Chapter VIII: The Gate

“Look, sahib, the hills open in front like a Waziristan _tangi_,” said Payindah, pointing.

It was getting on for midday, and we had nearly reached the wall of hills, which now towered, grim and threatening, above us, a long line of sheer cliff, incredibly high; and, though the face was scarred and furrowed, there seemed to be no place where it could be ascended except in true mountaineering fashion with ropes and other aids.

Nor was there any sign of life in all the expanse of bare brown rock that rose before us, not even a wheeling kite in the sky. If life there were ahead, it must lie all on the other side of this great barrier that stretched away on either hand as far as we could see, merging from dead lifeless brown to warmer reds and madders and purples, and then finally to hazy blues as the distance softened the hard outlines.

We two were standing on the edge of the sand looking up a short slope of rock, tumbled with big boulders and smaller stones that ended abruptly at the foot of the wall-like cliff. Some half a mile or more behind us our string of camels plodded slowly along over the low sand ripples, here only a foot or two in height.

The whole scene rather reminded me of the Derajat--the plain that lies between the Indus and Waziristan--save that the hills here were far more formidable. Behind us, the expanse of yellow sand, not unlike the sun-dried soil below the frontier hills. In front, those frowning walls of rock, and just ahead of me in the white sunlight, Payindah with his short _poshtin_, his loose tied khaki _pagri_ round his bobbed black locks, his baggy khaki breeches and worn _chaplis_, for all the world like any tribal levy man of the Indian border, save that his rifle, even now after the long march, was spotless, and his bandolier had been new-cleaned overnight. Evidently Payindah, like Forsyth, believed in first impressions.

Ahead of us, as he said, the little stream--now somewhat wider--ran into the rock wall in a narrow cleft, where it vanished.

“Wouldst like to picket the top?” I asked, pointing up.

“Wah, what could get up that save a fly?” said he; and, indeed, I think he was about right. It was not often that Payindah admitted that anything was out of his power, for he possessed to the full that boastfulness so characteristic of the Punjabi, a relic, perhaps, of the old Greek strain from Alexander’s time that the Punjab talks of even to this day.

Travel along the Punjab frontier, yes, and right down into Baluchistan, and any old ruin, any disused water-channel faced with big stone blocks, any uncommon feature that might be the work of men, and local fable will tell you that it was built by the great Sikandar.

“Well, let us push on to the mouth, and then, if we see naught, we will halt the camels here,” said I.

We went on forward right up to the mouth of the cleft--a narrow sword-cut such as one meets all along the Indian frontier, but narrower than most, perhaps a bare thirty feet from rock wall to rock wall, with the babbling stream running in the stony bed between.

But the height of it was more than any _tangi_ I had ever seen, comparable only to a Doré picture. On either hand the walls of bare rock shot up straight, hundreds of feet above us, striated lime rock, splintered and cracked and twisted, but offering neither foothold nor hand-hold for any but the boldest and most experienced climber equipped with every aid. At the foot were little whitened rock plants, and clumps of coarse grass.

A couple of hundred yards farther on and we could see the valley turning, but when we reached the turn, lo! another again in front. And a silence that was eerie, naught save the murmur of the water, here perhaps three or four feet wide and a foot or more deep in places, running fairly fast.

We went back to the entrance, and, seeing the camels just approaching, signalled to Wrexham to stop.

“Here we are, and I think the thing is to halt now and make camp. Afterwards, we can explore the valley. If it’s your great-great-uncle’s one, it runs in about three miles according to the diary. It’ll probably take nearly an hour going up and as much coming back, and say an hour pottering round, and by that time there’ll not be much point in going on. So we might as well stop now, and look for a camp. There are some overhanging rocks there that would give a certain amount of shelter from the wind if it gets up. In this sort of place one often gets howling gales, and a bit of shelter is welcome. What do you think?”

“Yes; I never thought we should get beyond the foot of the hills to-day,” said Wrexham. “I’m with you in the matter of getting a camp-site before we start exploring. There doesn’t seem to be much grazing here for the camels, worse luck.”

“There’s a little scrub stuff inside at the foot of the cliffs, but I think we’d be wise not to let the animals touch it to-day. Remember your old uncle’s beasts. The stuff may be poisonous. It seems a new kind to me. Payindah will stop in the valley entrance and do sentry while the rest of us fix up camp.”

Another hour saw us settled in, the camels unloaded, and our little tent snuggled under the lee of a big rock. We made a hasty lunch, and then, leaving the men to set up things, we three started up the valley, rifles very much at the alert. As we entered the _tangi_ mouth, Wrexham, who had been thoughtful during lunch, turned round to Forsyth and me just behind.

“Look here, you fellows, I’ve been thinking about what we ought to do when we get to the far end if we find the gate my great-great-uncle wrote about.

“It’s not exactly a suburban villa where you can walk straight up and ring the bell. The people who live here are presumably not accustomed to strangers, and they might be nasty. One is not at one’s best standing outside a fort gate trying to induce the people inside--who may not even know any language we speak--to let us in. My idea is that, if this _is_ the valley, and if we come across that stone gate, we should hang about a bit under cover and see if anything materializes.”

“I was thinking of that, too,” put in Forsyth. “We’ve plenty of water now, and so there’s no immediate hurry, though the camels could do with some grazing. I’m all for trying to get to know the inhabitants somewhere out in the open. From the diary the place sounded what you might call average inhospitable, and I should prefer to try my Greek on some bloke out in the open rather than have to shout it at a narrow loophole with the tip of a three-foot arrow wavering about just inside.”

“We all seem wonderfully unanimous in our thoughts,” said I; “the same thing occurred to me as we were starting. I suggest, further, we don’t even show ourselves at first. Let’s see if they materialize before we sound a tucket, or whatever the mediæval wanderer used to do when he struck a strange fortress and observed the occupants getting handy with the boiling lead in case they didn’t like his face.”

So we decided--and, as it turned out, it was well that we did so--to reconnoitre as carefully as if the inhabitants were Huns and we a bashful trench crawling party, and, if we found the gateway, not to go out of cover until we saw some chance of meeting the owners on more even terms.

As we went on, Forsyth remarked on the fact that the valley was getting still narrower. We had gone about a mile, and it was now not much above fifteen or sixteen feet wide. The bottom was of rounded stones and pebbles, obviously water-worn, but whether the whole valley was due to water action it was hard to say. It must have taken æons and æons for the stream to cut down those many hundred feet, unless at some time it contained a far greater flow of water than existed now.

Wrexham opined that originally it must have been a fault in the rock, and pointed out that the strata here were tilted up vertically on edge. He said that probably the valley we walked in had once been a layer of very soft rock--easily decomposed--between two harder ones, and that when the rocks had been tilted up the gradual percolation of water had started a groove, and then the stream had done the rest.

The walls were of a grey-green limestone here, though at the entrance the general tinge had been brown. There was practically no vegetation save for here and there, just at the foot, blanched shrubs and small plants of the type common in rock country over middle Asia. Just now the sun was nearly overhead, and some stray sunbeams filtered down, but for the greater part of the day the valley must have been--indeed, we soon found out that it was--shrouded in a grey gloom. By the time we had gone another mile, the walls had closed in to barely ten feet apart.

“I wouldn’t like to be caught in a spate here,” said I. “The place would be a seething torrent fifty or sixty feet deep in a few minutes if there was a heavy fall beyond. It rather makes me think of the Narrows on the Wana road from Jandola, only on a bigger scale.”

“Never been up there,” said Wrexham; “but, if you birds had to fight in stuff like this last year, I’m glad I wasn’t there. One thing here is that it’s so high above that, short of heaving over rocks blindly, the other side couldn’t get at you at all if you had command of the end. If the inhabitants are unpleasing, we could manage to hold them up in this pretty easily with rifles, and if we couldn’t get in, at least they won’t be able to get out at us. What a topping entrance for a real mediæval fortress!”

“Or even for a modern one. You couldn’t get guns up the cliff anywhere near here, and so you’d have to fight through this in pure primitive fashion; and if, as it must, it opens out in front, all they’ve got to do is to stick a few men with rifles, or even with bows, a little way beyond under cover to prevent you ever getting out at all.”

We were just rounding a turn as we spoke, Forsyth leading. We heard him exclaim suddenly, and then, coming round the corner, saw him standing staring at the rock walls.

“Well, I’m d----d!” was all he said.

It took us a second to realize about what he was exclaiming. The stream split into two branches, and twenty yards farther on these two branches disappeared into tunnels in the rock, low, square tunnels, perhaps three feet high by two broad, obviously the work of man, cut foursquare out of the solid limestone.

“Now I wonder what they did that for?” said Wrexham. “It doesn’t look as if these were springs. It seems rather as if somewhere higher up they had deliberately diverted the water.”

We studied the little tunnels, but there was nothing to show who had made them. Unornamented, they might have been of any date. Just plain tunnelling through the rock much as you can see in Northern India to-day, where the tribesmen tunnel along in the river-banks to lead water off to fields lower down, up above the natural water-level of the stream.

In front the valley continued its sinuous course, but dry now. We followed for about one hundred yards, and then Wrexham stopped and sniffed. He has a keen nose.

“Something dead about these parts,” he said at last.

There was just a faint movement of air, and undoubtedly, as Wrexham said, it was bringing down to us odours that evoked other scenes back in the war years. Two minutes later, rounding another bend, we were aware of brighter light in front.

“Steady,” said I; “I think we’ve come to the end. Stop here a minute while I look ahead.”

Another fifty yards round a still sharper and narrower bend, and then I drew back quickly into the shadow of the valley, which had suddenly widened, and was partly filled with some masses of fallen rock. I drew in my breath as I looked, and then, stepping back, waved up the others, signalling silence as I did so. When they came up, I motioned them behind the rocks and pointed. As they craned their heads cautiously up, I heard Wrexham give a low whistle of surprise.

For there, straight in front, was the open clearing and the rock gate, cut into the solid face of the cliff just as the old diary described it. And on the white stones of the clearing were bones, in large numbers--gaunt ribs and rounded skulls--and a pervading smell of death. While, most ominous of all, in the centre of the clearing a huddle of draggle-winged vultures jostled and flapped and writhed their foul necks about something hidden beneath them.

We crouched there, staring breathlessly across the clearing at the gate on the far side.

Imagine a sheer rock wall just like the cleft we had come up, but rock of a darker colour, that surrounded with the same unscaleable sides the little open space, about two hundred yards in diameter, at whose edge we were hidden in the valley mouth. On the far side of it, and facing us, the rock had been carved for some hundred feet across and sixty feet up into the semblance of a fort gateway.

There was the big central gate, with its massive pillars and great lintel carved after the fashion of a huge beam. Under this two great stone doors, embossed with stone spikes and square heads of nails in stone. On either side a small gate with similar stone-fashioned doors, each a single leaf, and on these again--worked in stone--the replicas of iron bar and spike and nail.

The big gate and the two small side doors were again all three enclosed in a frame fashioned like the projection of a fort, rounded towers on either side and crenelated bastions above. And in these bastions were long arrow-slips--real, these seemed, though showing dead black shadows.

On the long stone block that ran under the bastions were carvings of twisted serpents, whose heads met in a fan in the centre, above which was the full-rayed sun. This last, I think, had been gilded at some time, for it was brown and discoloured in places, as if at some earlier date it had been covered with colour, though now no trace of it remained.

Below that, and just above the main entrance, was lettering, standing up clear from the background.

“Can you read that?” I whispered as Forsyth focused his glasses.

“Too far,” he whispered back. “Pass me the telescope.” We had brought the telescope along with us luckily.

I passed it to him, and he undid the strap, fitted in the high-power eye-piece, and slid it into position with as much care as though stalking a markhor. He studied it a minute, and then turned to us. “_Greek_, and it’s more like the old Greek than what’s on the picture, though not quite the same,” he said. “It runs like this: ‘To those to north, the gate of life; but to those to south, the gate of death.’”

“It seems to be that, all right,” whispered back Wrexham; “this is the south side of the gate, and there are plenty of poor devils who have looked their last on life the last time they looked up at the arrow-slits. There’s a man there under the birds--foul beasts--or rather it _was_ a man some time ago. They pulled his foot up just now while I was watching through my glasses. He’s not new.”

“Wish I could smoke,” muttered Forsyth; “not safe now, I suppose. This is foul!”

“Guess I know now why they diverted the water,” said Wrexham. “The stream probably comes down on the far side of that gateway, and they diverted it to keep the entrance clear. Any one seen any movement in front?”

“Not a sign,” said Forsyth. “I’ve been putting my telescope on the loopholes. I should say they were real, not fakes like the rest of the carving.”

We lay there for perhaps three quarters of an hour watching, but never a sign of life in the gateway. At last I said to Wrexham, “Well, what’s the next move?”

He turned over and slid back down the rock.

“‘When in doubt put out pickets.’ Isn’t that what your frontier experts say? We must have some one always here in case any one appears. One of us three with one of the men. I propose that we do three shifts during the day, say six to ten, ten to two, and two to six. They may not use this place often; depends on the number of people they have to kill off, and we don’t want to miss a chance of seeing what sort of creatures they are. It’s after two o’clock now, and, if you two will stay here, I’ll scuttle back and get one of the men and then come and relieve you for the evening watch. Then to-night we can talk over the future.”

“What’s the programme if anything turns up?” asked Forsyth.

“Question of discretion, I think. Have a good look, and if they’re peaceful you might venture conversation. If not, don’t, but at least we shall know something about what they’re like. I’ll be as quick as I can.” And, picking up his rifle, Wrexham trotted off down the valley.

“Well, of all the d----d family graveyards I’ve ever struck,” said Forsyth as we settled down to our watch. “I wonder if it is a graveyard, by the way, in spite of Wrexham’s theory about killing people. We may have found the back entry into a sort of Parsi Tower of Silence place, where they put their dead because earth and fire are sacred elements and mustn’t be contaminated by corpses.”

“By Jove! I never thought of that,” I answered. “It might very well be that, after all. One can imagine this is rather like what the inside of one of those places on Malabar Hill would be, for instance. Only, if the diary is true, it knocks the cemetery theory out of count. And everything in it has panned out so far.”

“Yes, that’s so. Old Wrexham would have found a nicely laid out corpse and not a fellow with his hands tied and an arrow in him. Phew! When I come on a job like this again, I’m going to bring a gas-mask.”

It must have been nearly four o’clock when Wrexham, accompanied by Payindah, came up behind us. The latter grimaced a bit as he took up post.

“This is like Farance again, sahib,” he whispered to me. Evidently Wrexham had told him that it was sentry duty in the front line, and that he was not to make a noise.

We left them there, and went back down the valley to camp. Wrexham said he would come back as soon as it was dark.

On arrival in the camp, we found Firoz had some tea ready for us, and after that we checked through some of our stores, took photos of the _tangi_ entrance, and did various odd jobs of overhauling.

We also got out the twelve-bore, an old hammer-gun of mine. I thought if Sadiq was to take a hand in the lookout work he had better be armed, but it was no good giving him a .303 rifle. But he did know enough about a hammer-gun to work it, and there are worse things than a twelve-bore with buckshot at close quarters. I dropped a charging panther once with that same old gun and a charge of buckshot, and it stopped him as no high-velocity rifle would ever have done.

It was dark by six, and we expected to see Wrexham by seven. But he did not come, and about eight o’clock we began to get anxious, and Forsyth suggested going up the valley to look for him. I counselled waiting a bit, as I did not see how he could well come to grief. He had Payindah with him, and both were armed, and nobody could get into the valley except at each end; of that I was sure. And I was equally sure that no one could get in at the far end with two shots like Wrexham and Payindah waiting for them.

But when half-past eight had gone and there was no signs of them, I began to agree with Forsyth. We had just started into the _tangi_ when we heard footsteps ahead on the stones, and Wrexham and Payindah loomed up out of the gloom.

“What happened to you?” I said, as we turned back toward the tent. “It’s been dark for hours.”

“I know; that’s why I wanted the evening watch. I’ve been doing trench crawls quite in the old style with Payindah as covering party.”

“What on earth for?”

“Wanted to see what was on the far side of the clearing by the gates. Shout for food; I must go and wash first. I feel like a cemetery at present.”

He put down his rifle, and now, by the light of the lanterns, I saw that he had what looked like a thin bundle of sticks.

“What have you got there?” I asked.

“Show you after dinner,” was all he vouchsafed, as he made for the stream with a towel and a piece of soap.

During dinner he expanded. Nothing had happened during his watch, but the moment it got dark he left Payindah in position, and crept off in the gloom across the clearing. He has no nerves has Wrexham. I should have wanted very good reasons to take me out among that tangle of smelly bones. The first thing he had made for was the corpse we had seen. With the darkness the vultures had left it.

“I crawled up to him first. I was right this afternoon when I said he wasn’t new. He wasn’t by a long chalk. But in the faint light I could see that he had had no clothes, and also that his hands were tied. I expected that, because I’ve got a great respect for my great-great-uncle’s accuracy after all we’ve found. What I was looking for was the arrow, which was a messy job to get away. But I did it, and it’s there. There were two in this bloke as a matter of fact, but one was broken. I suppose he pitched on it as he fell.

“I did a circular tour after that, and found nothing much except bones, or what you might call ‘nearly’ bones. Once I caught my hand in something that I thought was string, and then realized that it was hair, long hair. They’re not only man’s bones there, unless some of them wear long hair like Baluchis or Sikhs, which I should think unlikely. I also picked up another arrow or two.

“It was practically pitch-dark now, but I headed for the gateway. I crawled up to it d----d quietly, and got right up against the central door. They’re real gates, all right. I pushed my knife its whole length into the crack between the two bits of the centre one.

“I glued my ear to the cracks, and listened for quite a long time, but nothing stirred inside, so far as I could hear.

“I tried the little doors after that, but they seemed to slide in the rock and fitted jolly tightly. They’re real, all right, too.

“The big one hasn’t been opened for a long time, I fancy, because the crack was packed with sand and grit. The grooves round the little ones, on the other hand, seem fairly clear.

“On my way back I stubbed my toe on another arrow sticking up in the ground, and brought that along, too. There’s no other entrance except the gate and the valley mouth where we stopped. It’s smooth rock wall all round like the sides of a well.

“After a last look in case we might see a glimmer of light in the loopholes, we came back. I’ve got the arrows tied up there. Pass ’em over, Alec.”

He spread them out on the top of the _yakhdan_[4] that served us as a table. “I cleaned ’em up a bit on the way down. Look, just as the diary said, there is writing on them.” He pointed to the stem below the draggled feathers. “What do you make of it?”

“They’re not the same, anyway. And they’re very indistinct. Here, put the light nearer,” said I.

“One thing, they’ve all got the same coloured shafts. See, they’re all black.”

“This one’s different,” said Forsyth. “Look, there’s a red ring round under the feathers.”

“Well, what’s the writing?” queried Wrexham.

“I’ve got mine,” said I. “It’s ‘Freedom.’”

“And I’ve got mine, too, now,” said Forsyth. “It runs ‘A little time.’ What on earth does that mean?”

“The Lord only knows,” said Wrexham. “Why on earth any one should want to paint things like that on an arrow beats me. Look at this one. It’s rather obliterated, an oldish one, I should say. But isn’t that ‘to-morrow’?”

“It is,” said Forsyth. “They’re a queer crowd with their mottoed arrows. Any one see a glimmering of sense in them? Let me see the other two.” He looked at them. “Duplicates. See; there’s another ‘Freedom’ one, and this is again, ‘A little time.’ Well, I give it up.”

We did, too.

“Anything else?” I asked Wrexham.

He shook his head. “Nothing else I could see. It was practically dark in there, just a faint glimmer of moon which hardly did anything except make the darkness darker. Well, now, about to-morrow. Whatever happens, we’ll stop here for a day or two. In the first place, we want to know if there’s anything to be seen, and in the second, we must give the camels a rest. I propose we watch in turns during the day. I’ll take first shift with Sadiq, then Forsyth and Firoz can relieve us. That’ll let Firoz get breakfast, and also be back in time to get evening food. You, Harry, with Payindah, can relieve Alec and Firoz. That suit every one?”

We both agreed that it would do.

“I think,” I said, “that we ought to have a sentry all night. You say you’ve seen nothing, but there may be people moving at night, though it’s not likely. Still, it’s best to prepare for the worst, even while firmly expecting the best. If we each do a two-hour shift, it won’t come very heavy.”

The others agreed it might be sound, so we arranged that we three and the two sepoys should do two hours each at the entrance to the _tangi_. Wrexham went on first, followed by Firoz, who was relieved by Forsyth. Payindah took over from him, and I had the dawn watch. However, nothing happened all night, and none of us heard a sound.

Shortly after the first dawn, Wrexham and Sadiq started up the _tangi_, and I went back to my blankets for another hour’s sleep, feeling very chilled, for the dawn air was biting. About half-past nine, after we had had breakfast, Forsyth and Firoz started off, and an hour and a half later Wrexham and Sadiq, who looked rather as if he had been seeing ghosts, came back with nothing whatever to report.

At a quarter-past one, I turned out Payindah, and the two of us went off to relieve Forsyth and Firoz at the mouth of the clearing. All was just as it had been the day before. The same heavy smell, the same litter of bones, the same filthy vultures, the same frowning, lifeless gateway in front.

“Cheerio,” said Forsyth as he went off. “Hope you’ll enjoy the family vault as much as I have. I’ve taken some photos, and I don’t believe any one ever comes here except, perhaps, once a month or so.”

Payindah and I settled down to our monotonous watch, and nothing moved before us save the obscene birds.