CHAPTER X

THE UNDERWORLD

Meanwhile, what of Jackson and Hamid Gul?

The former, more nervous and highly-strung than either of his friends, had suffered still more poignantly the malignant influence of the monster's eye. Like them, he had been taken that morning to the foot of the stairway, but the sight of the dizzy ascent had proved too much for him. He could not bring himself to face it, and returned to his cell, where he had remained all day in miserable solitude, his meals being brought to him at intervals.

Hamid Gul, the first to fall into unconsciousness, was also the first to revive. He came to himself as he was being carried along the corridor to the cell allotted him, and immediately began to plead for mercy on the ground that he was only a servant, only the humble cook. One of the priests, who understood Hindustani, had reasons of his own for testing the man's skill. Accordingly Hamid, after a night of solitude, was conducted to the kitchen attached to the priestly buildings on the plateau, and ordered to prepare one of his most appetising dishes. The man was as quick-witted as he was timorous. Like many native servants, he cherished a dog-like devotion for his master, and instantly made up his mind to employ his utmost art in the hope of ingratiating himself with his captors to the advantage of the whole party. He concocted one of Forrester's favourite dishes, under the eye of the priest, who, having made him eat a portion, as a precaution against poison, carried the rest away. Returning presently, he said "It is well," and informed Hamid that he was to consider himself attached, at any rate temporarily, to the kitchen staff. Hamid was delighted with his success, and would have been wondrously elated if he could have foreseen the remarkable events that were to spring from his clever cooking.

Forrester had dreaded the approach of night, when he would again have to encounter the unwinking glare of the eye. As soon as he had finished the meal brought to him by two negritos, as before, and was locked in, he took from his pocket the small article given him by the Indian girl. It looked like a tightly folded sheet of paper, greyish in colour. It crackled slightly in his hand. Opening it, he found it to be a thin sheet of some unfamiliar substance, about eighteen inches square. The only material to which he could compare it was mica; but on holding it between his eyes and the window, through which came the reflected glow of the setting sun, he discovered that it was more transparent than mica, but less than glass. From the first he had felt little confidence in the statement of the Indian girl. If this strange substance was a defence against the Eye, why had not the little negrito kept it for himself? Now that its transparency was proved, he lost even the slight hope which the girl's words had inspired. If pervious to daylight, how could this flimsy sheet give any protection against the incalculable force that must emanate from the Eye?

When darkness fell, and the green glow from the eye of the monster on the wall dominated the little apartment, Forrester, rather from curiosity than with any belief in the efficacy of the screen, held it before his eyes. To his amazement, it was absolutely effective. The glow diminished to a faint luminosity. All its searching brilliance, its compelling power, was gone. He moved the screen aside to make sure that the light was still there, that it was not eclipsed by some other agency. He was immediately undeceived, and again held the screen between his eyes and the monster. What appeared to him still more remarkable was that, protected as he was now from the light, he felt little of that terrible depression of spirits which had tortured him on the previous night.

Mackenzie's suggestion recurred to his mind. The monster's eye was part of the fell machinery employed by the Old Man of the Mountain to crush the spirits of his victims. He relied upon its influence sooner or later to terrorise their minds into utter subjection to his own. From his one night's experience, Forrester felt that the desired effect would supervene soon rather than late: no mortal man could long withstand the mysterious force which the glaring eye exercised upon him. He instantly resolved to divide the screen next day into three portions, if that were practicable, and give one secretly to each of his comrades, supposing that Jackson appeared on the plateau. The fragments might avail to arrest the gradual breaking down of their will-power.

Early next morning, before he could attempt to carry out his design, the door was opened, and the guards made signs that he was to follow them. Expecting to be led again to the stairway, he rose with alacrity. But his guides soon turned off into a passage branching from the corridor he had traversed on the previous day, and his heart sank with misgiving as he recognised presently the ante-chamber giving access to the Temple.

He was detained there for a few minutes until joined by Mackenzie and Jackson. The aspect of the latter struck him with anxious foreboding. Jackson was deathly pale: his features were pinched, his eyes dull and ringed with dark shadows.

"The Eye!" he murmured, and a shudder shook him.

There was no time for speech between them. They were led into the Temple, where the priests were already assembled, ranged in two rows as before. There was the same period of silent waiting; the same prostration to the floor when the mist ascended before the throne; the same gradual revelation of the August and Venerable. Again they chanted the solemn litany, and during the performance the Englishmen grew faint with apprehension lest it were to be followed by a ghastly scene like that which they had formerly witnessed.

The last response was uttered; an ominous silence brooded over the place; then Mackenzie and Forrester saw with a shiver of horror, between two priests advancing, the shrinking form of Lilavanti. She was lifted on to the pedestal, and silently bound to the framework; then the shaven figure on her left made his genuflexions and began to declare her crime. The Englishmen, of course, understood not a word of his recital; they were indeed as though frozen stiff to the floor. But when the first accuser had come to an end, and his colleague had bowed thrice to the awful figure on the throne before taking up the tale, the girl turned her head slightly and threw upon Forrester a glance in which he read a last anguished plea for help. A hot thrill surged through him; he felt his cheeks flush; and, clenching his fists, he sprang forward, into the gap between the ranks of the priests, and strode swiftly up the floor towards the throne.

"Stop! Stop!" he cried, raising his hands aloft.

There was not a movement among the priests. So well disciplined were they, or so terrified at what might ensue upon any infraction of the customary order, that each man remained steadfast in his place. If any looked at the profane audacious stranger, it must have been from the corners of his eyes.

At Forrester's impulsive movement Mackenzie took a step or two forward, under the instinctive prompting to support his friend. But reflection brought him to a standstill. He could do nothing at present: the prudent part was to await the issue of Forrester's intervention: perhaps his aid would be more valuable later on.

Forrester had started almost at a run, looking straight at the immobile countenance of the Old Man on the throne. But the nearer he drew to it, the slower he went. Under the steady gaze of those piercing eyes he felt his courage oozing away; he almost forgot his purpose. He struggled against the paralysis that seemed to be creeping over him; but when, standing immediately beneath the throne, he tried to raise his arms, they fell limp to his sides; when he tried to utter the burning words of entreaty on his lips, he could only mutter and mumble. And when the August and Venerable rose slowly in his place, and Forrester saw more clearly than before the lozenge-shaped ornament on his head-dress, from which the destructive beam had appeared to flash forth, he felt within his soul that he was about to share with the Indian girl the same annihilating doom.

A breathless stillness filled the Temple. Then the Old Man spoke, and his words seemed to Forrester like drops of ice-cold water falling on his head.

"You offer yourself to judgment in place of the girl?"

Unknown to Forrester, such substitution was frequently practised in China. He scarcely understood the meaning of what he had heard. Commanding his voice with an effort, he whispered:--

"Spare her! Do her no harm!"

The blazing eyes pierced him through and through; but the Old Man's voice, when he spoke again, was cold and emotionless as ever. Mackenzie, at the end of the Temple, wondered whether the wizened figure on the throne retained the least drop of warm blood in his veins, the least remnant of humanity.

"You oppose your puny strength to the Law of the Eye?"

"No, no," Forrester whispered. "She is a young girl; have mercy upon her!"

"The Law of the Eye knows no mercy," the calm voice went on. "Whoso transgresses, shall he not be cut off, even in the flower of his youth? In ignorance you have profaned this holy place: the Law ordains that the ignorant shall be chastised until he becomes wise. Its ordinances shall be fulfilled from generation to generation, even until the world dissolves. You shall be made wise, and when wisdom is yours, you shall once more, and once only, behold the Power of the Eye. You shall see that fair flower of maidenhood wither and become dust; then shall you yourself suffer the selfsame penalty, and your dust shall mingle with hers."

Speechless, fascinated, Forrester stood as though transfixed, scarcely conscious that Lilavanti was reprieved. The quivering screen rose before his eyes; the figure of the Old Man seemed to flicker and dissolve into it. He was unaware of what went on behind him--that the girl had been released from the pedestal and taken out; that Mackenzie, his joy at his friend's respite swallowed up by dismay and dread of the future, was led away to his cell; that Jackson had been carried out in a swoon; that the priests had passed out in silent procession--all but one.

Presently he rose at the touch of a hand. Staggering to his feet, he saw that the vast chamber was empty save for the priest at his side. Unresisting he allowed himself to be led through the hall into the ante-chamber, where the negrito guards, trembling in every limb, were awaiting him. They filed out before him into the corridor, and he followed them, supposing that they were leading him back to his cell. Unheeding, he did not know that they passed his bolted door. Only when they stood back, and he saw, in the dim green light, a stairway descending in the rock before him, did he become aware that he was in a part strange to him. Turning round, he asked the priest where he was. The mute immobile figure merely raised an arm and pointed downwards at the stairway.

Forrester was incapable of resistance, protest, expostulation. He felt helpless as a child, compelled to obey the behest of a stronger will. Slowly he began to descend the stairs. The negritos followed in a line, their spears slanted on their shoulders, and the priest in his wide flowing robes brought up the rear. Forrester, if he had been able to think, might have remembered that he had seen just such a procession passing like shades across the wall of the rift.

Down, always down, they went, until, after treading perhaps a hundred steps, they came to a long smooth stairless slope, steep enough to demand an effort lest the walking pace became an involuntary run. Presently there were more steps. At the foot of this second stairway the narrow, shallow tunnel--for it was no more--turned sharply to the left, and the floor again sloped, but this time upwards. Another series of stairs appeared. On ascending this Forrester, at length becoming awake to his surroundings, noticed that the greenish light was growing perceptibly brighter. He went on, up another incline, the floor of which was covered with a yielding deposit, apparently of dust that had fallen from the roof. Yet another flight of steps had to be mounted. Then the tunnel broke abruptly to the right, and a few paces more brought Forrester, more and more bewildered as he more completely recovered his wits, to the opening of a large cave on his left.

He glanced into the entrance, and was amazed to see a sheet of water, rippling a little in the greenish glow, and extending beyond eyeshot. The water washed the walls; but there was a narrow ledge of rock that lay uncovered, skirting the wall on the left. Forrester turned about to enquire whether he was to proceed along this ledge, and discovered that the negritos had halted some twenty paces in his rear, blocking up the tunnel. Behind them the taller figure of the priest stood with arm outstretched towards the cave.

Taking this as a command to go on, Forrester wheeled round, and walked towards the ledge, wondering with sickly apprehension what lay in the dim greenish mist beyond, and why his escort had not accompanied him. Glancing to the right as he reached the ledge, he saw, in a recess commanding the entrance to the cavern, a group of armed negritos and a priest standing behind them. There could be no doubt that they were placed there as a guard: the recess was a sort of wardroom.

He proceeded along the ledge, and came in about twenty yards to a gap, bridged by a broad plank with a handrail on the side towards the lake. He crossed this, went along the continuation of the ledge on the farther side, and arrived suddenly at the entrance of another cave, larger and more lofty than the first, rising to a vaulted roof like the nave of a cathedral. Its floor of rock was a foot or two above the level of the lake. Entering it, he saw a number of human figures, seated at the further end. One of them rose on seeing a stranger, and after a brief hesitation, stepped hastily forward to meet him. With a gulp and a half articulate cry, Forrester quickened his step, and in a few moments was grasping a firm hand, and looking amazedly into an English face.