CHAPTER XI.

THE ABODE OF THE KHOND.

Seated on the floor were Zohrab Zubberdust and two other men.

One was the Hindoo banker. He was slight in figure, with diminutive hands and feet; like all his vast race, he was of a dark-brown colour, with straight black hair, that seemed almost blue when the light struck it, hanging straight and lankly behind his large ears--an undoubted worshipper of Brama, of the monkey god, and of all those unnumbered idols that for forty centuries have been the objects of adoration to millions upon millions--even before the Temple of Juggernaut was built. He sat cross-legged on a _nummud_, or carpet of red frieze, above which was spread a yellow calico covering. A cushion supported his back. He had cast off his headdress, slippers, and tunic--the day had been warm--and all save his loose dhottee, or what passed for unmentionables. He had the eye of Siva painted in the centre of his forehead (the eye that, by winking once, involved the world in darkness for a thousand years), thereby adding to the diabolical grotesquerie of his visage; and he was occupied from time to time by indulgence in the "eighth sensual delight" of the Hindoos--chewing betel-nut, a hot and aromatic stimulant.

The other interesting native of India who sat beside him, smoking hempseed and bhang in a handsome hubble-bubble, which had snake-like coils covered with red and gold-coloured thread rising from a stem of silver, shaped like a trumpet, was Ferishta Lodi, the Khond, whose attire consisted of little more than the amount indulged in by his Hindoo friend; but, unlike the puny latter, he was a man of powerful and muscular frame, great in stature, and terribly hideous in face and figure. He was rather pale-complexioned, for a Khond; but his visage bars description, for ugliness of contour and expression,--it was that of a tiger, but a tiger pitted with small-pox, the few wiry bristles of his moustache that stuck fiercely out from his long, upper lip, the fiery carbuncular red of his eyes, with two long and sharp side tusks, completing the illusion or resemblance.

Looking wonderfully handsome by contrast to those two men, Zohrab lounged between them, propped against the wall by a soft cushion; his bright steel cap, his beautiful Persian sabre, and gilded pistols lay near him; he had a long cherry-pipe stick in his mouth, and close by was a flask of Cabul wine, in which, natheless the wise precepts of Him of Mecca, he was indulging, greatly to Mabel's apprehension, somewhat freely.

"And so, Ferishta," said he, "the infernal Kuzzilbashes are in search of me too, you say?"

"Yes--aga; three rissallahs, at least."

"From where?"

"Shireen's fort."

"And led by whom?"

"The Khan Shireen in person."

"But how know you that they are after me?"

"Because I heard Shireen say, when he met Mohammed Saleh near Baber's tomb, that had he not been certain that the false plotter was Overhearing Zohrab, he might imagine that an evil spirit, like Sakkar, had assumed his shape and voice, to delude them both, and the Feringhee woman too. But that is all bosh; for who believes in such things now?"

The dark eyes of Zohrab sparkled dangerously. He might have pardoned some such slighting speech in a devout Hindoo, even in a Christian; but in a Jew, or one professing the horrible tenets of a Khond, he could not let it pass without remark.

"Dare you say that the evil spirit, Sakkar, did not once assume the shape of Solomon, on possessing himself of his magic signet, and alter all the laws of the world for forty days and nights?"

"I dare say nothing about it," replied the other, sulkily: "I am a Khond."

"And, as such, accursed of God!" muttered Zohrah, under his teeth; for at that precise juncture of his affairs he could afford to quarrel with none--his present hosts least of all.

The banker looked uneasy, and crammed into his mouth an extra allowance of the eighth delight, ever the solace of the Hindoo race, and held in such estimation that Ferishta, the Moslem historian, writing in 1609, when describing the magnitude of the Indian city of Canaye, says that it contained thirty thousand shops for the sale of betel-nut alone.

Zohrab, though he sometimes broke the laws of the Koran, just as many an excellent Christian, or one who perfectly believes himself to be such, may transgress the laws of his Bible, loathed the unbelieving Khond, as he should have loathed a Jew or a fire-worshipping Gueber; but, circumstanced as he was, he felt himself compelled to listen to a speech like the following; for the Khonds are a low race of idolaters, and glory in announcing themselves as such, and in decrying the gentler creeds of others.

"The faith of your prophet would never have suited us, Aga Zohrab, though we cannot say, like the Bedouins, we have no water in the desert, and therefore cannot perform ablutions, as we have wells, and to spare, in our sacred groves; but like those Bedouins, our people, who dwell in rocks and on the mountains, have no money, therefore we cannot give alms; while the forty days' fast of Hamad an must prove useless to poor people who fast all the year round; and if the presence of God be everywhere, why go all the way to seek Him in a black stone at Mecca? Besides, your prophet, like that of the Feringhees, teaches, I am told, repentance--a perilous institute, for may not a man say, 'I may commit a thousand crimes, and, if I repent me, I may be forgiven; and as it will thus be no worse for me, I may as well continue to sin and enjoy myself even unto the end!' Is it not so, aga?"

Zohrab, more of a soldier than a logician, and readier with his sabre than his tongue, was unable quite to follow the strange argument of the Khond; he could only glare at him with bent brows and dilated nostrils, while asserting angrily that which had nothing exactly to do with the matter--that he believed devoutly in the power and miracles of his Prophet--that the waters gushed at will from the fingers of the latter--that he was conveyed by a mysterious animal, called a Borak, from Mecca to Jerusalem--that in one night he performed a journey of ten thousand years--that a holy pigeon, sent from heaven, whispered revelations in his ear,--not to pick peas thereat, as the accursed Kaffirs asserted,--that he proselytised the Genii, and did many more incredible things: to all of which the Hindoo, whose beliefs were altogether of a different kind, listened with the stolid aspect of one of his own bronze idols; but the Khond did so with covert mockery on his terrible face; while poor Mabel dreaded a growing quarrel, as it was evident that the fiery and impatient Zohrab abhorred the companionship and protection of Ferishta Lodi; for he was a reckless soldier, valuing his own life little, and the lives of others less.

It was evident that, in the heat of the present discussion, he had forgotten all about her, till suddenly the Khond said--

"We talk too loud, aga, and may be overheard. I told you who were on your track----"

"Yes; and by the eight gates of paradise, and the seven gates of hell, I am not likely to forget them!"

"Well, have you taken means to ensure flight?"

"Wherefor?" asked Zohrab fiercely.

"I mean, if traced."

"I have my sword and horse," was the curt reply.

"But the Feringhee woman?"

"Allah! I had all but forgotten her!" said Zohrab, starting.

"Right: sacrifice your property for your life, and your life for your religion; but make not yourself the captive of a woman. Now, if traced, what, I ask, of the Kaffir slave?"

"By the soul of the Prophet!" exclaimed Zohrab, in great and sudden perplexity, "what can I do, but leave her here?"

"Sell her to the young Shah: she is worth a thousand mohurs," suggested the Hindoo banker.

"The coward has fled," said Zohrab.

"She is beautiful as the one he lost, and whom he mourned so much that it required the whole seraglio to console him."

"Poor fellow!" sneered Zohrab.

"I will buy her of you for two hundred tomauns, paid down," said the Khond. "Money is useful to those who are fugitives."

"Buy her--for a wife?" asked Zubberdust, changing colour. The Khond laughed; and his laugh was as the growl of some strange animal, as he replied--

"No: a Khond marries a Khond."

"For what, then?"

"The purposes of that religion we have been discussing just now," replied the other, deliberately and in a low voice.

Mabel heard this suggestion without exactly comprehending what it meant at the time; but she could see that a crimson flush of shame and passion came over the dark face of Zohrab; his eyes literally sparkled and flashed with the fury of deep and sudden passion, as he sprang to his feet, snatched up his sabre and half drew it, choking with intensity of utterance, ere he could speak; for the Khonds are a race of cruel and barbarous idolaters, who live in the more inaccessible mountain ranges of India, and were quite unknown till the beginning of her present Majesty's reign, when, by the military operations undertaken in Goomsoor and on the Chilka Lake--a long and narrow inlet from the sea--and when our troops from thence ascended the range of Ghauts, we made the acquaintance of this most ancient but hitherto unknown race of aborigines, whose religion, a distinct Theism, with a subordinate demonology, requires (as Captain Macpherson first discovered) a human sacrifice periodically to the godhead, the fetish or spirit whom they style Boora Penna, or the Source of Good, who created all things by casting five handfuls of earth around him; but, like more enlightened folks, the Khonds have their schismatics and sceptics, who dispute bitterly, and hate each other as cordially as Christians can do,--but about the origin of mountains, meteors, and whirlwinds, where the rivers come from, where they go to, and so forth.

It is to Tari, the wife of this Boora Penna, that the propitiatory human sacrifices are periodically offered (in groves which are dark, gloomy, and deemed holy as those of our Druids were in Europe), amid the most horrible rites, roasting over a slow fire, for one, about the time when the ground is cropped, so that each family may procure and bury a little of the victim's flesh in the soil, to ensure prosperity, and avert the malignity of the goddess, who otherwise might blast their rice, maize, or vines; and the immolation takes place amid wild jollity, deep drunkenness, and debauchery.

Aware of the complete isolation and helplessness of Mabel, the Khond saw how readily and easily he had a victim at hand; and what could prove more acceptable to Tari than the young, beautiful, and pure daughter of an alien race and creed? And the Hindoo schroff, accustomed to the incessant infanticide practised by his people, and their death-festivals at Juggernaut, saw nothing remarkable in the matter, and sat chewing his betel-nut with perfect equanimity.

Not so Zohrab Zubberdust! His passion knew no bounds. He had sprung to his feet, and fully unsheathed his sabre.

"May thy mother's grave be defiled--if indeed such be possible, O dog of an idolater!" he exclaimed, and was about to cut him down; and doubtless might have sliced his head in two, like a pumpkin, but for sudden sounds in the now partially darkened street without, that arrested the unlifted sabre.

These were the loud murmur of a multitude, the barking of pariah dogs, the trampling of horses, the voices of men in authority, and other undoubted tokens of the house being surrounded.

The glittering blade of Zohrab drooped for a moment. He passed his left hand across his brow. Then he smiled with proud disdain as he placed his steel cap on his head, and twisted the turban-cloth around it. Next he drew a pistol from his belt, while the diminutive Hindoo became pea-green with fear, and an expression of almost mad ferocity seemed to pass over the face and to swell the great chest of the Khond, Ferishta Lodi. Danger and death were at hand, he knew; but not on whom they might fall.

Zohrab rushed to a window on one side. The narrow alley was filled by a mass of armed men on foot and on horseback. He saw the mail-shirts of the Hazir-bashis, the flashing of weapons, and the red smoky light of the matches in the locks of the juzails. He hurried to another window; it opened to the court where the mulberry-trees grew. It was full of red-capped Kuzzilbashes, mounted and accoutred, some carrying red flashing torches; and high amid the excited and bristling throng towered old Shireen Khan on his favourite camel. He was brandishing his long lance, and gesticulating violently to Saleh Mohammed, who was mounted on a beautiful white Tartar horse.

The opening of the window caused them and many others to look up. Then Zohrab was seen and recognised by several.

"Dog, whose father has been damned! at last, at last, we have thee!" hissed Saleh Mohammed, through his dense beard, as he shook his sabre upward; and a yell from his people followed, mingled with the thunder of mallets on the entrance door.

"Dog of a Dooranee thief, take that!" cried the reckless Zohrab, firing his long pistol full at Saleh Mohammed (beside whom a man fell dead), and then taking his measures in an instant, he rushed from the room, and ascending by a narrow stair to the roof of the house, which he knew to be flat, by superhuman strength he tore up the ladder, cutting off pursuit--for a mere wooden ladder it was--and tossed it on the heads of the armed throng below. A number of large clay vases, filled with gigantic geraniums and other flowers, with four cross-legged marble idols of Siva, Deva, Vishnu, and Brama, the property of the banker, he hurled down in quick succession also, to increase the danger and confusion; and each, as it fell crashing upon the turbaned heads, the brown upturned faces, and fierce eyes that gleamed in the torchlight below, elicited a storm of yells and the useless explosion of several rifles which were levelled upward, and the balls from which either starred upon the walls or whistled harmlessly away into the darkness.

Zohrab, brave as a lion, now almost leisurely reloaded his long pistol, and felt the edge and point of his sabre with the forefinger of his left hand. It was an old Ispahan sword--one of those famous blades made and tempered by Zaman, the pupil of Asad. Formed of Akbarer steel, it rung like a bell, and Zohrab valued this sword as second only to his own soul. He had taken it in battle from an old Beloochee, who was following Mehrib Khan to the siege of Khelat, and it was valued at two thousand rupees. Many times had that good weapon saved his life; it had ever been at his side by day, or under his pillow by night; and now he kissed it tenderly, with fervour in his heart and a prayer on his lips, for a knowledge came over him that, though he might escape, the end seemed close and nigh. He looked to the sky; it was enveloped in masses of flying clouds.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, hopefully, "the star of Zohrab may yet again shine out in God's blessed firmament!"

Then he looked over the sea of flat-terraced roofs that spread around him, and from amid which the round, dark domes of the mosques and the greater mass of the Bala Hissar--rock, tower, and rampart, tier upon tier--stood abruptly up; and over these roofs he knew that he must make his way, if he would escape some dreadful death, such as impalement by a hot ramrod prior to decapitation; for Ackbar Khan and Saleh Mohammed would accord him small mercy indeed.

"Kill him!"

"Slay the ghorumsaug!"

"Drink his blood!"

"Death to the Sooni!" cried some.

"Death to the follower of Shi!" cried others, equally at random. Such were some of the shouts that loaded the night air in the streets below, where the blue gleaming of keen sabres, of tall lances, and long juzail-bayonets was incessant; for not only was the house, but even the alley itself was environed on all hands.

"A _chupao_* with a vengeance!" muttered Zohrab, as by one vigorous bound he leaped from the roof on which he stood to that of the opposite street, the distance between being little more than six or seven feet. The action was not unseen; a heavy volley of rifle-shot whizzed upward--we say, _whizzed_, for the bullets were round, not conical. There was a furious spurring of horses, a rush of the crowd, and many armed men now entered the houses, to make their way upon the roofs, and to attack or capture him there; but Zohrah, light, active, and lithe, only waited to draw breath, ere he sprang across the deep, dark gulf of another narrow street, then another, and another.

* Night attack.

Meanwhile, forgotten and left to herself, Mabel, with terror, heard all these hostile sounds dying away in the distance. Her just indignation at Zubberdust for the cruel trick he had played, and the new dangers amid which he had left her, had now passed away; and amid the fears she had for her own future fate, she was too womanly, too generous, and too tender of heart, not to feel intense compassion for a single human being--a brave young man, too--hunted in this terrible fashion from house-top to house-top, like a wild animal. Yet she could but tremble, cower on her knees, utter pious invocations in whispers, and, pausing, listen fearfully to the dropping fire of shots and the occasional yells in echoing streets without, till a firm and bold grasp was laid upon her tender arm. She looked up, and found herself looked down upon by the hideous face of the Khond, then lighted up by an indescribable expression. She remembered all she had overheard, and all she had read in "Macpherson's Religion of the Khonds," and she became well-nigh palsied with fear.

"O my God!" she exclaimed, and closed her eyes. Then, that she might see no more of that horrible visage, being dressed like an Afghan woman, she instantly lowered her veil, according to the custom which has prevailed in the East ever since the days when "Rebekah took one, when she perceived Isaac coming towards her, and covered herself;" but with a fierce, mocking laugh, the Khond tore it off, and, after surveying her fully and boldly, went out, securing the panel of the room behind him by a strong wooden bolt.

Four, five, even seven streets were crossed in mid air, in a succession of flying leaps, by Zohrab successfully, when, just as breath was beginning to fail him, a shot from a juzail ripped up his right thigh, rending the muscles fearfully, and the blood from a lacerated artery issued in a torrent from the wound.

"May the snares of Satan and the thunder-smitten be on the head of him who fired the shot!" moaned Zohrab, as he reeled and staggered, unable to leap again, while on the flat-terraced roof of a house he had left there came swarming up several dismounted Dooranees, armed with rifles, swords, and pistols.

He faced furiously about: the roof was perfectly open, for there was neither cornice nor parapet to crouch behind. He fired both his pistols, and with each shot a man dropped in quick succession. At the same moment several balls were fired at him; three struck him in the body, and he sank half-powerless on his knees, but in weakness--_not_ supplication. He hurled his pistols at his destroyers, and then, lest any of them should ever possess his beloved Ispahan sword, he snapped the blade across his knee as if it had been brittle glass, and cast the glittering fragments among the crowd below.

In a piercing voice he exclaimed, as he threw up his arms. "Ei dereeghâ, ei dereeghâ, oo ei dereegh! Would to Thee, O God, that I had never been tempted--had never seen her!" and then inspired by what emotion we know not, unless it were to seek succour for Mabel, and to have her saved from the terrible Khond, he took off the cloth of his turban, the last appeal a Mohammedan can make when imploring mercy for himself or a friend, and was waving it above his head, when a ball pierced his brain; he gave a convulsive bound upwards, and fell dead and mangled into the street below.

In half an hour after this, the head of "Zohrab the Overbearing" was placed in the public Charchowk, beside that of the unfortunate baronet, Sir William Macnaghten.