CHAPTER XVII.

MABEL'S PRESENTIMENT.

Mabel Trecarrel seemed to see or to feel the image of Waller become more vividly impressed upon her mind, now, as every day's journey, as every hour, and every mile towards the deserts of Great Tartary, increased the perils of her own situation, and seemed to add to the difficulties, if not entirely to close all the chances, of their ever meeting again on this earth; and as Bameean, a rock-hewn city, the Thebes of the East, and geographically situated in Persia, began to rise before the caravan, when it wound down from the Akrobat Pass, a deeper chill fell on her heart, for she had a solemn presentiment creeping over her that there all her sorrows, if not those of her companions too, should be ended.

A laborious progress of several miles, during which her now weary dhooley-wallahs staggered and reeled with fatigue, brought them from the mountain slopes into a plain, damp, muddy, and marshy, where from the plashy soil there rose a mist through which the city seemed to shimmer and loom, shadowy and ghost-like. A great portion of this plain was waste, and hence believed to be the abode of ghouls, afreets, and demons, who, in the dark and twilight, sought to lure the children of Adam to unknown but terrible doom.

A gust of wind careering over the waste from the Pass, rolled away, like a veil of gauze, the shroud which had half concealed the place they were approaching; and with a mournful and sickly interest, not unmixed with anticipated dread, Mabel and her friends surveyed the city of Bameean.

Rising terrace over terrace on the green acclivities of an insulated mountain, the bolder features and details shining in the ruddy sunlight, the intermediate spaces sunk in sombre shadow, it exhibited a series of the most wonderfully excavated mansions, temples, and ornamental caverns (the abodes of its ancient and nameless inhabitants), to the number of more than twelve thousand, covering a slope of eight miles in extent.

Many of those rock-hewn edifices, carved out of the living stone which supports the mountain, and are the chief portions of its foundation and structure, have beautiful friezes and entablatures, domes and cupolas, with elaborately arched doors and windows. Others are mere dens and caverns, with square air-holes; but towering over all are many colossal figures, more particularly two--a woman one hundred and twenty feet high, and another of a man, forty feet higher--all hewn out of the face of a lofty cliff.

By what race, or when, those mighty and wondrous works of art were formed, at such vast labour, no human record, not even a tradition, remains to tell; their origin is shrouded by a veil of mystery, like that of the ruined cities of Yucatan; so whether they are relics of Bhuddism, or were hewn in the third century, during the dynasty of the Sassanides, has nothing to do with our story. But the poor hostages, as they were conveyed past those silent, dark, and empty temples, abandoned now to the jackal, the serpent, and the flying fox, with the towering and gigantic apparitions of the stone colossi lookingly grimly down in silence, felt strange emotions of chilly awe come over them--the ladies especially. To Mabel Trecarrel, in her weak and nervous state, the scene proved too much; she became hysterical, and wept and laughed at the same moment, to the great perplexity of Saleh Mohammed, who was quite unused to such exhibitions among the ladies of _his_ zenanali.

Though stormed by Jenghiz Khan and his hordes, in 1220, after a vigorous resistance, this rock-hewn city, by its materials and massiveness, could suffer little; yet it was subsequently deserted by all its inhabitants, who named it "Maublig," or the _unfortunate_. After that time, its history sank into utter obscurity; its once-fertile plain reverted to a desert state once more; yet unchanged as when Bameean was in its zenith, its river of the same name flows past the caverned mountain, on its silent way to the snowy wastes where its waters mingle with those of the Oxus.

In this remote place the captives were all, as usual, enclosed in a walled fort which contained a few hovels of mud, where in darkness and damp they strove to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances permitted, with blankets, xummuls, and the saddles on which they had ridden.

The Dooranees of Saleh Mohammed had to keep sure watch and ward there, for the Usbec Tartars are the predominating people, and, though divided into many tribes, they are all rigid Soonees, with but small favour for the Afghans; and the prisoners soon learned that the unusual costume of Saleh Mohammed, instead of inspiring Zoolficar Khan, as he had expected, with wonder, only excited in that sturdy Toorkoman an emotion of contempt, that a Mussulman should so far degrade himself by adopting, even for a day, the dress of a Feringhee--a Kaffir; and they had something approaching to hasty words on the subject, when, on the first evening of their meeting, those dignitaries sat together on the same carpet under a date tree in the garden of the fort, while slaves supplied them with hot coffee, wheat pillau, pipes, and tobacco.

There, too, had Mabel been borne on a pallet, by the express permission of the Khan, that she might enjoy the sunshine; there was, he knew, no chance of her attempting to escape; and to prevent any covetous Toorkoman from playing tricks with the tender wares entrusted to him, he had a double chain of sentinels with loaded muskets planted round them, as Zoolficar Khan could perceive when reconnoitring the place, which was outside the city of Bameean, but immediately under the shadow of its temples and rock-hewn giants; for Zoolficar, having learned that Saleh Mohammed was proceeding towards the deserts with the captives to sell, to punish the men of their tribe for interference in the affairs of Afghanistan, was not indisposed to have the first selection from among them, and had resolved to look over "the lot" with a purchaser's eye.

He had already, over their pipes and coffee, broached the subject to Saleh Mohammed; but the latter, undecided in everything, save that he had to halt where he was for fresh orders from the Sirdir, Ackbar Khan, would not as yet listen to any proposals for selling or bartering, and eventually dozed off asleep, with the amber mouthpiece of the hubble-bubble in his mouth, leaving Zoolficar Khan to amuse himself as best he might.

Mabel, weary and faint with her long journey of nine consecutive days, though borne easily and carefully enough in a palanquin, lay listlessly and drowsily pillowed on her pallet, under the cool and pleasant shade of an acacia tree. Near her stood a tiny pagoda of white marble, carved as minutely and elaborately as a Chinese ivory puzzle; and before it was a tank wherein were floating some of the beautiful red lotus, the flowers of which far exceed in size and beauty those of the ordinary water-lily.

The slender, drooping, and fibrous branches of the acacia tree, so graceful in their forms and so tender in their texture, cast a partial shadow over her, and, as they moved slowly to and fro in the soft evening wind, by their rocking or oscillating motion predisposed her to slumber; and so, ere long, she slept, but slept only to dream of the past--the happy, happy past, for keenly did she and all who were with her realise now that "it is the eternal looking back in this world that forms the staple of all our misery."

Anon, she dreamed of the monotonous swinging of her palanquin, and the doggrel songs by which the poor half-nude bearers sought to beguile their toil and cheer the mountain way; now it was of Waller, with his fair English face, his handsome winning eyes, and frank, jovial manner, retorting some of the banter of Polwhele or Burgoyne. She was at her piano; he was hanging over her as of old, and their whispers mingled, though fears suggested that the horrible Quasimodo, the Khond, with his cat-like moustaches and mouth that resembled a red gash, was concealed somewhere close by; then she heard cries and shots--they were attacked by Hazarees, Ghazees, Ghilzies, or some other dark-coloured wretches; and with a little scream she started and awoke, to find that her veil had been rudely withdrawn--uplifted, in fact--in the hand of a man who stood under the acacia tree, and had been leisurely surveying her in her sleep with eyes expressive of inspection and satisfaction.

She shuddered, and a low cry of fear escaped her; for she knew by the cast of his face, by his air and equipment, that the stranger was a Toorkoman--the first who had come--by his unwelcome presence bringing fresh perils, as she knew, to all the English ladies; yet he was a handsome fellow, not much over five-and-twenty, and so like Zohrab Zubberdust in aspect and bearing, that they might have passed for brothers.

Mabel feebly struggled into a sitting posture, and, snatching her veil from his hand, looked steadily, perhaps a little defiantly, at Zoolficar Khan; for he it was who, when his older host dozed off, to dream of plunder and paradise, had proceeded to make a reconnaissance of whatever might be seen of the prisoners and their guards; for it might yet suit his interests or his fancy to cut off the whole caravan in a night or so. Thus, a few paces from where Saleh Mohammed was sleeping in the sunshine had brought him unexpectedly on Mabel!

He was a dashing fellow, whose dress was not the least remarkable thing about him. His trowsers, of ample dimensions, were of bright blue cloth, very baggy, and thrust into short yellow boots; he had on three collarless jackets, all of different hues, and richly fringed and laced; a large turban of silk of every colour, with a white heron's plume, to indicate that he was a chief; a shawl girdle, with sword, dagger, and long-barrelled awkward Turkish pistols stuck therein, completed his attire. His keen, sharp Tartar features, though suggestive of good humour by their general expression, were not, however, without much of cunning, rakish insolence, and the bold effrontery incident to a lawless state of society, a knowledge of power, and much of contempt or indifference for the feelings of others. He looked every inch one of those wild

"Toorkomans, countless as their flocks, led forth From th' aromatic pastures of the north; Wild warriors of the Turquoise hills, and those Who dwell beyond the everlasting snows Of Hindoo Koosh, in stormy freedom bred, Their fort the rock, their camp the torrent's bed!"

He simply gave the scared Mabel a smile, full of confidence and saucy meaning, and then turned away, leaving her a prey to emotions of fear--a fear that might have been all the greater had she heard what passed between him and Saleh Mohammed at the time when she, trembling in heart and feeble in limb, crept back to the ladies' huts to tell them, with lips blanched by terror, that "the first Toorkoman had come!"

And stronger than ever grew her presentiment within her.

The craving to hear of the movements of the three British armies which they knew to be still in Afghanistan was strong as ever in the hearts of the captives--to hear the last, ere a barrier rose between them and their past life; and that barrier seemed now to be the mighty chain of Hindoo Koosh rising between them and the way to India and to home. Long had they hoped against hope. Nott, and Pollock, and Sale--where were they and their soldiers? What were they doing? For the Dooranees would tell nothing. Had they and their forces been destroyed in detail, even as Elphinstone's had been? Those yells and noisy discharges of musketry, in which the captors at times indulged in honour of alleged victories over the three Kaffir Sirdirs, on tidings brought by wandering hadjis, filthy faquirs, and dancing dervishes, could they be justified? Alas! fate seemed to have done its worst!

Surmises were become threadbare; invention was worn out. Each of the poor captives had striven, by suggestions of probabilities and by efforts of imagination, to flatter themselves and buoy up the hearts of others; but all seemed at an end now.