Bertram Mitford

“ Mehriâb station, on the Shâlalai line of railway, was situated amid about as wild, desolate and depressing surroundings as the human mind could possibly conceive.
A narrow treeless plain—along which the track lay, straight as a wall—shut in by towering arid mountains, rising to a great height, cleft here and there by a chasm overhung by beetling cliffs—black, frowning and forbidding. At the lower end of the plain rose sad-hued mud humps, streaked with gypsum. There was nothing to relieve the eye, no speck of vivid green standing out from the parched aridity prevailing ”

“ The perspiration streamed from every pore at the prospect of the appalling torment to which they were about to subject him. Not even the thought that this was part of the forfeit he had to pay for the saving of Vivien availed to strengthen him. Unheroic as it may sound, there was no room for other emotion in his mind than that of horror and shrinking fear. The ring of savage, turbaned countenances thrust forward to witness his agony were to him at that moment as the faces of devils in hell.
Umar Khan drew his tulwar and laid its keen edge against one of the helpless man’s ankles. ”

“ They were there by accident, but, being there, their innate savagery and fanaticism blazed up in response to the maddening slogan of the Ghazis, with whom, almost to a man, they decided to make common cause. If ever a sharp and vivid contrast was to be witnessed it was here. The peaceful, prosaic, commonplace railway station platform of a few moments ago, was now a very hell of raging shaggy demons, yelling with fury and fanatical hate, rolling their eyes around in search of more victims, as they splashed and slipped in the blood of those they had already massacred. ”

“ These tents, in number about a dozen, are pitched among the trees of an apricot tope, whose leafage is just beginning to bud forth anew after the devastations of a flight of locusts. In front the valley bottom is open and comparatively level but behind, the mountain range rises rugged and abrupt—its face cleft by the black jaws of a fine tangi, narrow, but with perpendicular sides rising to an altitude of several hundred feet. This picturesquely forbidding chasm acts in rainy weather as a feeder to the now dry watercourse on whose bank the camp is pitched. ”

“ The events of the previous night came back to him—the long, wearisome journey, the exhausted steed, the sudden onslaught of the Ghazis, the pursuit—then that last desperate effort for life—the rolling flood, the jezail shot, and—oblivion. Now a thought struck him. Where was he? In a tent. But whose tent? Was he a captive in the hands of his recent assailants? Hardly. This was not the sort of treatment he would have met at their hands, even if the unmistakably European aspect of all the fittings and tent furniture did not speak for themselves. ”

“ The entire band of fervid devotees sprang to its feet as one man. Tulwars whirled from their scabbards, and, in a moment, the intruder was surrounded. Well might the latter now despair. Well might he realise that the bitterness of death was indeed past. All that he had gone through was as nothing. He had walked, with his eyes open, right into the midst of his enemies, had placed, of his own act, his life in their hands. Foremost among the threatening, scowling countenances was the repulsive, exultant one of Umar Khan.
“Ah! ah!” snarled this implacable savage, with a grin of exultation. ”

“ In the shade before the station master’s private quarters, a man was squatting—a wild, fierce-looking Baluchi. Before him the whole party now halted, treating him as with the deference due to a leader. But one glance at the grim, cruel face and eagle beak, and shaggy knotted brows, sufficed. In him Campian recognised the man who had scowled so demoniacally upon him in the retinue of the Marri sirdar—the man he had wounded and lamed for life when set upon by the Ghazis in the Kachîn valley. ”

“ Luckily the horse, forgetting for the moment its weariness in the terror of this sudden onslaught, sprang forward without waiting for the spurs now rammed so hard and deep into its ribs. But the assailants had chosen their ground well. The road here made a sudden descent—and was rough and stony withal. The fleet-footed mountaineers could travel as fast as the horse. Their flight over that rugged ground seemed as the flight of a bird.
The foremost, wellnigh alongside, held his sword ready for a fatal sweep. The awful devilish look on the face of this savage appalled the traveller. ”

“ Campian’s fate hung in the balance there in the pitchy gloom. Beneath him all black darkness, death, horror, annihilation. The merest feather weight either way would turn the scale. He let go of the chain with his feet. A last and mighty effort, and—he was lying safe and sound on the rock-floor above; well nigh unconscious with exhaustion and the awful strain his nerves had undergone.
For long he lay thus. Then the cravings of hunger became more than he could bear. Physical nature reasserted itself. He must obtain food at all risks. The forest bungalow was not far from that place. ”

“ Buktiar duly translated this, and the Baluchi answered:
“What do I gain? Revenge—blood for blood. But hearken. I had intended to strike off thy head, but thou shalt have thy life. Yet if Umar Khan must walk lame for the remainder of his life, why should the dog whose bite rendered him lame walk straight? Answer that, dog—pig—answer that,” growled the barbarian, grinding his teeth, and working himself up into a frenzy of vindictive rage. “Tell him what I said just now, Buktiar—that a brave man never bears malice for wounds received in fair fight,” was the answer. ”

“ And then with the growing hostility of those around, he framed a theory that they were but awaiting the return of Umar Khan to put him to death, with such adjuncts of cruelty as that implacable barbarian might feel moved to devise.
Would his fate ever be known? Why should it? Orientals were as close as death when they chose to keep anything a mystery. But what mattered whether it were known or not? Vivien? She would soon forget—or find some “duty” to console her, he told himself in all the bitterness fostered by his unnerved and strained state. ”

“ A volley laid them low. Then, with wild yells, expressive of mingled fanaticism and blood thirst, the savage Ghazis rushed along the platform waving their naked swords, and looking for more victims. They slashed the wretched Babu to pieces where he lay—and then seeing that their other victims were not quite dead—rushed upon them, and cut and hacked until there seemed not a semblance of humanity left. Whirling their dripping weapons on high in the bright sun, they looked heavenward, and yelled again in sheer mania as they tore back on to the platform. ”

“ The sun, newly risen, was flooding the valley with a rush of golden ether; reddening the towering crags, touching, with a silver wand, the carpet of dewdrops in the valley bottom, and mist-hung spider webs which spanned the juniper boughs—while from many a slab-like cliff came the crowing of chikór, pretty, defiant in the safety of altitude—rejoicing in the newly-risen dawn. ”

“ He learnt much of what had befallen since his captivity—of the arrest of the Sirdar, the anxiety as to his own fate, and the doings of Umar Khan, with whom his present friends seemed not altogether out of sympathy—in fact, he decided that if it depended upon their aid, the chances of capturing that redoubted freebooter were infinitesimal. Thus they fared onward, day after day, through tangi and over kotal, threading deep mountain valleys, and traversing sun-baked plains; now resting for the night at mud-walled villages, now camping out in the open beneath the desert stars. ”

“ 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 pass through many of them. ”

“ There emerged from the tent door, a figure clad in the full voluminous draperies and close veil of an Afghan woman.
She did not even look at the troop. She fled away over the plain as fast as her legs could carry her, uttering shrill screams. Those who looked on were filled with wild amaze. How could any living thing have escaped that volley? A movement made to pursue her was simultaneously checked, and then the Political Agent and some of the sowars entered the tent, but cautiously. ”

“ The old Syyed was genuinely rejoiced at beholding his neophyte once more. The latter, in spite of his own protests, anger, menaces even, had been spirited off by the lawless and irreligious followers of Umar Khan, nor had he been able to learn his whereabouts.
“Ah, my son,” he said at the close of their cordial greeting, “Allah watches over His own—and His Prophet holds hell in store for they who oppress them. Yet, it is well. I may no more be with thee to instruct thee in the fair flowers of the faith. Yet forget not that Allah has delivered thee in thine extremity, and that not once.” ”

“ Two men of his Pathân forest guard walk behind, one carrying his master’s gun, the other a few brace of chikór or grey partridge, an abominable unsporting biped, whom no amount of education will convince of his duty to rise and be shot. The evening has closed in wet and stormy, and the lightning gleam sheds its red blaze upon the white tents of the camp. ”

“ Would these wolves ever release their prey? Bhallu Khan was of a kindred tribe. What did he think of the chances? But the old forester, who, like most barbarians or semi-barbarians, always answer what they imagine the inquirers would like best to hear, replied that he thought the chances were good. All men loved money—even the sahibs would rather have plenty than little—he interpolated with a whimsical smile. Baluchi loved money too. Umar Khan would probably release his prisoner if plenty of rupees were offered him. ”

“ The Markhôr Cave. “There is a large section of our fellow subjects that votes Alpine climbing the most incomprehensible form of lunacy known to science, on the ground that to spend half one’s life, and putting the whole of it in pawn, scrambling up rocks and ice and snow, for the sake of getting to the top of some pinnacle which a hundred people have already got to, and thousands more eventually will, is to place one’s self beyond the pale of ordinary intelligence. ”

“ Life in camp among these elevated mountain ranges was healthful and not unpleasant. At an altitude of anything up to 8,000 feet the air stirred keen and fresh, and the climate of Shâlalai, the cantonment station where he had his headquarters in the shape of a snug, roomy bungalow and a garden in which he took much pride, was appreciated alike by himself and others, to whom recollection was still vivid of the torrid, enervating exhaustion of plains stations. Furthermore his term of retirement was not many years distant and on the whole, Upward found no great reason for discontent. ”

“ Don’t you notice it, Vivien?”
“I think so. It has a dispiriting effect on one, as if something was going to happen.”
The sun had gone down in a lurid haze, which was not cloud, and the jagged peaks of the opposite range were suffused in a hot, vaporous afterglow, while the dark depth of juniper forest in the deep, narrow valley seemed very far down indeed. ”

“ But if life, in its fatefulness, has refrained from dashing the cup of happiness—tardily yet finally grasped—from the hands of these two, its normal grimness of irony is not likely to suffer in the long run. For Umar Khan is still at large. Force and diplomacy alike have failed to bring that arch-free-booter and murderer within measurable distance of the gallows and faggot pyre, which he has so richly earned a score of times over. For the twenty-first time the wily evildoer has escaped retribution, and in all probability will continue to do so. ”

“ Thus Nesta Cheriton’s clear voice, which of course carried far enough to be heard by the favoured one, as she intended it should. The pair of discomfited warriors twirled their moustaches with mortification, but their way of accepting the situation was characteristic, for while Fleming laughed good-humouredly, if a trifle ruefully, Bracebrydge’s tone was nasty and sneering, as he replied:
“Variety is charming, they say, Miss Cheriton. Good thing for some of us we are not all alike—ah—ha—ha!” ”

“ The latter turned pale. Quick as thought, however, he had drawn a volume of the Korân from beneath his garments, and placed it upon his head.
“La illah il Allah”—he began.
”—Mohammed er rasool Allah,” (Note 2) chorused the blood thirsty savages, as though in one fierce war shout, turning to hack once more at the mangled carcase of the miserable Hindu.
“Hearken, my father,” said Umar Khan, pointing his rifle at the traveller. “A true believer is safe at the hands of other believers. But, father, delay not to deliver over the seven hundred rupees which are in thy sash.” ”