Newspapers / The Roanoke Beacon and … / Feb. 8, 1918, edition 1 / Page 2
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A Thrilling Story of German the Fierce Hillmen of India During the War KING FACES THE BIGGEST ADVENTURE OF HIS CAREER SO FAR WHEN HE COMES TO THE ENTRANCE OF KHINJAN CAVES AND PROVES HIM SELF A MURDERER. Synopsis. At the beginning of the world war Capt. Athelstan King of the British Indian army and of its secret service, is ordered to Delhi to meet Yasmini, a dancer, and go with her to Kinjan to meet the outlaws there who are said by spies to be preparing for a jihad or holy war. On his way to Delhi King quietly foils a plan to assassinate him and gets evidence that Yasmini is after him. He meets Rewa Gunga, Yasmini's man, who says she has already gone north, and at her town house witnesses queer dances. Ismail, an AfridI, be comes his body servant and protector. lie rescues some of Yasmini's' hillmen and takes them north with him, tricking the Hangar into going ahead. The Rangar deserts him at a dangerous time. He meets his brother at Ali Masjid fort. The disguise he assumes there fools even the sharp-eyed cutthroats composing his guard. CHAPTER X. 6 Even with the man with the stom ach ache mounted on the spare horse for the sake of extra speed (and he was not suffering one-fifth so much as he pretended) ; with Ismail to urge, and King to coax, and the fear of mountain death on every side of them, they were the part of a night and a day and a night and a part of another day in reaching Khinjan. At night and at noon they slept fit fully at the chance-met shrine of some holy man. The "Hills" are full of them, marked by fluttering rags that can be seen for miles away; and though the Quran's meaning must be stretched to find excuse, and hillmen are adept at stretching things and hold those shrines as sacred as the book it self. Men who would almost rather cut throats than gamble regard them as sanctuaries. So a man may rest In temporary peace even on the road to Khinjan, although Khinjan and peace have nothing whatever In com mon. It was at such a shrine, surrounded by tattered rags tied to sticks, that fluttered in the wind three or four thousand feet above Khyber level, that King drew Ismail into conversation. and deftly iorcea on mm tne roie or questioner. "How can'st thou see the caves 1" he asked, for King had hinted at his In tention ; and for answer King gave him a glimpse of the gold bracelet. "Aye! Well and good! But even shv dare not disobey the rule. Khinjan wns there before she came, and the rule was there from the beginning, when the first men found the caves! Some hundreds have gained admis sion, lacking the right. But who ever saw them again? Allah! I, for one, would not chance it!" "Thou and I are two men !" answered King. "I shall see the caves." "Aye ! But listen ! How many In dian servants of the British Raj have set out to see the caves? Many, many aye, very many! Some, having got by Khinjan, entered the caves. None ever came out again !" "Then, what is my case to thee?" King asked him. "If I cannot come out -Who Are Your Howled a Human Being, Whose Voice Was So Like a Wolf's That the Words at First Had No Meaning. again and there Is a secret, then the secret will be kept, and what is the trouble?" "T Iatp th&o iha AfrirtI nnswprwl simply. "Thou art a man after mine own heart. Turn! Go back before It Is too late I" King shook his head. ; "I was In Khinjan once before, my friend I I know the rule! I failed to '.reach the caves that other time be cause I had no witnesses to swwir they had seen me slay a man In the teeth of written law. I knpw ! "Who saw thCMs time?" Ismail asked, and bega: QickIe with the I cruel humor of tl ' V that sees '"Mng, or In amusement In a the destruction ns. "Be -1 H V" ' he "Come with me, then." "Nay, I am her man. She waits for me!" "I Imagine 6he waits for me!" laughed King. "Forward! We have rested In this place long enough !" It was ten of a blazing forenoon, and the sun had heated up the rocks until It was pain to walk on them and agony to sit, when they topped the last es carpment and came in sight of Khln jan's walls, across a mile-wide rock ravine Khinjan the unregenerate, that has no other human habitation within a march because none dare build. It was midday when at last they stood on bottom and swayed like men in a dream fingering their bruises and scarcely able for the heat haze to see the tangled mass of stone towers and mud-and-stone walls that faced them, a mile away. They were nearly across the valley, hunting for shadow where none was to be found, when a shotted salute brought them up all-standing in a cluster. Six or eight nickel-coated bullets spattered on the rocks close by, and one so narrowly missed King that he could feel its wind. Up went all their hands together, and they held them so until they ached. Nothing whatever happened. Their arms ceased aching and grew numb. They advanced another two hundred yards and another volley rattled among the rocks on either hand, frightening one of the mules so that It stumbled and fell and had to be helped up again. When that was done, and the mule stood trembling, they all faced the wall. But they were too weary to hold their hands up any more. Thirst had begun to exercise Its sway. One of the men was half delirious. "Who are ye?" howled a human be ing, whose voice was so like a wolf's that the words at first had no meaning. He peered over the parapet, a hundred feet above, with his head so swathed in dirty linen that he looked like a bandaged corpse. "What will ye? Who comes unin vited into Khinjan?" King bethought him of Yasimini's talisman. He held It up, and the gold band glinted in the sun. Yet, although a Ilillman's eyes are keener than an eagle's, he did not believe the thing could be recognized at that angle, and from that distance. Another thought suggested itself to him. He turned his head and caught Ismail in the act of signaling with both hands. "Ye may come!" howled the watch man on the parapet, disappearing In stantly. King trembled! perhaps as a race horse trembles at the starting gate, though hwas weary enough to trem ble from fatigue. But that passed. He was all In hand when he led his men up over a rough stone causeway to a door in the bottom of a high battle mented wall and waited for somebody to open 't The great teak door looked as if It had been stolen from some Hindu tem ple, and he wondered how ani when they could have brought It there across those savage Intervening miles, nigh nbnve the door was a ledge of rock that crossed like a bridge from wall to wall, with a parapet of stone built upon It, pierced for riflr-fire. As they approached a Rangar tur ban, not unlike King's own, appeared above the parapet on the ledge and a voice he recognized hailed him good humoredly. "Salaam aleikoum!" "And upon thee be peace !" King an swered In the Pashtu tongue, for the "nilis" are polite, whatever the other principles. . Rewa Gunga's face beamed down on him, wreathed in smiles that seemed to include mockery as well as triumph. Looking up at him at an angle that made his neck ache and dazzled his eyes. King could not be sure, but it seemed to him that the smile said, "Here you are, my man, and aren't you In for it?" He more than half sus pected he was intended to understand that. But the Rangar's conversation took another line. "By jove!" he chuckled. "She ex pected you. She guessed you are a hound who can hunt well on a dry scent, and she dared bet you will come In spite of nil odds! But she (Ldn't Khyber Intrigue Among expect you In Rangar dress! No, by jove! You jolly well will take the wind out of her sails !" King made no answer. For one thing, the word "hound," even in English, is not essentially a compliment But he had a better reason than that. "Did you find the way easily?" the Rangar asked; but King kept silence. "Is' he parched? Have they cut his tongue out on the road?? That question was in Fashtu, direct ed at Ismail and the others, but King answered it "Oh, as for that," he said, salaaming again in the fastidious manner of a na tive gentleman, "I know no other tongue than Pashtu and my own Ra jasthanl. My name is Kurram Khan. I ask admittance." He held up his wrist to show the gold bracelet, and high over Ills head the Rangar laughed like a bell. "Shabash!" he laughed. "Well done! Enter, Kurram Khan, and be welcome, thou and thy men. Be welcome in her name I" Somebody pulled a rope and the door yawned wide, giving on a kind of courtyard whose high walls allowed no view of anything but not blue sky. Through a gap under an arch in a far corner of the . courtyard came a . one eyed, lean-looking villain In AfridI dress who leaned on a long gun and stared at them under his hand. After a leisurely consideration of them he rubbed his nose slowly with one finger, spat contemptuously, and then used the finger to beckon them, crooking It, queerly and turning on his heel. He did not say one word. King led the way after him on foot for even in the "Hills" where cruelty Is a virtue, a man may be excused, on economic grounds, for showing mercy to his beast His men tugged the weary animals along behind him, through the gap under the arch and along an almost interminable, smelly maze of alleys whose sides were the walls of square stone towers, or some times of mud-and-stone-walled com pounds, and here and there of sheer, slab-sided cliff. Like Old Jerusalem, the place could have contained a civil war of a hundred factions, and still have opposed stout resistance to an outside army. Alley gave on to courtyard, and filthy square to alley, until unexpectedly at last a seemingly blind passage turned sharply and opened on a straight street, of fair width, and more than half a mile long. It Is marked "Street of the Dwellings" on the secret army maps, and it has been burned so often by Khinjan rioters, as well as by expe ditions out of India, that a man who goes on a long journey never expects to find it the same on his return. It was lined on either hand with motley dwellings, out of which a mot- iier crowd of people swarmed to stare at King and his men. There were Hin dus sycophants, keepers of accounts and writers to the chiefs (since lit eracy is at a premium In these parts). In proof of Khinjan's catholic taste and indiscriminate villainy, there were women of nearly every Indian breed and caste, many of them stolen into shameful slavery, but some of them there from choice. And there were lit tie children little naked brats with round drum tummies, who squealed and shrilled and stared with bold eyes. Perhaps a thousand souls came out to watch, all told. Not an eye of them all missed the government marks on King's trappings, or the govern ment brand on the mules, and after a minute or two, when the procession was half-way down the street a man reproved a child who had thrown a stone, and he was backed up by the others. They classified King correct ly, exactly as he meant they should. As a hakim a man of medicine he could fill a long-felt want ; but by the brand on his accoutremeuts he walked an openly avowed robber, and that made hlra a brother in crime. Somebody cuffed the next child who picked up a stone. He knew the street of old, although It had changed perhaps a dozen times since he had seen it It was a cul-de-sac, and at the end of it, just as on his previous visit there stood a stone mosque, whose roof leaned back at a steep angle against the mountainside. It was a famous mosque In its way, for the bed sheet of the Prophet is known to hang in It, preserved against the ravages of time and the touch of Infidels by priceless Afghan rugs be fore and behind, so that it hangs like a great thin sandwich before the rear tone wall. King had seen It Toward the mosque the one-eyed ruf fian led tfie way, with the long, leisurely-seeming gait of a mountaineer. At the door, in the middle of the end of the street he paused and struck on the lintel three times with his gun butt And that was a strange proceeding, to say the least In a land where the mosque Is public resting place for homeless ones, and all the "faithful" have a right to enter. A mullah, shaven like a mummy for some unaccountable reason even his eyebrows and eyelashes had been re moved pushed his bare head through the door and blinked at them. tThere was some whispering and more) star By Talbot Mundy Copyright by the Bobbs-Merrill Company ing, and at lust the mullah turned his back. The door slammed. The one-eyed guide grounded his gun-butt on the stone, and the procession waited, watched by the crowd that had lost its Interest sufficiently to talk and joke. In two minutes the mullah returned and threw a mat over the threshold. It turned out to be the end of a long nar row strip that he kicked and unrolled In front of him all across the floor of the mosque. After that it was not so astonishing that the horses and mules were allowed to enter. "Which proves I was right after all !" murmured King to himself. In a steel box at Simla is a mem orandum, made after his former visit to the place, to the effect that the entrance into Khinjan caves might possibly be inside the mosque. No- "I Slew an Englishman I" body had believed It likely, and he had not more than half favored it himself ; but It Is good, even when, the next step may lead into a death-trap, to see one's first opinions confirmed. He nodded to himself as the outer door slammed shut behind them, for that was another most unusual circum stance. A faint light shone through slitlike windows, changing darkness into gloom, and little more than vaguely hinting at the Prophet's bed sheet. But for a section of white wall to either side of it, the relic might have seemed part of the shadows. The mullah stood with his back to it and beckoned King nearer. He approached until he could see the pattern on' the covering rugs, and the pink rims round the mullah's lashless eyes. "What is thy desire?" the mullah asked as a wolf might ask what a lamb wants. ; "Audience with her 1" King an swered, and showed the gold bracelet on his wrist The red eye-rims of the mullah blinked a time or two, and though he did not salute the bracelet, as others had invariably done, his manner un derwent a perceptible change. "That is proof that she knows thee. What Is thy name?" "Kurram Khan, hakim. "We need thee in Khinjan caves ! But none enter who have not earned right to enter ! There is but one key. Name it!" King drew In his breath. He had hoped Yasmini's talisman would prove to be key enough. The nails of his left hand nearly pierced the palm, but he smiled pleasantly. "He who would enter must slay a man before witnesses in the teeth of written law!" he said. "And thou?" , "I slew an Englishman !" The boast made bis blood run cold, but his ex pression was one of sinful pride. "Whom? When? Where?" "Athelstan King a British arrficer sent on his way to these 'Hills' to spy!" It . was like having spells cast on himself to order ! . . "Where Is his body?' "Ask the vultures ! Ask the kites 1" "And thy witnesses?" Hoping against hope, King turned and waved his hand. As he did so, being quick-eyed, he saw Ismail drive an elbow home into Darya Khan's ribs, and caught a quick interchange of whispers. "These men are all known to me," said the mullah. "They have right to enter here. They havt right to tes tify. Did ye see his slay his man?" "Aye !' lied Ismail, prompt as friend can be. "Aye! lied. Darya Khan, fearful of Ismail's elbow. "Then enter !" said the priest re signedly, as one who admits a com municant against his better Judgment He turned his back on them so as to face the Prophet's bed sheet and the re&r wall, and In that minute a gimjwnju.jL hairy hand gripped King's arm from behind, and Ismail's voice hissed hot breathed in his ear. "Ready of tongue! Ready of wit! Who told thee I would lie to save thy skin? Be thy kismet as thy courage, then but I am hers, not thy man ! Hers, thou light of life though God knows I love thee !" The mullah seized the Prophet's bed sheet and Its covering rugs in both hands, with about as much reverence as salesmen show for what they keep in stock. The whole lot slid to one side by means of noisy rings on a rod. and a wall lay bare, built of crudely cut but well laid blocks. It appeared to reach unbroken across the whole width of the mosque's Interior. On the floor lay a mallet, a peculiar thing of bronze, cast in oue piece, handle and all. The mullah took it in his hand and struck the stone floor sharply once then twice again then three times then a , dozen times In quick succession. , The floor rang hol low at that spot. After about a minute there came one answering hammer stroke from beyond the wall. Then the mullah laid the mallet down and though King ached to pick it up and examine It he did not dare. His business was to at tract as little attention to himself as possible; and to that end he folded his hands and looked reverent, as if entering some Mecca of his dreams. Through his horn-rimmed spectacles his eyes looked far away and dreamy. But it would have been a mistake to suppose that a detail was escaping him. : The Irregular lines In the masonry began to be more pronounced. All at once the wall shook and they gaped by an inch or two, as happens when an earthquake has shaken buildings without bringing anything down. Then an irregular section of wall began to move quite smoothly away from in front of him, leaving a gap through which eight men abreast could have marched a tunnel, split in two to right and left. Judging by the angle of the two divisions they became one again before going very far. The mullah stood aside and mo tioned 'King to enter. But the one eyed thrust himself between Darya Khan and Ismail, pushed King aside and took the lead. "Nay!" he said, "I am responsible to her." It was the first time he had spoken and he appeared to resent the waste of words. The tunnel was pierced in twenty places in the roof for rifle fire ; a score of men with enough ammunition could have held it forever against an army. The guide led, and King followed him, filled with curiosity. "Many have entered!" sang the lashless mullah In a sing-song chant. "More have sought to enter! Some who remained without were wisest! I count them! I keep count! Many went lnl Not all came out again by this road!" "Lead along, Charon !" King grinned. He needed some sort of pleasantry to steady his nerveo. But, even so, he wondered what the nerves of India would be like if her millions knew of this place. CHAPTER XI. The gap closed up behind them and the tunnel began to echo weirdly. Over their heads, at Irregular intervals, there were holes that if they led as King presumed into caves above, left not an inch of all the losg passage that could not have been swept by rifle fire. It was impregnable; for no artillery heavy enough to pound the mountain into pieces could ever be dragged within range. Whatever hiding place this entrance guarded could be held forever, given food and cartridges ! The tunnel wound to right and left like a snake, growing lighter and light er after each bend ; and soon their own din began to be swallowed in a greater one that entered from the farther end. After two sharp turns they came out unexpectedly into the glaze of blue day, nearly stunned by light and sound. A roar came up from below like that of an ocean in the grip of a typhoon. When his wits recovered from the shock. King struggled with a wild de sire to yell, for before him was what no servant of British India had ever seen and lived to tell about and that la an experience more potent than un- bT( broken rum. They had emerged from a round mouthed tunnel It looked already like a rabbit-hole, so huge was the cliff be hind on to a ledge of rock that formed a sort of road along one side of a mile-wide chasm. Above him, it seemed a mile up, was blue sky, to which limestone walls ran sheer, with scarcely a foothold that could be seen. Beneath, so deep that eyes could not guess how deep, yawned the stained gorge of the underworld, many-colored, smooth and wet And out of a great jagged slit la the side of the cliff, perhaps a thousand feet below them, there poured down iitto thunderous dimness a waterfall whose breadth seemed not less than half a mile. It spouted seventy or eigmy yards before n began to carve,, and Its din was like the voice of all cre ation. Ismail came and stood by King In silence, taking his hand, as a little child might. Presently he stooped and picked up a stone and tossed ft over. "Gone !" he said simply. "That down there Is Earth's Drink !" "And this is the 'Heart of the Hills' men boast aboSit?" "Nay ! It is not !" snapped Ismail. "Then, where " But the one-eyed guide beckoned im patiently, and King led the way after him, staring as hakim or prisoner or any man had right to do on first ad mission to such wonders. Not to have stared would have been to proclaim himself an Idiot They soon began to pass the mouths of caves. Some were above the road, now and then at crazy heights above It, reached by artificial 'teps hewn out of the stone. Others were below, reached from the road by means of lad ders, that trembled and swayed over the dizzying waterfall. Most of the caves were inhabited, for armed men and sullen women came to their en trances to rte. Ears grow vceustomed to the sound of water sooner than to almost any thing. It was not long before King's ears could catch the patter of his men's feet following, and the shod clink of the mule. He could hear when Ismail whispered : "Be brave, little hakim ! She loves fearless men!" At last the guide halted, in the mid dle of a short steep slope where the path was less than six feet wide and a narrow cave mouth gave directly onto it. "Be content to rest here!" he said, pointing. "Thy cave?" asked King. "Nay. God's ! I am the caretaker ! , The '"Hills" are very pious and po lite, between the acts of robbing and shedding blood. "Allah, then, reward thee, brcUer ! answered King. "Allah give siiftt to thy blind eye! Allah give thee -children ! Allah give thee peace, and to all thy house!" The guide salaamed, half-mocklngly, half-wondering at such eloquence, paused In the passage to point Into the side caves that debouched to either hand, turned on his heel and stalkad out of the cavern. It was the last King ever saw of him. King turned back and looked into the other caves saw the weary horse and mule fed, watered and bedded down took note of the running water that rushed out of a rock fissure and gurgled out of sight down another one- examined the servants' cave and saw that they had been amply provided with blankets. There was nothing lack ing that the most exacting traveler could have demanded at such a dis tance from civilization. There was more than the most exacting would have dared expect. "Ismail I" he shouted, and jumped at the revolver-cracklike echo of his voice. Ismail came running. "Make the men carry the mule's packs into this cave. You and. Darya Khan stay here and help me open them. Remember, ye are both assist ants of Kurram Khan, the hakim I" "They will laugh at us! They will laugh at us!" clucked Ismail, but he hurried to obey, while King wondered who would laugh. Within an hour a delegation came from no less a person than Yasmini herself, bearing her compliments, and hot food savory enough to make a brass idol's mouth water. By this time King had his sets of surgical Instru ments and drugs and bandages all laid out on one of the beds and covered from view by a blanket It was only one more proof of the British army's everlasting luck that one of the men, who set the great brass dish of food on the floor near King; had a swollen cheek, and that ha should touch the swelffng clumsily as "Does It Pain Thee, Brother?" Asked Kurram Khan, the Hakim. he lifted his hand to shake back a lock of greasy hair. There followed an oath like flint struck on steel ten times In rapid succession. "Does It pain thee, brother?" asked Kurram Khan the hakim. As a famous medicine man, King holds his first clinic among the suffering natives f the Khln. Jan country, and hear some Im portant news. . v (TO BH CONTINUE?.)
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