"Gentlemen," he said, "the August and Venerable welcomes you to his sanctuary. Uninvited you come, but none the less are you welcome. The August and Venerable will extend to you such hospitality as lies within his means. But it is not meet that armed parties should enter the holy precincts. Be content, therefore; withdraw to the lower gate, and leave your weapons there. When you return, this upper gate will be opened to you, and I shall have the honour and privilege of introducing you to the Presence."

This speech was delivered in the dull, dreamy, expressionless tone which had characterised all the young man's utterances, except in those few tense minutes succeeding his rescue from the elephant--the monotonous sing-song of a child nervously reciting a lesson.

"The 'Presence' is that one-armed rascal beside him, I suppose,"

whispered Forrester. "The poor weed says what he is told to say. What's our answer?"

"We're in an awkward fix," Jackson began, but Mackenzie cut him short.

"Things aren't so hopeless as that," he said, quickly. "We'll not part with our arms--our only protection. We don't know when we may need them. I'll answer the fellow." Raising his voice, he said: "We refuse to lay down our arms. We have no hostile intentions--we're as meek as lambs--but the shutting of the gates is a dashed unfriendly act, and makes us mighty doubtful about our welcome. Lift this gate, and lead us to the presence of the August and Venerable. We demand an audience with him."

His comrades thought that a more conciliatory manner and more formal phrases might have served them better, but they said nothing. There was no reply from above; they supposed that the young Chinaman was translating to his master, though they heard no sound. It was too dark to see the heads without artificial light; and after a minute or two had pa.s.sed in silence Mackenzie struck a match, and held it so that its light would fall on the spot where the shapes had been seen. But the wall was blank; the gargoyles had disappeared.

"What's going on now?" Forrester murmured.

"Maybe they're sending someone to work the machinery," answered Mackenzie.

They waited silently, expecting every moment to hear the harsh grating of the rising shutter, and the rattle of the chains. But minutes pa.s.sed, and there was no sound except the hard panting breaths of Hamid Gul.

Gradually, however, they became conscious of a strange feeling of oppression. The mustiness of the air, which they had felt ever since they entered the rift, became impregnated with a subtle new odour. At first they paid little attention to it, merely remarking on it one to another. But presently Jackson began to sway on his feet.

"I feel funny," he said, slowly. "Getting--awfully--sleepy."

"Hold up, man!" said Mackenzie, sharply, as Jackson staggered against him. "d.i.c.k, take him by the arm; we'll walk him about."

"If I can," returned Forrester. "I feel uncommonly drowsy, too."

They took Jackson by the arms, and led him down the rift in the direction of the first shutter. A few yards away they pa.s.sed Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground. With growing alarm Mackenzie tried to hurry the pace, but his companions became moment by moment heavier on his hands. After a minute or two he let Jackson's arm go without knowing it. In a few seconds more his grip of Forrester loosened, and he walked on two or three paces alone. Then he, too, fell a prey to the overmastering influence of the atmosphere.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Taking Jackson by the arms, they led him down the rift, and a few yards away, they came upon Hamid Gul, lying with relaxed limbs on the ground.]

"Hold up, I'm telling you!" he muttered, staggering and reaching out with his hands.

Next moment, without volition of his own, he sat down on the ground, striving, like a man half drunk, to keep himself erect, and declaring to himself that he was "quite all right." But his hands fell limply to his sides, his body swayed gently, his head nodded, and in a few seconds he, like the rest, was p.r.o.ne in unconsciousness.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LAW OF THE EYE

Some two hours later, Mackenzie awoke, heaving a great sigh.

"Hech! But I've a sore head the morn," he murmured, rubbing his eyes drowsily as he looked around him. The sight of bare blank walls instead of the walls of his bungalow, decorated with colour plates from the ill.u.s.trated papers, caused him to sit up suddenly and rub his eyes again. It was a minute or two before full consciousness and the recollection of recent incidents returned to him. Then he remembered that his last waking moments had been spent in the rift; but he had awaked in a stone-walled, stone-floored cell, cubical in shape, and ten feet in each dimension.

His comrades, still asleep, lay at full stretch on the floor, on either side of him.

"Eh, d.i.c.k! Bob! waken yourselves," he called.

There was no response.

He got up, moved, somewhat totteringly, to Forrester, and prodded him in the ribs.

"Waken!" he called again. "Man, what's wrong with you?"

He gazed anxiously into his friend's face as Forrester slowly opened his eyes. Turning away, he hastened to Jackson, poked him, bawled in his ear, felt his pulse; then, a.s.sured that he was not dead, as he had begun to fear, raised him in his arms and shook him vigorously.

"Haven't got the ball, you a.s.s!" Jackson spluttered.

"This isn't rugger, old man," said Forrester with a light laugh, coming to his side. "Wake up and see where the beggars have carried us."

Jackson recovered his wits more tardily than the others.

"His face is green," Forrester whispered uneasily.

"So is yours," said Mackenzie.

"And yours too, by Jove!" cried Forrester, after a good look at him.

"What the mischief have they been doing to us?"

"I cannot say. I know that my head is sore."

"I've a headache, if that's what you mean," said Forrester.

"So have I, splitting," added Jackson, sitting up, but still resting his hands on the floor. "By Jinks, the stone is warm!"

"It is that," said Mackenzie, feeling it. "They're wishful we shan't take a chill, by the look of it."

They gazed around their narrow chamber. Walls and floor appeared to be of solid rock. In the centre of one wall was a door of stout timber, without lock or handle. High in another was an opening, like the arrow slits in medieval castles, through which a white light filtered.

"Get on my back, d.i.c.k, and keek out," said Mackenzie.

In a moment Forrester was mounted.

"I see nothing but a blank wall twenty feet away," he called down. "And not much of that. It looks like the wall of the rift. I tell you what: this room must be cut out of the wall this side. When you called it a castle, you spoke better than you knew, Mac."

"Ay, so it seems," Mackenzie replied, as Forrester sprang down. "But I'm fair flummoxed. The room's perfectly light, though yon slit isn't more than twelve by two. Where does the light come from? It's greenish, too, which accounts for our delicate complexions. And look! you see that?"

He pointed to the faint shadow of a fourth human figure that pa.s.sed across the wall opposite to the window. It flitted through their own shadows, and disappeared.

A moment's glance a.s.sured them that it had not been cast from without; yet the wall appeared solid, in no degree transparent.

There was no furniture in the room. Silently they sat upon the floor, watching the wall nervously for a return of the mysterious inexplicable shadow. But it did not reappear. The strange light, the stranger apparition, brought back upon them redoubled the uneasiness they had felt ever since they entered the rift, and especially after seeing the ghostly procession on the wall. At that moment they could have believed that they lay in the haunt of some necromancer, whose magic art might manifest itself in terrors unconceived.

"They must have hocussed us," murmured Forrester at length, his thoughts reverting to his last conscious moments in the rift.

"Ay, put us to sleep with some narcotic gas," said Mackenzie. "What'll they do next?"