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“Forward, sahib!” he urged; and the tone of his voice bordered on insolence. “Shall Jimgrim and the butcha need us and we play vulture above a carcass?”
Catesby laughed dryly.
“Do as I say,” he ordered.
They were able to go quite a long way without losing sight of the black, velvet-looking belt of gloom that was the wady bottom, and Catesby’s plan proved not so contemptible after all. Keeping a company of Sikhs in fighting trim for months past had given him a knowledge of all that countryside that could not desert him in the dark, and presently they reached a low eminence from which they could look down into the wady in either direction.
By that time, too, the moon shone at such an angle that the darkness below them was considerably broken up and patches of sand were beginning to be visible in places. To their left, clearly outlined in the yellow light, lay a sandy amphitheater, and if they had only known it they could see the opening of the tomb to which the Arab had led Jim and Suliman.
Nevertheless they seemed to have missed their opportunity, and Narayan Singh suddenly swore a streak of Indian oaths that would have made a mere comminating prelate shudder with mixed envy and dread. Down below them, passing in single file across a yellow sand-patch to their right, they caught sight of men’s figures moving swiftly. Catesby counted five, the Sikh six, but there might have been more because of the shadows, and some might have crossed the patch of light before they saw the others. They were all swallowed in black night again before the brain could get any clear impression of their general appearance.
Catesby made up his mind swiftly enough then, and Narayan Singh approved, since decision entailed action.
“Come on! After them from the rear!”
They slid down the sandbank into the wady and started to run, keeping in the middle where the track was loose and soft, so as to make less noise. Neither man knew exactly what they meant to do other than force the party ahead to stand and give an account of themselves. If that should entail a free fight, well and good; the Sikh, at least, would sooner fight than not, and Catesby had no objection.
But the one paramount, essential objective was to get tidings of Jim Grim, and neither of them made a single stipulation as to ways of means. They simply ran.
Whether or not they were gaining on their quarry they never knew; for suddenly, down the sandbank just abreast of them, panting, staggering, tripping, tottering, tumbling into their arms to sob and cling to them—Suliman came like a bolt out of the night—too scared and breathless to explain himself, kicking and punching at Narayan Singh because he should comprehend without words—too bewildered to speak English to Catesby, who had scant Arabic.
Catesby was not much of a hand with children. He tried sternness to antidote hysteria, and succeeded only in making his victim cry. So Narayan Singh squatted in the wady as if time were no consideration, and took the boy in his lap.
“A brave fellow!” he said. “Truly a brave fellow! Out in the night alone and not afraid of leopards! A soldier in the making! A swift runner! A man of deeds, not words! A scout who knows friends in the dark and can find them! A skirmisher who takes a cliff-side like a warhorse galloping! Truly a proper friend for such a one as Jimgrim! And what said Jimgrim? I wager had had a message for Narayan Singh?”
“Curse you religion! Curse your mother and her family! What are you waiting for? Let me go!”
The youngster struggled, and struck the Sikh’s face with his fists, but stirred no reprisals. Narayan Singh held on an laughed.
“Aha! A ruffian! A fighting man! A very Rustum (a famous warrior) at the age of eight. I wager Jimgrim sent him out to fight the iblis!”
The word iblis loosened the floods of speech at last. Suliman spat into the Sikh’s black beard and followed up the illustration with his text.
“Come and get him! Come quick! The iblis sits and spits at him! Jimgrim is bewitched. The iblis curses him. Jimgrim’s pistol is bewitched; he can’t use it. The iblis laughs. I ran to find you and you were gone, so I came back to kill the iblis with my kukri. Now you sit and grin, you son of sixty dogs, while the iblis murders Jimgrim. Have you no heart? Have you no courage? Jimgrim is in danger!”
“Aye, father of reprimands! But where?”
“Where? In the cave, of course! In the cave, idiot!”
“Which cave, O father of whirlwinds?”
“Which cave, Narayan Singh? As if there were more than one! Can Jimgrim be in two caves?”
“Can you lead us to the cave?”
“No! I have lost my way!”
That admission was altogether too much for Catesby, who was listening in shadow. He stepped closer to try again what stern authority might do. But Narayan Singh waved him back with an imploring gesture, and resumed the milder method.
“Such a scout! Such a father of long memories! I wager he has not forgotten what I taught him in Jerusalem. You were in the cave, Suliman? And you came out of the cave? Then on which side shone the moon—on this or that hand? This hand I wager. No? That one? Ah! And you crossed this wady to reach the place where I waited with the sahib? Ah! Then the cave is this way. Come!”
He got up, took the child by the hand and led him along the wady in the opposite direction to that in which they had been running, Catesby following in agonies of impatience. At every projection Narayan Singh would stop and try to get the boy to recognize it, but it was not until they reached the open amphitheater that Suliman gave a gasp of sheer excitement and began to run.
“There! There is the cave! I see it! Hurry, Narayan Singh! Curse you for a crawling beetle! Pick me up and carry me, I am halas—finish!”
Narayan Singh gathered him up in his hairy arms, gentle as a woman’s, but as strong as two pythons, and broke into a double. The moonlight shone straight into the cave mouth, and Catesby, having no load, reached it first. By the time Narayan Singh overtook him and had set down Suliman, Catesby was disappearing head first into a black hole, sending his voice ahead of him:
“Grim! Hullo! Jim Grim! Hullo, Uncle Sam, are you there? The reserves are coming, Grim—hold on!”
Suliman was next into the hole, charging under the Sikh’s legs and pulling out his kukri as he scrambled, yelling too:
“Oh Jimgrim! Taib (all right) Jimgrim! All right, Jimgrim! Coming! We are here!”
They plunged forward into utter darkness; and because Suliman was to busy shouting to think of warning them about the tricks of the place they all three took a header down a four-foot drop into the echoing home of blackness.
Narayan Singh proved heavy, for it is bone and thew that weigh, not fat. It took Catesby two minutes to recover breath, and then at last he struck a match. He held it high over his head, and the light showed all four walls of a cavern.
“Grim! Where are you?”
The cavern, with a row of sepulchers hewn into the walls, was empty. The echoes mocked them. Catesby struck match after match, and they peered together into every niche and cranny, finding nothing but a dollop of candle-grease to prove that anyone had ever been in there.
Catesby burned his fingers with his last match, and the blackness of the womb of darkness shut them in again.
“Too late? Surely not too late?” muttered Narayan Singh.
Then Suliman lifted up his voice and yelled:
“He is gone! Oh, Jimgrim! Prince of men! That iblis has eaten him! Curse the iblis! Curse his religion and his mother and his eyes and his belly and his teeth! In the name of Allah, may his soul be flung into the fire that burns. May devils torture him forever. Oh, my Jimgrim!