"There's a good deal in what you say, Miss Cheriton. I must think out how the thing may be done." Then he talked on other and indifferent matters, and shortly took his leave.

Meanwhile the bi-annual _jirgeh_, or tribal council, was in progress at Shalalai, and representatives of all the tribes and clans and septs gathered daily in the durbar hall to meet the _Sirkar_ and ventilate grievances and settle disputes, and in short to discuss matters generally between themselves and the Executive. Stately chiefs and their retinues--tall, dignified men, picturesque in their snowy turbans and long hair and flowing beards, wending thither beneath the plane-shaded avenue--pa.s.sed in strange contrast the dapper sub skimming along on his bicycle, or fashionably attired ladies in their high-wheeled dogcart flashing by at a hard trot, bound for club or gymkhana ground. Such, however, they eyed as impa.s.sively as they did the crowd of low caste Hindus which thronged the bazaar; for the training of their wild desert home had left no room for the display of emotions. Now and then, recognising some official, they might utter a grave "Salaam," accompanied by a slight raising of the hand, but that was all. A contrast indeed! The unchanging East, in its melancholy dignity and fund of awe-suggesting power--because power held in the mystery of reserve--jostled by fussy, domineering, up-to-date civilisation; the fierce, wild, untamable spirits masked by those copper-hued and dignified countenances, side by side with the careless, pleasure loving, yet intensely pushing and practical temperament underlying the fresh, tawny-haired Anglo-Saxon faces. Even the very headgear suggested a vivid contrast--the mult.i.tudinous folds of the snowy and graceful turban expressive of absence of all capacity for flurry--cool deliberateness, repose, wisdom--even as the c.o.c.k of the perky "bowler" seemed a very object lesson in itself of push and bounce and "there-to-stay" tenacity.

Now and then one or two of the sirdars would visit Upward to talk officially on forest matters in their respective districts, or to view his multifold trophies of the chase, which keenly interested them.

These visits Upward encouraged, hoping to learn something of Campian's fate. But it was of no avail. Of the ma.s.sacre at Mehriab station, and the doings of Umar Khan in general, the wily Asiatics professed the profoundest ignorance, not with effusive reiteration, but in a grave, nonchalant, dignified way, as though the matter were entirely unworthy of their notice or cognisance, once and for all. But to Vivien Wymer, who never lost an opportunity of studying these people, such visits were of untold interest; moreover, they seemed to result in a certain degree of hope renewed. These stately, courteous-mannered potentates had not got cruel faces. There was a n.o.ble look about most of them, even a benevolent one. Surely these were not the men to sanction a coldblooded murder.

Meanwhile, during the _jirgeh_, the matter of Umar Khan was receiving the full attention of the Executive. It was one thing for the chiefs to protest ignorance in private and unofficial conversation with Upward, with whom, diplomatically, they had no earthly concern. Carefully and with due deliberation the authorities narrowed the net--and it was decided to arrest Yar Hussain Khan, who, as the outlaw's feudal chief, was responsible for his behaviour--and a sirdar of the Brahuis who was proved to have sheltered and screened him.

The chiefs in question made no trouble over the decision of the _Sirkar_. With Oriental impa.s.sibility they accepted the situation, and were placed under guard accordingly. But two nights later Umar Khan swooped down upon a Levy post within ten miles of Shalalai, surprised and ma.s.sacred the handful of Hindu sepoys in charge, and rolled a couple of field pieces down the mountain side, retiring as swiftly as he had appeared: while the Brahui clans in the neighbourhood began to make themselves disagreeable by various small acts of aggression which rendered it unsafe to venture many miles beyond the lines.

Things began to look uncommonly lively in and about that station containing five thousand troops--horse, foot and artillery.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

AT DARKEST HOUR.

Away in the Kharawan desert the dust columns are whirling heavenward in many a tall spiral shaft; more like the hissing steam jets of some vast geyser than anything so dry and unadhesible as mere sand.

A dead flat level, stretching afar into misty distance on the skyline on every hand--its only vegetation a low scrubby attempt at growth; the fierce sun at a white heat overhead; the sky as bra.s.s--what life can this awful wilderness by any possibility support? Yet so wonderful, so inexhaustible are the resources of Nature that even here both man and beast can fare along, and that moderately well.

Camels, with their loads, kneel on the sand, resting from their labours; with their ugly heads and weird snaky necks and unceasing guttural snarling roar, conveying the idea of hideous antediluvian monsters somehow or other forgotten by the Flood in this desert waste. A flock of black goats, cropping daintily at the spa.r.s.e attempt at herbage, or crouching in groups chewing the cud, represents the other phase of animal life there, unless three or four gaunt Pathan curs employed at a.s.sisting to herd the same. Here and there a tent, or mere shelter of tanned camel hide, blackened by the heat of innumerable suns, stretched upon poles, affords a modic.u.m of shelter from the arid baking heat.

It is the hour of prayer. Grouped together the believers are kneeling-- facing towards the holy city; whose exact direction they have a marvellous faculty for determining with accuracy. As one man they sink down in their twofold prostration, forehead to the earth, then rise again, and the droning hum of voices goes out upon the shimmer of the scorching air. One, in front of the rest, leads the devotions, a little, shrunken, aged figure, and by his side is another, but it is the form of a man in all the vigour of his prime.

With more than ordinary unction the prescribed formulae are repeated.

No abstraction or looking round is here, such as the faithful when individually devout may occasionally give way to. Perhaps it is the holy character and reputation of the leader that ensures this edifying result, for the Syyed Hadji Ain Asraf is justly invested with both of these.

He who prays side by side with this pillar and prop of Moslem orthodoxy is arrayed like the rest. His white turban, cool and voluminous in its folds, is the same as that of these swarthy copper-hued sons of the desert--so, too, are the graceful flowing garments and chudda, in which he is clad. His shoes are off his feet, and his prostrations and general att.i.tude differ in no wise from those employed by the other devotees--the outcome of a lifetime's habit. Yet, as the orisons over, all rise and resume their shoes and their wonted and work-a-day demeanour, a close observer might well notice that this is no fanatical son of the Orient but a man of Anglo-Saxon blood--in short, none other than Howard Campian.

How then is it that the part has come to him so easily? He had professed Islam, it is true; but that as a mere expedient to save himself from the murderous blades of Umar Khan and his followers. Yet it is strange how the varying phases of life will unconsciously affect the man who is accustomed to pa.s.s through many of them. Your wooden headed, groove-compressed John Bull, in his stay-at-home, stick-in-the-mud-ishness, is impervious to any such impressions. He is too devoid of sympathy for the ideas of any other living soul, for one thing. But the true cosmopolitan, the globe wanderer, whose wanderings leave him more and more with an open mind, can see things differently, can even realise that the multifold races and tongues and creeds who inhabit this earth do not necessarily do so on gracious sufferance of John Bull aforesaid, with whom, by the way, they have not the shadow of an idea in common. It happened that Campian had some acquaintance with the Koran, in fact possessed an English translation of the sacred volume; a circ.u.mstance which stood him in right good stead with those who held him in durance. The faith of Islam had always struck him as a rational creed, moral and orderly, with the claims of a fair amount of antiquity behind it; wherefore now, under duress and as a matter of expediency, no great shock was entailed upon him in subscribing its tenets. Besides, his profession of faith involved no denial of any article of faith he might previously have held. The a.s.sertion that Mohammed was the prophet of G.o.d seemed not an outrageous one, looking at the fact that the stupendous creed, founded or revealed by the seer of Mecca, held and swayed countless millions, who for sheer devoutness, consistency to their own profession, and the grandeur of unity, could give large points to the cute, up-to-date Christian with his one day's piety and six days' fraud, and his jangling discord of multifold sects.

He was a good bit of a natural actor, wherefore, having a part to play, he identified himself with it, and played it thoroughly. Partly from motives of convenience, for his own clothing had undergone wild, rough treatment of late, partly from those of expediency, he had adopted the dress of his custodians, and his dark, sunbrowned face, clear cut features and full beard, framed in the white voluminous turban, was quite as the face of one of themselves. Only the eyes seemed to betray the Anglo-Saxon, yet blue or grey eyes are not uncommon among some of the Afghan tribes.

It is by no means certain that his profession of faith would have availed to save his life at the rancorous hands of Umar Khan--that lawless freebooter being impatient of the claims of creed when they conflicted with his own strong inclinations--but for the interference of the Syyed Ain Asraf. The dictum of the latter, however, especially in a matter of faith, was not to be gainsaid. Not by halves, either, had the Syyed done things. He rejoiced over his new convert, insuring for him good treatment, and, in short, everything but liberty. We have just stated that Campian possessed a translation of the Koran, and the fact that he did so seemed a mark to all that his was no sudden forced conversion. He had evidently been making a study of their holy religion, as the Syyed pointed out.

To this lead Campian a.s.siduously played up. The volume was at the bungalow of the Colonel Sahib, where he had been staying, he explained, and thither he prevailed on them to accompany him, in order to fetch it.

Nor was that all, for he made use of the circ.u.mstance to prevail upon them to spare the house, as having contained a volume of the sacred book, and under whose roof had come many inspirations which had led to his conversion. They had looted the place somewhat, but had refrained from doing much real damage.

The Syyed Ain Asraf then, had taken his proselyte completely under his wing, and, through the interpreting agency of Buktiar Khan, was never tired of instructing him in all the tenets and rules and discipline of Islam. This was not altogether unwelcome to the said proselyte, and that for diverse reasons. For one thing the subject really interested him, and greatly did it beguile the tedium and hardship of his captivity: for another he was anxious to establish the friendliest relationship with the old Syyed. The name had recalled itself to his recollection the moment he heard it uttered. This was the other name mentioned in connection with the treasure and the ruby sword--Syyed Ain Asraf, the brother of the fugitive Durani chief, Dost Hussain Khan.

Did this old man know? Was he in the secret, or had all clue been lost?

Again, did that mysterious chest, so startlingly, so grimly lighted upon by himself, actually contain that rare and priceless treasure?

Often would Campian's thoughts go back to those awful hours spent hanging over the black depths of the chasm. Often would he wonder whether the discovery was an actual fact, or a dream, a phantasmagoria of his state of over-wrought mind and body, and in the hot glare of the desert he would shade his eyes as though the better to live over again those hours of horror and of pitchy gloom. But when he would have liked to sound the old Syyed on the subject, that curse, the barrier of language, would come in. Save for a smattering of the most ordinary words, which he had picked up, Campian could only communicate through the agency of Buktiar Khan, and Buktiar Khan was at best but a slippery scoundrel, and totally untrustworthy where a matter of such pa.s.sing importance was involved.

Campian had long since given up his first idea, viz: that he was being held as a hostage, to be released on payment of the stipulated five thousand rupees. That sum he knew had been paid, duly as to time and conditions, but to his representations that he should be set at liberty the reply was consistently short and to the point. It was not in the _bundobust_. So he made up his mind to bide his time patiently, keep his eyes and ears open, pick up as much of the language as he could, and pursue his studies of the Koran under the tuition of his now spiritual guide, Ain Asraf.

That venerable saint found in him a most promising neophyte--and through the agency of the ex-chupra.s.si they would hold long theological debates on this or that point of faith, or the exact interpretation of the words of the Prophet, wherein the Moslem doctors were wont to read diverse or ambiguous meaning; and the cheap and spick and span English translation formed yet one more of those strange life contrasts beside the yellow parchment scroll covered with its Arabic text--while the Syyed, with the aid of pebbles placed out, or squares and circles described in the dust, strove to convey to his disciple some idea of the configuration of the holy city and the inviolable temple; the sacred Caaba and the stone of Abraham.

Strange and wild had been Campian's experiences during the long weeks-- months now--since his recapture. His jauntily-expressed self gratulation on the prospect of seeing something of the inner life of the Baluchis he can remember now with a rueful smile. Hurried here and hurried there--now freezing among bleak mountain-tops, now roasting on the waterless desert: subsisting on food perfectly abominable to civilised palate, and housed in low square huts, the nocturnal gambols of whose multifold tenantry tried his as yet scanty stock of Moslem patience--in truth he has had enough and to spare of such experiences.

So interminable and tortuous withal have been his wanderings that at the present moment he has not the least idea as to his whereabouts, or whether Shalalai is north, south, east, or west, or far or near--or indeed anything about it. One redeeming point about the situation is that after the first week of his captivity nothing more has been seen of Umar Khan. That obnoxious ruffian had disappeared as effectually as though death or his own free will had severed his connection with the band.

With the additional security the absence of the arch-brigand brought to him, there came fits of terrible depression. What was going to be the end of all this, and whither did they purpose to convey him? Northward, to wild untrodden regions of Afghanistan or Persia when the band should find it expedient to flee thither--and, what then? Sooner or later the enmity of Umar Khan would take effect in his murder, secret or open.

And he was so helpless, for though, as we have said, he had adopted their costume as well as their creed, and was suffered to go out and in among them at will, never by any chance did his custodians allow him aught in the shape of a weapon.

And now, as we see him here in the heart of the Kharawan desert, after the hour of prayer, the old Syyed for the twentieth time and with unswerving patience and copious diagram is explaining the exact position of the stone of Abraham and its distance from the holy Caaba, he makes up his mind to try and break the ice.

"Ask the Syyed, Buktiar," he says, "who was the Sirdar Dost Hussain Khan?"

But before the ex-chupra.s.si can put the question, a light dawns over the aged face. As the question is put it deepens and glows.

"Ya--Allah!" he responds, raising hands and eyes heavenward. "His soul is in the rim of Paradise, my son. Yet, what knowest thou of Dost Hussain Khan?"

Campian debated a moment or so what reply to make. There was nothing suspicious about this, for Orientals are never in a hurry. But he was spared the necessity of replying at all, for a diversion occurred which threw the camp into a state of wild excitement.

Away on the skyline a cloud of dust was rising. Onward it swept at a great rate of speed, whirling heavenward; and through it the tossing of horses' heads, and the white turbans of their riders.

The dust cloud whirled over them. Recovering from the momentary blindness of its effect, Campian beheld a score and a half of wild Baluchis dashing up on horseback. A dozen of these had leaped from their steeds, and--yes--they were coming straight for him. He had no weapon, yet in that flash of time he noticed that not a tulwar was drawn. They flung themselves upon him, bore him to the earth by sheer weight of numbers, and in a trice he was powerless, bound fast in a cruelly painful att.i.tude, being in fact trussed up in such wise as to be brought as nearly into the shape of a huge ball as the human frame is capable of being brought. Nor was this all. They rammed a gag into his mouth--a horrible gag composed of a wedge of wood covered with very dirty rag--and in this plight he was hauled to one of the kneeling camels, and, literally turned into a bale by being wrapped in sacking, was loaded up among the other packages upon the animal's back.

The agony of it was excruciating. Every bone in his body ached with the distortion of the enforced and unwonted att.i.tude. The rack would have been a joke to it. Moreover, what with the filthy gag, and the sacking which covered him, he was more than half suffocated. Flames danced and reeled before his eyes--his brain was bursting. Then a couple of sickening lurches and jolt--jolt--jolt. The roaring, snarling animal had risen and was proceeding at its ordinary pace--and now, in addition to the torture of his strained att.i.tude, the jolting impact of the other packages seemed in danger of crushing the life out of him against the pack saddle.

Wherefore this outrage? A moment before, free, comparatively almost one of themselves, and now--What was the meaning of this abominable treatment?

Ha! What was that? The trampling of horses--the rush of many hoofs-- nearer and nearer. Now it was thundering around--and racked, suffocated, half dead, in his agonising and ignominious position, the blood rushed tingling through the unfortunate man's frame, for over and above the sudden tumult rose a loud English voice. Rescue at last! In his sore and painful plight, he nearly fainted with the revulsion of the thought.

"Tell the devils to stop," it cried. "Now, Sohrab, ask them who they are, and all about themselves."

And he who listened there helpless, recognised the fresh, bluff voice.

It was that of his quondam camp-mate--Fleming. If only he could make his presence known--but that noisome gag rendered all sound as impossible as his bonds rendered movement. He heard the question put by the Baluchi interpreter, likewise the long-winded reply. Then another English voice--an impatient one.

"I believe we'd better push on, Fleming. These devils'll take half the day jawing here. I'm dead certain that was Umar Khan himself in that crowd just now, and they'll have nearly half an hour's start of us.

Let's get on, say I."

"I don't know quite what to do, Sinclair," said the first voice. "I've a good mind to overhaul these chaps' loads. There might be some clue in them--some bit of loot perhaps--which might be a guide to us."

Heavens! How the wretched prisoner strained and tugged at his bonds.

If he could but loosen that diabolical gag ever so slightly! He could see in imagination the whole scene--the two English officers at the head of their native troopers; the sullen, scowling Baluchis standing by their camels hardly deigning to do more than barely answer the questions put to them; then the impatience of the subaltern shading his eyes to gaze horizon-ward--and the more cautious, reflective countenance of the captain. Yes, he could see it all. Rescue, within a yard of him!

Great G.o.d! was it to reach him--to touch him, and yet pa.s.s him by? He strained at his bonds till his eyes seemed to burst from his head. One sound would bring him immediate rescue, immediate freedom--yet not by a hair's-breadth would that devilish gag relax its constraint.

"Pho! What could we find that would help us?" rejoined the impatient voice of the subaltern. "And every moment Umar Khan is putting another mile of this infernal desert between him and us."

The argument seemed to weigh. The sharp, crisp word to advance--the rattle of sabres and the jingle of bits; the thud of the troop-horses'

feet, and the swish of the thrown-up sand--all told its own tale to the ears of the wretched prisoner as the troop swept onward, literally within a couple of yards of him, and soon died away. Then the renewed jolt--jolt, told that the camels had resumed their interrupted march.

It was the last straw. Physical anguish and mental revulsion proved too much. The unfortunate man lost all consciousness in a dead swoon.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.