Caves of Terror, Talbot Mundy [best books under 200 pages txt] 📗

You see, they were scornful of women—then."

"Peace, woman!" the Mahatma growled. "Does a bee sting while it gathers honey? You spied on our secrets, but did we harm you for it?"

"You did not dare!" she retorted. "If I had been alone, you would have destroyed me along with those unfortunates on whose account you held the meeting. It would have been easy to throw me to the mugger. But you did not know how many women had overheard your secrets! You only knew, that more than one had, and that at least ten women witnessed the fate of your victims. Is that not so?"

"Victims is the wrong word. Call them culprits!" said the Gray Mahatma.

"What would the Government call them?" she retorted.

The Gray Mahatma curled his lip, but made no answer to that. Yasmini turned to King.

"So I knew enough of their secrets to oblige them either to kill me or else teach me all. And they did not dare kill me, because they could not kill all my women too, for fear of Government. So first they took me through that ordeal that you went through last night. And ever since then I have been trying to learn; but this science of theirs is difficult, and I suspect them of increasing the difficulty for my benefit. Nevertheless, I have mastered some of it."

"You have mastered none of it!" the Gray Mahatma retorted discourteously. "The golden light is the first step. Show me some."

"They thought they were being too clever for me," she went on. "They listened to my suggestion that it might be wise to show Athelstan King the mysteries, and send him to America to prepare the way for what is coming. So we set a trap for Athelstan. And Athelstan brought Ganesha with him. So now I have two men who know the secret, in addition to myself and all my women. And I have one man who has skill enough to learn the secret, now that he knows of it. Perhaps both men can learn it, and I know full well that one can."

"And then?" King suggested.

"You shall conquer the world!" she answered.

King smiled and said nothing.

"I am uncertain yet whether or not I shall choose to be queen of the earth!" she said. "Sometimes I think it would be fun for you and me to be absolute king and queen of everywhere. Sometimes I think it will be better to make some stupid person—say Ganesha here, for instance—king, and for ourselves to be the power behind the throne. What do you think, Athelstan?"

"I think," he answered.

"And you observe that the Gray Mahatma likewise thinks!" said she. "He thinks what he can do to thwart us! But I am not afraid! Oh dear no, Mahatma-ji, I am not at all fearful! Your secret is not worth ten seconds' purchase unless it is of use to me!"

"Woman, is your word worth nothing?" asked the Gray Mahatma. "You can not use what you know and keep the secret too. Let those two men escape, and the secret will be blown to the winds within the hour."

She laughed outright at him.

"They shall not escape, old raven-in-a-robe!"

Just then some of her women brought a table in, and spread it with fruit-laden dishes at the far end of the room. Yasmini rose to see whether all was as she wished it, and I got a chance, not only to look through the curtains, but also to whisper to King. He shook his head in reply to my question.

"Could you manage for two, do you think?" he asked; and by that I knew him for a vastly more than usually brave man. Consenting to what you know is sure to destroy you, if the other fellow fails, calls for courage.

"Makes a two to one chance of it," I answered.

"Very well, it's a bet. Give your orders!" said King.

The Mahatma sat rigid in mid-room with closed eyes, as if praying. His hands were crossed on his breast, and his legs twisted into a nearly unimaginable knot. He looked almost comatose.

The shutters and the glass windows were open wide to admit the morning breeze. Nothing was between us and freedom but the fluttering silk curtains and a drop of about seventy feet into an unknown river.

"Hold my hand," I said, "and jump your limit outward!"

The Gray Mahatma opened one eye and divined our intention.

"Mad!" he exclaimed. "So then that is the end of them!"

He believed what he said, for he sat still. But Yasmini came running, screaming to her women to prevent us.

King and I took off together, hand-in-hand, and I take my Bible oath that I looked up, and saw Yasmini and the Gray Mahatma leaning out of the window to watch us drown!

Of course, seventy feet is nothing much—provided you are used to the take-off, and know the water, and have a boat waiting handy to pick you up. But we had none of these advantages, and in addition to that we had the grievous handicap that King could not swim a stroke.

We took the water feet-first, close together, and that very instant I knew what we were up against. As we plunged under, we were whirled against a sunken pole that whipped and swayed in the current. King was wrenched away from me. When I fought my way to the surface I was already a hundred yards beyond the palace wall, and there was no sign of King, although I could see his turban pursuing mine down-stream. We were caught in the strongest current I had ever striven with.

I don't know what persuaded me to turn and try to swim against it for a moment. Instinct, I suppose. It was utterly impossible; I was swept along backward almost as fast as I had been traveling before. But what the effort did do was to bring me face-up-stream, and so I caught sight of King clinging to a pole and being bobbed under every time the weight of water caused the pole to duck. I managed to cling to a pole myself, although like King it ducked me repeatedly, and it was perfectly evident that neither of us would be alive in the next ten minutes unless a boat should come or I should produce enough brawn and brain for two of us. And there was no boat in sight.

So between ducks I yelled to King to let go and drift down toward me. He did it; and that, I believe, is the utmost test of cold courage to which I have ever seen any man subjected; for even a strong swimmer becomes panic-stricken when he learns he is no longer master of his element. King had the self-control and pluck to lie still and drift down on me like a corpse, and I let go the pole in the nick of time to seize him as his head went under.

Followed a battle royal. Fight how I might, I could not keep both of our heads out of the water more than half the time, and King very soon lost the little breath that was left in him. Thereafter, he struggled a bit, but that did not last long, and presently he became unconscious. I believed he was dead.

The choice then seemed to lie between drowning too or letting go of him. I did not dare try the shallows, for ninety per cent. of them are quicksands in that river, and more than one army has perished in the effort to force its way across. The only possible safety lay in keeping to mid-stream and sweeping along with the current until something should turn up—a boat—a log—possibly a backwater, or even the breakwater of a bridge.

So I decided to drown, and to annoy the angels of the underworld by taking as long as possible in the process. And I set to work to fight as I had never in my whole life fought before. It was like swimming in a millrace. The current swirled us this and that way, but everlastingly forward.

Sometimes the current rolled us over and over on each other, but for fifty per cent. of the time I managed to keep King on top of me, I swimming on my back and holding him by both arms, head nearly out of the water. I can't explain exactly why I went to all that trouble, for I was convinced he was dead.

I remember wondering what the next world was going to be like, and whether King and I would meet there, or whether we would each be sent to a sphere suited to our individual requirements—and if so, what my sphere would be like, and whether either of us would ever meet Yasmini, and what she would be doing there. But it never occurred to me once that Athelstan King might be alive yet, or that he and I would be presently treading mother earth again.

I remember several terrific minutes when a big tree came whirling toward us in an eddy, and my legs got tangled up in some part of it that was under water. Then, when I managed to struggle free, King's cotton loin-cloth became wrapped in a tangle of twigs and I could neither wrench nor break him free; whenever I tried it I merely sent myself under and pulled his head after me.

However, that tree suggested the possibility of prolonging the agony a while.

I seized a branch and tried to take advantage of it, using all my strength and skill to keep the tree from rolling over on King and submerging him completely. I can remember when we whirled under the steel bridge and the tree struck the breakwater of the middle pier; that checked us for a moment, and instead of sending us under, dragged King half out of the water, so that he lay after that on top of a branch.

Then the stream got us going again, and swung the butt end of the tree around so that I was forced by it backward through the arch of the bridge; and after that for more than a mile we were waltzed round and round past sand-banks where the alligators lay on the look-out for half-burned corpses from the burning ghats higher up.

At last we swung round a curve in the river and came on a quiet bay where they were washing elephants. The current swung the tree inshore to a point where it struck a submerged sand-bank and stuck there; and there we lay with the current racing by, and King bobbing up and down with his head out of water, and I too weak by that time to break off the twig around which his loin-cloth was wrapped.

Well, there we were; but after a few minutes I raised enough steam for the whistle at all events. I yelled until my own ear-drums seemed to be bursting and my lungs ached from the pressure on the water in them, and after what seemed an eternity one of the mahouts on shore heard me.

Hope surged triumphant! I could see him wave his arm, and already I saw visions of dry land again, and a disappointed Yama! But I was overlooking one important point: we were in India, where rescues are not undertaken in a hurry.

He called a conference. I saw all the mahouts gather together in one place and stare at us and talk. They swung their arms as they argued. I don't know what argument it was that finally appealed to the mahouts, but after an interminable session one of them fetched a long rope and nine or ten of them climbed on the backs of three big elephants. They worked their way a little bit upstream, and then came as close as the elephants dared. One of the big brutes felt his way cautiously to within twenty yards, and then threw up his trunk and refused to budge another inch.

At that a lean, naked, black man stood up on his rump and paid out the rope down-stream. He had to make nine or ten attempts before it finally floated within reach of my hand. Then I made it fast to the tree and, taking King in my right arm, started to work my way along it. It was just as well I did that, and got clear of the branch; for the mahouts passed the rope around the elephant's neck and set him to hauling; he rolled the tree over and over, and that would surely have been the end of King and me if we had been within reach of the overturning branches. As it was I clung to the rope and the elephant hauled the lot of us high and dry.