faded, a crackling detonation seemed to rip the very heavens from marge to marge.

As yet no rain had fallen: and for ten deafening minutes the little party rode in silence through an inferno of reiterate light and sound.

Once or twice Quita glanced at her husband, cantering beside her, and wondered vaguely when she would hear him speak again; wondered, too, at her own matter-of-fact acceptance of that which a week ago had appeared impossible. But the storm stunned heart and brain, as well as eye and ear. Everything human,--life, death, love itself,--seemed trivial in face of this stupendous battle of the elements. Above them, and on all sides of them, the lightning leaped and darted, like a live thing seeking its prey. It was as if the sombre heavens were bringing forth brood upon brood of fiery serpents, and greeting the birth of each with ear-splitting peals of t.i.tanic laughter.

Then came the rain:--not in mere drops, but in a solid sheet of water, blinding, drenching, stupefying. At the same instant the fury of the storm culminated in a blaze of white light that seemed to spring upon them from all sides at once, with a shout as of fiends let loose; and, through the echoing after-roll of thunder, came a sharper, harsher sound,--the death note of a mighty tree.

Lenox and his wife faced one another involuntarily with startled looks.

"How appalling!--What was it?" she asked between two breaths.

"A pine struck somewhere up the _khud_. Not frightened, are you, la.s.s?" he added with tender concern. "It's the very thing you wanted.

You've got your thrilling finale with a vengeance!"

A clatter of breaking branches made him look up. "Great G.o.d!" he cried, on a note of alarm. "Back your pony sharp. It's coming down on the top of us!"

And as she obeyed, with the swift instinct of fear, Desmond's voice reached him through the rush of the rain.

"Look out for yourself, Lenox! She's safe enough."

But before the words were out, the upper half of a great deodar crashed down upon the narrow path, and a long branch struck the Galloway's shoulder with tremendous force. For an instant Shaitan staggered under the blow:--then horse, and man, and tree were hurled headlong down the steep, rain-lashed ravine.

A great cry broke from Quita: and in that cry, and the white, rigid repression that followed it, Garth had his answer to the question he had never asked.

For the hundredth part of a second all seven sat paralysed by the hideous thing that had happened before their eyes, and by the hopeless nature of the drop down which Lenox had disappeared:--wiped out, as though he had never been.

Then Desmond's practical vigour a.s.serted itself, and he sprang lightly to the ground.

"Here, take hold of the Demon, some one!"

And it was Quita who leant forward and grasped the bridle with a steady hand. Her action gave him the chance he wanted of getting close enough to speak a few words of encouragement in a hurried undertone.

"Don't lose heart. It's an ugly drop. But he fell clear of the tree; and these _khuds_ are the most chancy things imaginable. I'm off after him, as fast as hands and feet can take me."

Speech was beyond her; but she thanked him with her eyes.

A moment later he was kneeling in the mud, rapidly unfastening boots and gaiters; for one downward glance had convinced him that it would be a matter of climbing, and difficult climbing at that.

By now Colonel Mayhew had dismounted also; and as Desmond stood upright--in socks and breeches--and flung aside his dripping helmet, the older man drew him to the path's edge.

"Look here, my dear chap," he mid, when they were out of earshot of the group, who sat spellbound in the grip of tragedy, "are you justified in running a serious risk, probably--to no purpose? For I'm afraid poor Lenox hasn't a ghost of a chance. You're a married man, remember; and it looks to me uncommonly like madness to attempt that _khud_ in such weather. It'll be a case of holding on with your eyelids; and there's a coolie track not far from here, that leads down to the valley."

Desmond's month took the dogged line that his _sowars_ knew and loved; and a combatant light flashed in his eyes.

"Your blood's cooler than mine, sir," he answered quietly. "But I have a fairly steady head; and my wife would be the last person in the world to hold me back, thank G.o.d. In such cases five or ten minutes may mean just the difference between life . . . and death. If you will get together some sort of a stretcher--a good strong one--and come on post-haste down the coolie track, I'll be grateful. I suppose we haven't a drop of brandy among us?--bad luck to it!"

"There's a provision _kilter_ on one of the coolies. Shall we have it turned out, on the chance?"

"Good Lord, yes. Get it done at once, please." Then he turned to Garth. "I say, Major, gallop on, will you, and catch up Dr O'Malley.

I saw him start with the last contingent. They can't be more than two miles ahead."

And as Garth obeyed the peremptory request, the devil himself must have whispered to his heart the despicable suggestion that possibly Fate had struck a blow in his favour after all.

Colonel Mayhew, meanwhile, rummaging feverishly in the depths of the _kilter_ with scant hope of success, bestrewed the wet earth on all sides of him with canned fruits, sardines, greasy jharrons, and crumpled wads of newspaper: till at length, like Hope out of Pandora's casket, there came forth from an unsuspicious-looking bundle of clothes half a bottle of brandy, stowed carefully away by the kitmutgar, for private ends best known to himself.

Desmond, who stood by fuming with impatience to be gone, laid eager hands on it.

"Lord, what a miracle! Pity there's no flask handy," he muttered, b.u.t.toning his coat, and thrusting the unwieldly impediment into a side-pocket. Then, catching sight of a horn tumbler among the _debris_, he picked it up, and drew out the bottle.

"Better leave you some for the women,--if you can get 'em to drink it diluted with a trifle of rain!--There now, I'm off. For G.o.d's sake, Colonel, look sharp after me."

Without waiting for an answer, he swung round on his heel, and for the first time looked at his wife, whose eyes had never left him since he sprang from the saddle. Now, as his own challenged them, they gave him in full the approval he craved; and, for the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds, their spirits clung together in an embrace more intimate than any communion of the lips.

Then Theo Desmond wrenched himself away.

Stepping deliberately backward, over a short, sheer drop, he let himself down by his hands on to a tumbled ma.s.s of boulders, and began his perilous descent in earnest. Whereupon Brutus,--who stood at the _khud's_ edge peering into s.p.a.ce, ears and tail dumbly demanding explanation,--lunged forward, as if to follow so practical a lead; and only Colonel Mayhew's prompt clutch at his collar saved him from joining the master who had so basely deserted him. Both he and Desmond's distracted Aberdeen were handed over to a _sais_; and after much ineffectual choking and gurgling, subsided into apathetic despair.

Already half a dozen natives were busy devising an impromptu stretcher from fir branches, ropes, and strips of coolie blanket,--drenched and evil-smelling, yet acceptable enough; while Quita sat watching its construction in a dazed stillness; her eyes dry and wide; her artist's brain picturing too vividly that which lay awaiting it down there in the pitiless rain, that seemed to add a refinement of cruelty to the horse-play of lightning and thunder.

But Colonel Mayhew, unaware of the morning's double tragedy, had eyes only for his daughter; and, in his first free moment, hurried to her side. She had hidden her face, and was crying softly, to Michael's open dismay. Once or twice he had even laid a hand on her, unheeded, and unrebuked. But her father's touch roused her, and she took convulsive hold of him. She was still little more than a child; and this was her first face-to-face encounter with the brutality of G.o.d's universe.

"Don't upset yourself, girlie," he said kindly. "The damage may be less than we think for. I must stay here and help; but you must be a good child, and ride on at once. You'll see her safe home for me, won't you, Maurice?"

Michael acquiesced eagerly. Unrelieved tragedy upset his nerves. He longed to escape from the consciousness of Quita's dumb despair; and when Elsie had been induced to swallow a drop of brandy that would not have warmed a sparrow, they rode off briskly through the sullen downpour.

With a breath of relief, Colonel Mayhew went up to Honor Desmond, who had just dismounted.

"What's that for?" he asked anxiously. "You and Miss Maurice are going on too, of course."

Honor shook her head.

"But you can do no earthly good by waiting. We may be an hour or more before we get up here again. It will be slow work, if . . . if Lenox is alive;--and you will be drenched to the skin."

"There are worse evils than that!" she answered with gentle immobility.

"Don't trouble about me, please. I _must_ stay here till I know what has happened; and I think Miss Maurice will wish to stay too. We shall come to no harm. We women have nine lives, you know!"

"And if you will--you will. . . . I know that also! But at least take a nip to keep out the damp. Your husband gave me this at the last moment for the three of you."

"How like him to think of it!" she murmured, smiling unsteadily.

"Yes--it _was_ like him,"--and in the expansion of the moment the warm-hearted Resident put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. "He's a deuced fine fellow, my dear, and he has found a wife that's worthy of him."

Honor blushed rose-red, and took the proffered stimulant.

"I'll give Miss Maurice some too," she said. "Don't lose a second on our account, please."