"Three days ago a party of Chinamen attacked and severely injured the Deputy Conservator of Forests, Mr. Benson, in this bungalow, and abducted his daughter. They were ten or twelve in number and well armed, and over-awed the servants and forest employees. They have been tracked towards the Bhutan Frontier and, I fear, have crossed it by this. There was, unfortunately, much delay in the information reaching me while I was touring the district south of the forest; and I have only just arrived here. I hasten to acquaint you with the occurrence as I am powerless if the ruffians have crossed into Bhutan. Please request the Officer Commanding Military Police Detachment to send out parties to try to cut off the raiders from the pa.s.ses through the mountains, although I fear it is too late.

Can you meet me here and confer with me? Please bring the Medical Officer of the detachment with you, as Mr. Benson is in a bad state and no civil surgeon is available for a great distance from here.

"Your obedient servant, Edward Lawrence.

D.S.P."

Horror-stricken, Wargrave questioned the forest guard. The man had not been at the bungalow at the time of the outrage and could not greatly supplement the information contained in the letter. The story that he had learned from the servants was to the effect that a party of Chinamen had arrived at Mr. Benson's bungalow and asked for employment as carpenters. There was nothing unusual in this, as Chinese from the Southern Provinces frequently make their way on foot through Tibet and Bhutan over the mountains in search of work on the tea-gardens or in Calcutta. Apparently they had suddenly struck the old man down and surprised Miss Benson before she could offer any resistance. Producing fire-arms they had terrified the servants. They had a mule hidden in the jungle and on this the girl was placed and led off. Long after they had disappeared some of the forest guards had timidly followed their track for some distance and found that it led towards the Bhutan Frontier.

When Wargrave had extracted from the man all the information that he could he rushed into the Mess and acquainted the two officers in it with the terrible news. Like him they were horrified at the outrage. Major Hunt went at once to the Fort to order out parties of the detachment in accordance with the District Superintendent's request; and Macdonald got ready to proceed to the Forest Officer's bungalow forty miles away.

The a.s.sistant Political Officer despatched a cipher telegram to the Foreign Department, Government of India, at Simla, informing them of the occurrence and of his intention to investigate the affair personally, and, if possible, rescue Miss Benson. He knew that the Heads of the Department, although they would not sanction or approve officially of his crossing the frontier in pursuit of the raiders, as it would be contrary to the Treaty with the Bhutanese Government, would not enquire too closely into his movements. But whether they liked it or not he intended to follow the abductors if necessary into the heart of Bhutan, Treaty or no Treaty.

His first step was to send for Tashi and order him to prepare the disguise that he intended to use. His rifle he left behind, but armed himself with a brace of long-barrelled automatic pistols to which their wooden holsters clipped on to form b.u.t.ts, thus converting them into carbines accurate up to a range of a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards. He found a third for Tashi in Colonel Dermot's armoury, which was at his disposal.

Night had fallen long before the detachment elephant that bore Wargrave, Macdonald, Tashi and the forest guard as well as its own _mahout_, reached the bungalow where the District Superintendent of Police awaited them. The doctor found Benson suffering from a wound in the head, with concussion and fever. Frank interrogated the servants carefully and elicited from them one fresh fact about the outrage that shed a flood of light on its motive and its author. It was that the leader of the party was pock-marked and blind in the right eye; and this at once confirmed Frank's suspicion that the instigator of Muriel's abduction was the Chinese _Amban_, whose parting threat to the girl had thus materialised.

At daybreak Wargrave and Tashi started on foot accompanied by a forest guard to put them on the track of the gang. This led up towards the Bhutan Frontier, which runs among the hills at an average elevation of six thousand feet above the sea. As the a.s.sistant Political Officer antic.i.p.ated, the party had headed for the portion of the border under the control of the _Amban's_ friend, the Penlop of Tuna. Enquiries among the inhabitants of the mountain villages resulted in several of them coming forward with the information that they had seen a small body of armed Chinese escorting a cloaked and shrouded figure on a mule and climbing up towards Bhutan. Two of the Government Secret Service agents among these Bhuttias had followed them cautiously to the frontier and seen them received there by a party of the Tuna Penlop's armed retainers. These men reported that the watch on all the pa.s.ses into Bhutan was stricter than ever, and, as one of them phrased it, not even a rat could creep through un.o.bserved.

This discouraging intelligence was a further proof of _Amban's_ guilt.

But Frank realised that it would not be sufficient to justify the Government of India claiming redress from the Republic of China; and, indeed, diplomatic procedure was much too slow to be of any use in the rescue of the girl. An appeal to the Maharajah of Bhutan would be equally fruitless; for his powerful va.s.sal the Tuna Penlop was practically in rebellion against him and defied his authority. The sole hope of saving Muriel lay in Wargrave's prompt action.

Yet try as the subaltern would, he and Tashi were unable at any point to pierce the cordon of guards along the frontier. Generally they got away unseen; but on one occasion they were discovered and had to flee back into British territory under a shower of arrows. Fortunately fire-arms are scarce in Bhutan; and the Tuna Penlop's soldiers possessed only bows.

It was imperative that Wargrave and his follower should be circ.u.mspect in their movements, and by day they hid in caves or in the jungle clothing the slopes of the higher hills, to escape observation by Bhutanese spies. When they had exhausted the food that they had brought with them and failed to procure any more from their Secret Service agents in the villages, Tashi gathered bananas, dug up edible tubers like the _charpattia_ or _charlong_, and snared jungle-fowl and Monal pheasants. Having obtained a bow and a sheaf of arrows from a village he sometimes succeeded in killing a _gooral_, the active little wild goat found in the lower hills, the flesh of which is excellent.

As day after day went by and found them no nearer success in crossing the frontier Wargrave began to lose heart. He was hara.s.sed by anxiety over Muriel's fate and feared that he would never be able to rescue her.

At times he grew desperate and but for his companion's remonstrances would have tried to fight his way through the border guards, although in his saner moments he knew that it would be sheer madness.

Besides danger from human enemies the two men were menaced by peril from wild beasts as well. Panthers prowled among the hills, great Himalayan bears, a blow from the paw of one of which would crack a man's skull, wandered on the jungle-clad slopes and, though not carnivorous, were always ready to attack human beings. Herds of wild elephants, which had scaled the mountains into Bhutan at the beginning of the Monsoon to reach the northern face of the Himalayas and escape the heavy rains that deluge the southern slopes and also to avoid the insects that plague them in the jungle at that season, were commencing to return to the Terai. Often Wargrave and Tashi had to climb trees to let a herd go by; and each time as he watched them the subaltern thought longingly of Colonel Dermot and Badshah. If he had them to help him how easily he could burst the barrier between him and the land that held the girl whom he loved and who needed him so!

Late one afternoon, as the two men were making their way through bamboo jungle at the foot of high cliffs close to a pa.s.s into Ghutan which they had not yet attempted, they blundered into the middle of a herd of elephants feeding. There was no tree in which they could take refuge, and before they were able to make their escape they found themselves surrounded on every side. A number of cow-elephants, which, having young calves with them, were very savage, pressed threateningly towards the men, who tried to force their way into the dense growths of the bamboos and so put a frail barrier between themselves and the menacing beasts.

They knew that their pistols would be useless, and they had already given themselves up for lost when the huge animals which were apparently about to charge them, suddenly stopped and drew aside to allow a monstrous bull-elephant to pa.s.s through. It was a single-tusker, and it advanced steadily towards the men. Frank stared at it incredulously.

Could it be----? Yes, it was. He was sure of it. It was Badshah.

And the elephant knew him and came towards him. In the sudden revulsion of feeling and his relief at knowing that they were safe Frank almost lost his head. A mad hope surged through him. He stretched out his arms imploringly to the great beast and cried impulsively:

"Oh, Badshah! _Hum-ko madad do_! (Help us!)"

To his amazement the animal seemed to understand. It sank slowly to its knees as though inviting him to mount it.

"Sahib! Sahib! He offers us his aid," cried Tashi excitedly, and he scrambled up after Wargrave who had climbed on to the broad shoulders.

The subaltern leaned forward and, touching the huge forehead, pointed in the direction of Bhutan. Badshah turned and moved off towards the pa.s.s through the mountains, while the herd followed; and Frank thrilled with the hope that at last he was about to break through the barrier of foes between him and the girl he loved.

CHAPTER XIV

THE DEVIL DANCERS OF TUNA

Flat-roofed, arcaded buildings terraced one above the other, with gaily painted walls from which covered wooden verandahs and box-like, latticed windows jutted out, surrounded a paved courtyard, its rough flagstones hidden by shifting, many-coloured throngs of gorgeously vestmented priests, mitred bishops, hideous demons, skeletons with grinning skulls and weird creatures with _papier mache_ heads of bears, tigers, dragons and even stranger beasts. Wild but not inharmonious music from shaven-headed members of an orchestra of weird instruments--gongs, shawns, cymbals, long silver trumpets--deafened the ears. Crowds of gaily-clad spectators covered the flat roofs of the building and arcades, thronged the verandahs, filled the windows and squatted around the courtyard--these last kept in order by bullet-headed lamas with whips.

It was the annual ceremony of the Devil Dance of the great Buddhist monastery of Tuna, one of the fantastic Mystery Plays, the now almost meaningless functions into which the ideal faith preached by Gautama, the Buddha, the high-souled reformer, has degenerated.

From all parts of Bhutan west of the dividing line of the great Black Mountain Range, from Tibet, even from far-distant Ladak, the faithful had made pilgrimage to be present at the great festival in this most famous and sacred _gompa_ of the land. Red lamas from Western Tibet and yellow from Lha.s.sa, abbots and monks from little-known monasteries lost among the rugged mountains, nuns with close-cropped hair from the convents of Thimbu, Paro and Punaka, robber chiefs of the Hah-pa and graziers from Sipchu, townsfolk from the capital and peasants from the fever-laden Himalayan valleys--all had gathered there. For all who attended the sacred festival could gain indulgences that would save them a century or two's sojourn in the hot or cold h.e.l.ls of their religion.

In a gallery adorned with artistic wooden carvings and hung with brocaded silk and gold embroideries sat a fat, bare-legged man with close-cropped hair and scanty beard, wearing an ample, red silk gown ornamented with Chinese designs worked in gold thread. He was the Penlop of Tuna, the great feudal lord of the province, whose high-walled _jong_, or castle, crowned the rocky hill on which the monastery and the town were built. Behind him stood his officers and attendants clad in silk or woollen kimono-like garments bound at the waist by gaily-worked leather belts from which hung handsome swords with elaborately-wrought silver hilts inlaid with coral and turquoises and with gold-washed silver scabbards.

The courtyard was gay with fluttering prayer-flags, the poles of which as well as the wooden pillars of the arcades were hung with the beautiful banners artistically worked with countless pieces of coloured silks and brocades and needlework pictures of Buddhist G.o.ds and saints for which the monasteries of Bhutan are justly famed. From the blue sky the sun blazed on the riot of mingled hues of the decorations and the dresses of spectators and performers.

Especially gorgeous were the robes of the high priests in the spectacle.

They strongly resembled Catholic bishops in their gold-embroidered mitres, copes and vestments as, carrying pastoral crooks or sprinkling holy water, they moved around the courtyard in solemn procession behind acolytes carrying sacred banners, swinging censers and intoning harmonious chants. Troops of baffled demons fled at their approach howling in diabolic despair. Shuddering wretches clad in scanty rags, groping blindly as in the dark, wailing miserably and uttering weird, long-drawn whistling notes, shrank aside from the fleeing devils and stretched out their hands in supplication to the saintly prelates. They were intended to represent the spirits of dead men straying in the period of _Bardo_--the forty-nine days after death--during which the soul released from the body is doomed to wander in search of its next incarnation. In its journeyings it is a.s.sailed and terrified by demons, who can only be defeated by the prayers of pious lamas to Chenresi the Great Pitier.

The whole purpose of these representations is to familiarise during life the devout Buddhists with the awful aspect of the many demons that will obstruct their souls after death and try to lead them astray when they are searching for the right path to the next world in which they are to begin a fresh existence.

On this strange, bewildering spectacle an English girl looked down from a small balcony not twenty feet above the courtyard. And the sight of her caused the attention of many of the spectators to wander from the Mystery Play. The fat old Penlop frequently looked across the quadrangle at her from his gallery and as often uttered some coa.r.s.e jest about her to his grinning followers, while he raised a chased silver goblet filled with _murwa_, the native liquor, to his lips.

It was Muriel Benson. For weeks she had been a prisoner in the lamasery, cloistered in a suite of well-furnished rooms and waited on by a close-cropped nun. She had been surprised in the bungalow and overpowered by three of the Chinamen before she realised her danger or could seize a weapon with which to defend herself. Had she been able to s.n.a.t.c.h up a revolver she would have made a desperate fight for freedom.

But with fettered hands, a helpless captive, she had been carried away on a mule. From the first she had recognised the pock-marked, one-eyed leader of the gang as the _Amban's_ officer, and so had known who was the author and cause of her abduction. For days she had been borne along up the rough track over the mountains, through narrow, high-walled pa.s.ses, down deep valleys and across rushing torrents, closely guarded but always treated with respect. Her captors used broken Tibetan and Bhutanese when they desired to communicate with her, but they answered none of her questions. She had dreaded reaching their destination, where she expected to find Yuan Shi Hung awaiting her; and once, in fear of it, she had tried to throw herself down a precipice along the brink of which the path ran. After that she had been roped to a big, powerful Manchu.

On her arrival at the monastery she learned from her garrulous nun-attendant that the _Amban_ had been summoned to Pekin, where a revolution had taken place and his friends there hoped to make him President, which he regarded as a step towards the Imperial throne. The monks of the monastery were his faithful allies on account of his relationship to the powerful Abbott of the Yellow Lama Temple in the Chinese capital. They had agreed to guard his prisoner, if his men succeeded in capturing her, until he returned or sent for her.

At first the girl, relieved of the dread of falling at once into his hands, lived in the hope of a speedy rescue. It was unfortunate, she thought, that Colonel Dermot, with his extraordinary knowledge of and influence over the Bhutanese, had left India. But even without him the power of the British Empire would be set at once in motion to avenge this outrage on an Englishwoman. Dermot's understudy, the a.s.sistant Political Officer, faithless lover though he was, would do all he could to save her. a.s.suredly she would not have long to wait.

But as the days dragged by and she still remained a prisoner her heart sank. She needed all her courage not to lose hope and give way to despair. For she had always hanging over her the dread of Yuan Shi Hung's return. But she had resolved to kill herself rather than fall into his hands, and for that purpose had bribed her cheery, good-natured attendant to procure a dagger for her. She pretended that she wanted it as a protection in the lamasery, for the door of her apartments was without a fastening. Even on the outside there was neither lock nor bolt, for escape was considered impossible for her. If she got out of the monastery she would be captured at once in the town.

She was not interfered with and saw no one but her nun. Once or twice she ventured to creep down to the great temple of the monastery, drawn by curiosity and the sound of harmonious Buddhist chants intoned by the lamaic choir. But for her anxiety about her father and her dread of the _Amban's_ return her worst trial would have been the monotony of her captivity, were it not that the memory of Wargrave and her unhappy love caused her many a sleepless night.

With nothing to occupy her mind she hailed the festival of the Devil Dance as a welcome distraction. Not even the impertinent curiosity of the spectators could drive her from her balcony. She followed the many phases with interest, although she could not understand the meaning of them. For the performance was a curious mixture of religion and blasphemous mockery, of horse-play and coa.r.s.e humour as well as a strange impressiveness. A comic interlude would follow the most solemn act. Troops of devils burlesqued the sacred rites of the faith, and bands of comic masks filled the arena at times and delighted the audience by playing practical jokes on the spectators and each other.

The solitary white woman attracted their clownish humour, and they danced in front of her balcony, shouting out rude witticisms that caused much amus.e.m.e.nt to the lookers-on. Fortunately the girl's command of the language, fairly good though it was, was insufficient to enable her to understand their coa.r.s.e jests. But their intention to insult her became obvious. The leaping, howling mob of strangely apparelled performers threatened to storm her balcony. Some climbed on each other's shoulders to get nearer her, others even began to swarm up the pillars supporting her balcony. To the delight of the audience the noisy mob eventually clambered up to the railing of the balcony and, jesting, laughing, uttering weird cries, perched on it and shouted and jeered at her.

Her face flaming, the girl drew back and was about to retire into her room when suddenly she stopped, rigid with surprise. For above the shouts of the maskers, the roars of the spectators and the din of the clashing cymbals and braying trumpets, she heard her name spoken distinctly. Incredulous she stood rooted to the ground and stared at the yelling clowns perched on the railing. The uproar redoubled; but again she distinguished one word above it all:

"Muriel!"

A wild hope flashed into her heart. Pretending to be amused at the antics of the performers she advanced laughingly towards them. They gesticulated and shouted more furiously than ever. But in the medley of strange sounds she distinctly heard the words:

"It's I, Frank. Don't be afraid."

They seemed to come from the _papier mache_ head of a grotesque serpent worn by a man who was foremost among her tormentors and wildest in his frenzied gestures. Smiling the girl stood her ground even when some of the maskers, encouraged by her att.i.tude, climbed down from the rail and surrounded her, dancing, hallooing, leaping. The snake-headed one was the wildest in his antics and shrieked and shouted loudest of them all.

But mixed up with incoherent cries and sounds she caught the words:

"Are you guarded?" A wild yell followed. "Can you get out?" Then he yelled like a mad jackal.

With wildly-beating heart the girl pretended to repulse the advances of the maskers good-humouredly and spoke to all in English, telling them to leave her balcony and cease to molest her. But with her laughing remonstrances she mingled the words:

"I am not guarded. I can leave my room. I will go down to the temple and wait behind the statue of Buddha."