Chapter XI: The Caves

“The way lies up there,” said Aryenis, pointing.

“Can we climb up to those caves? I know that is the place, because I remember the arch.”

She was guiding the riding camel, with me as a passenger behind. Her first slight apprehension of the ungainly beasts had quickly disappeared, and for the last two days she had insisted on the front seat and the control of the nose-rope.

We were a few hundred yards out into the sand from the base of the cliffs, where, after marching six miles on the fourth morning, we had found under a projecting shoulder of rock, a little spring-fed pool with a stream running away out into the sands, doubtless to be swallowed up before very far. There was some scant vegetation, and Wrexham had halted the camels for water.

A mile and a half beyond us was a semi-detached hill, which jutted out from the main mass, still steep as ever. It projected a mile or so into the desert--a long hog-back of rock, with sides precipitous enough for the first three or four hundred feet, but which then sloped comparatively gently to the crest.

When we stopped at the water, Aryenis, who had been scanning the outlying hill ever since it first showed up, edged her camel out into the sand, and then gave a cry of joy, as round the shoulder of rock we saw the point where the outlying hill joined the main wall.

“I was right. Look; there is the great arch,” she had cried.

The outlier joined on to the high cliffs at a height of perhaps sixteen hundred or seventeen hundred feet. But at the junction swelled up the most peculiar natural formation I have ever seen. It was a giant arch of limestone, formed of strata bent by some primeval convulsion of the earth, and from which in the course of ages the central softer layers had been weathered away, leaving the hard outer ones as a true arch.

One sees many cases where the strata run up into partial arches, leaving, as it were, the piers on either side and perhaps a small piece of the bow, but the central portion is always lacking, either snapped in the original disruption or weathered away later. Never before have I met a case of the whole fold remaining in arched form. Springing up from the crest of the hog-back to a height of some three hundred feet over a wide bow, it then curved in to join the great precipitous wall we had followed these last four days.

And just above it in the cliff face were some dark shadows, which Aryenis was indicating as the caves of which she had told us. On looking with my glasses they proved to be, as she had said, unmistakable openings.

“Can we climb up there?” she asked again impatiently.

“They seem some height above the arch, and the sides of the lower hill are none too easy. But if we can get up anywhere, it will be at the point farthest out, which looks lower than the rest. We’ll call the others and ride over there.”

We fetched Wrexham and Forsyth, and showed them the great arch and the caves above.

“By Jove, what a quaint formation!” said Forsyth. “I’ve never seen a thing of that type on such a scale. I’ve seen tiny editions of it, but never anything approaching that size. It’ll take a bit of climbing, I should say, looking at it from here.”

As we went out to the far end of the lower hill, we asked Aryenis if the caves were used by her people.

“No. No one ever goes there now. They are very deep, and are supposed to have spirits in them, and people are afraid to go down into their darkness. They were once an old pagan temple, I think.”

“How did you find your way into them, then?” I asked.

She laughed. “My brother teased me about being afraid of the dark, so I told him I was much braver than he was, and that I would go down into the caves. We have a house quite close to them. And I said that he wouldn’t dare to come. So, of course, he came. There were long, long dark passages, but we had a lantern, and we didn’t see or hear anything at all. At the end we came out into a big open cave with pillars carved in it, and some smaller caves on each side. All had openings looking down on that big arch. Afterwards we brought my father there, but none of the other people come, for they are rather afraid of spirits, and the caves don’t take you anywhere.”

When we got to the far end where the hog-back terminated above the desert, we found that, as we had thought, the sheer part was nothing like so high as nearer to the main cliff. Also it was not so smooth. There were lines of jagged broken strata and projecting folds of rock and crevices, and Forsyth considered it was easily climbable.

“Well, now, the thing is to camp by that water. There is a little grazing for the camels, the same kind as you find at the other side of the desert, so they can’t take any harm from it. It will be something green for them to chew,” said I.

“Yes,” answered Wrexham, “and then, directly we’ve had a mouthful of food, Alec and I, with Payindah, will come over here again and reconnoitre the way up. You say Payindah climbs fairly well. Firoz is rather heavy-footed on a hill. You and Aryenis can stop in camp and see things fixed up. A restful afternoon won’t do either of you any harm, especially with that face of yours.”

My wound was healing up cleanly, much to Forsyth’s and still more to my own satisfaction; but it was inclined to be painful, especially at night, and a quiet afternoon would be by no means unwelcome, more particularly as there would be Aryenis to keep me company. It’s funny how circumstances alter things. I suppose it was the unusual surroundings which had thrown us together so much during the last four days, but I couldn’t help feeling that I had known her for years and years--in fact, absurd as it sounds, I really at the moment couldn’t picture any kind of existence in which she would be absent. Probably the wide loneliness of the desert had much to do with it.

About midday the reconnoitring party set off. Aryenis and I walked out far enough from the pool where we had camped to be able to see the arch.

While the others were making their way across the sand to the end of the hill, Aryenis turned to me and reminded me that I had not yet told how we had found our way to the hills across the desert. So I gave her an outline of the story of old John Wrexham’s journey, and the things he had written in his diary. Then I went on to tell her how Wrexham had come up in 1919 to prospect, and of the man he had found.

“But how wonderful to think that a single man could have made his way so far across the desert. And how extraordinary your friend’s finding him in the way he did. I wonder who he could have been. Were there any things on him to tell?”

“Yes; there was a picture which we have with us here, and we think it must be one of his sister because of the writing on it. I’ll get it, if you like.... Why, what is it?”

Aryenis’s exclamation of wonder had stopped me.

“A picture of his sister! But we were sure he had died in the gate when the Shamans captured him! Tell me,” she went on breathlessly, “was the name ‘Euphrosine’ on the picture? A girl with brown hair and blue eyes?”

“Yes; that’s it. I hope it wasn’t some great friend of yours?” I said, seeing her eyes.

“But it was! It was Ziné’s brother! She’s my greatest friend. But, no! It isn’t a great shock, because we were sure he was dead. We never even thought of him being alive, although the spies said they believed he had escaped from the gate. But, in the first place, we did not believe them, and then, although a certain archer of the chief Shaman’s guard, who professed a secret friendliness for our folk, and we did our best to help him through them, we never thought he could traverse the desert, nor did we know what lay beyond.”

She was silent a space, her lips moving, praying, I think, for the man’s soul after the manner of the Christian Sakae.

“Who was he, then, and how came he by his death, or rather by the captivity that led to it?” I asked at last.

“He was one of the biggest chiefs of the Green Sakae. As I told you, the Shamans for some years have been overcoming the other clans--the Red, Brown, and Green Sakae--always beginning by stirring up the people against their chiefs. Some were slain by their own folk, misled by the Shamans’ guile; then others, whose people would not rise against them, were attacked by the Shamans when the country was weakened, and so overthrown and slain, save some few who escaped to us.

“When the state of the Green Sakae country was at its worst, Carius--that was his name--sent Ziné to stop with us for greater safety, hoping that things would be better. But by treachery the Shamans captured his fort by night. We heard that, though he made a good fight, he was taken prisoner and carried off to their country.

“My father tried to help him by spies--we were not at war with the Shamans then, nor were we strong enough to invade their country--sending clothes and money, which the spies promised to get to him if he were put out to death through the gate after the Shamans’ cruel fashion. And Ziné put the picture in with the clothes. The spies told us they had succeeded with the help of the archer I mentioned, and said that it was common talk among the guard that next day his body could not be found. So then for a space we hoped, believing that he had got the things they said had been dropped over the cliffs and freed himself and escaped. But after a while we felt sure he must be dead, and thought that the spies, after the manner of such men, lied to us to get the greater reward.”

“Then is Euphrosine, or Ziné, as you call her, still with you, or is there peace in her country now?”

“No; it is as bad as ever, for there is no rule, and the people fight among themselves, and the Shamans slay and pillage as they will, now helping one section, now another, for they do not really desire to rule the land themselves yet. They wish to destroy all law, so that they may then easily set up their own customs, when folk are wearied of war and pillage and unable to resist them. I do not know much about their rule, save that some of their decrees are foul beyond imagining. As I told you, they worship evil gods. But when we get home my father will tell you more about it all than I can. I think he hopes to destroy the Shamans some day and restore peace to the other clans. Then, if he does that, Ziné will be chief of her clan again, for she has no other close relations.”

“Do women rule, then, in your country?”

“But yes, sometimes, if there be no close male relatives. But I would not like it, since it often means they have to marry some one whom they would not, lest he whom they would marry be not acceptable to the clan. I am glad I have a brother.”

Strangely enough, so was I, though I did not say so.

“Do not women ever rule in your country, Harilek?” she went on.

“Yes, sometimes; and they sometimes do not like it for the same reason, that their husbands are chosen for them.”

“Which is _quite_ wrong,” said Aryenis, with a defiant tilt of her well-shaped chin. “A woman should always choose her own man, although,” she added as a minor qualification, “of course, he is always allowed to think _he_ has done the choosing.”

“I believe it is like that in my own country, though I do not know from experience,” said I. Aryenis looked at me thoughtfully but said nothing, so I dropped the subject and rigged up the telescope. “The others ought to be in sight on the hill now. It’s nearly an hour since they left.”

Within a minute or so I picked them up, three tiny figures making their way up the more gentle slope above the cliff part. They worked upward until they reached the foot of the arch, where they halted awhile.

Then slowly--slowly--they clambered up and up until at last all three stood erect and walked across the great bow till they stopped under the cliff face which towered above them. There they stayed for some time.

“Think you they can get up to the caves? Oh, they _must_ be able to!” said Aryenis, who was using my glasses. She picked up things extraordinarily quickly, though, like all women, the “how it worked” interested her not at all. All she desired was a sufficiency of knowledge to get practical use out of things.

“Yes; they’re sure to get up, though perhaps not this afternoon. They may want more rope.”

I pretended an assurance I was far from feeling. The cliff above the end of the arch looked sheer as a house wall and as smooth.

“They’re coming back again,” said Aryenis with a sigh of disappointment. “I don’t know any other way if we cannot climb that.”

I was more than disappointed. The possibility or otherwise of reaching the caves was probably life or death to us all. But we hadn’t told Aryenis that. Gloomily and silently we watched them make their way down.

However, on their arrival in camp, their report was a shade better than I had hoped, though none too good. They considered that with a little work the first part could be made easily practicable even for men with heavy loads, and the second part up to the foot of the arch was quite a gentle slope.

The arch itself was more difficult. It rose nearly three hundred feet according to Wrexham’s estimate, tapering upward and inward in a gentle curve, till at the centre it was not more than twelve or fourteen feet wide. However, with ropes the loads could be got up on to it.

But to get up the rock face to the caves was quite a different matter. If we could get people from above to let down ropes, it would be all right, though unpleasant. But Aryenis had said no one ever came there. So absolutely our only hope was for one of us to succeed in climbing up with the rope, and fix it to something in the cave by which to help the rest up.

“There’s a sloping seam in the rock stretching up to the cave mouth as far as we can see,” said Wrexham, drinking the tea Aryenis had poured out for him. “It doesn’t look to me as if it gave foothold to anything bigger than a lizard, but Alec, who’s done a lot of rock-climbing, thinks it might just be possible for a clever climber given a miraculous amount of luck. Anyway, it’s our only chance, and we’ve got to take it or give up and go back; and that, as you know, is at least even chances of pegging out while trying to get across the desert. The camels are pretty done now.”

He pulled out his pipe and lit it.

“Well, what are we going to do, then?” I asked, looking across to where Forsyth was talking to Aryenis.

“To-morrow we’ll all go up, leaving Firoz and Sadiq here with the camels. We’ll take every bit of rope we can scratch together, as well as the two one hundred fifty foot lengths of Alpine rope. Alec is going to make a shot at getting up the seam by himself. He says it’s no good two men going, because the rock is so sheer that if one slipped the other would be pulled off, too, and it’s no good chucking away two lives. I wanted to go, but he insisted, and as he’s done more climbing than I, although I’ve done a lot of crag-work at home in Durham, I caved in.

“If he can get up he’ll fix the rope, and you’ll follow, and then we’ll get Aryenis up. Then I and Payindah will go back to camp. Aryenis will have to get you out of the caves and through the cliffs, and then--since she says it’s in her country--you ought to find friends and be able to come back in the afternoon or else next morning with men and get the rest of us and the kit up.”

We went to bed early that night, and perhaps were not quite so cheery as we had been the previous evenings. To-morrow’s dawn was going to solve a big question for us--the biggest one in the world probably--since my evening’s look at the camels somehow did not seem to fit with sixteen days’ journey back across the desert.

Wrexham, Forsyth, and Payindah started first, carrying the ropes, a lantern for use in the caves, two rifles, our _poshtins_, and a bundle of food. I was deputed to look after Aryenis, and so relieved of a load. Wrexham might have saved his forethought, for she climbed better than I, and I don’t consider myself a bad hand at mountaineering. But Aryenis hung out over bare rock without a tremor, and smiled at me struggling behind. She said they had a house in the hills--by which I supposed she referred to the high mountain--and that she had climbed ever since she was a child.

As we reached the foot of the arch, I caught sight of Payindah squatting on the rock, just where the slope hid the rest of the arch from us. Looking at it, I wondered how they had got their kit up, for it was pretty steep.

But there were certain projections and jagged bits that gave foot- and hand-hold, and the slope of the arch made it easier. As a matter of fact, it was only the first fifty or sixty feet that was so difficult. Above that, although it did not show from below, the curve forward became more pronounced, and the rock much rougher and easier to move over without fear of slipping.

The whole arch was not unlike an old flying-buttress, steepish at the foot and with a more gradual curve afterwards.

“Come along,” said Aryenis, all impatience to get in sight of the caves.

“Wait till they let down the rope,” I replied. I thought she would want a rope there.

She looked at me as if I were daft, and before I could say another word had sprung up the rock and stood balancing on nothing ten feet over my head.

“Come,” she said, and went on.

I wasn’t going to let a girl beat me if I could help it, so I slipped off my heavy _chaplis_, fastened them on to my belt, wriggled my toes into what foothold I could find, and followed. But she had caught Payindah’s outstretched hand, and was over the corner while I was still twenty feet behind.

Payindah hauled me up, and then, with “Wah! the miss-sahib must be a true hill-woman,” he followed her. It was easier going after that, a long smooth slope of perhaps two in one, twenty to twenty-five feet broad, with a sheer drop on either side. Aryenis went up it without an effort, Payindah and I panting behind her.

A hundred feet farther up in front I could now see Wrexham, with Forsyth still farther ahead. Another five minutes, with the arch getting narrower and narrower, and we came to the top, whence it splayed in a gentle curve over forty feet or so of nothingness to join the main wall. Luckily we all had good heads for height, but less experienced people would have sat down rather tremblingly, I think.

Picture to yourself a narrow causeway of rock only a few feet wide, perhaps twenty feet thick, sprung forty or fifty feet over a drop of nearly three hundred to the back of the hill we had left, and gently sloping downward again from the centre into a slight crevice in the towering wall in front, which rose smooth greenish-grey rock, apparently void of any decent hand- or foot-hold hundreds of feet above us.

Some eighty feet above the end of the arch where we stood in the white sunlight, the wide desert spread out behind and the wind whistling past us, were the black entrances to the caves, three of them, the centre one--the biggest--perhaps twenty feet across, almost directly above the arch.

Wrexham and Forsyth had been joined by Aryenis, and were talking together on the narrow end of the arch where it joined the cliff.

I crossed the arch, avoiding looking down at the dizzy drop below, and joined them. Aryenis turned to me with a little smile of triumph.

“Oh, Harilek, you can run over flat stones all right, but you are slow--slow--on a hill. I must teach you to go quick.”

“Thank you. You shall,” I said. Then I turned to Forsyth. “How the deuce are we going to get up there?”

“Up that crack in the rock,” said he, pointing to a thin seam I had not noticed at first.

I looked at it. The more I looked, the less I liked it. I looked again more than doubtfully.

“I shall go up first with the rope, and if I slip you’ll have to try and hang on to the end and pick up the bits.” He was taking off his coat as he spoke.

We tied the rope round him, and the rest of us got hold of the end, prepared to try and pull him clear of the arch if he slipped, a pretty hopeless task.

He took a last look round, and then he stepped out the couple of feet over empty space, clinging to a tiny projection in the rock, got his feet on the edge of the seam which ran slightly slanting, and started up.

I have seen some good cool rock-climbing in my time, but never have I seen any one go up like that.

It took him about twenty--to us--breathless minutes, and for the life of me I could not see what he held on to. On going up myself later (with the rope) I found that the seam projected somewhat from the rock face, and gave a good hand-hold. Luckily, it was not badly weathered, and so did not break away.

But we all expected every minute to see him slip from his footing and fly downward, and only hoped that he would fall clear of the arch, and so give the rope a chance of checking him in mid-air below us.

“He’s there,” said Aryenis, as she clapped her hands softly. “He climbs wonderfully.”

I could see he had his hands on the cave floor, and was pulling himself in. Then he disappeared from sight.

“Good old Alec,” said Wrexham. “Whatever happens now, we shan’t die in the desert.”

A couple of minutes later he began to tug the rope after him, taking up twenty or twenty-five feet.

After that nothing for a space. Then his head emerged. He was presumably lying on the floor craning out, and he shouted down to us:

“The caves lead upward and inward. It’s Aryenis’s cave, all right, for it’s got some stone pillars in it. I’ve tied the rope fast to one, and I’ll pull in the slack as Harry comes up.” He disappeared into the cave again.

“Now, then, Harry, your turn,” said Wrexham, knotting the rope round me.

I started up, keeping my eyes resolutely turned from the three-hundred-foot drop below me, and not feeling at all pleased with the prospect. But, as a matter of fact, with the rope and with the deep crevice which I found in the rock, it was easier than I hoped, and I got up without any more trouble than a few seconds of intense fright when my foot slipped once.

As I stood up and looked round the cavern, I remarked to Forsyth: “What a peculiar place. Are those pillars carved?”

There were pillars of solid rock from floor to ceiling on both sides, stretching away into the darkness at the back. They were smooth, round pillars, devoid of ornamentation, with a slight splay at top and bottom.

“Carved. I looked as I first came up. It’s not unlike a church, as a matter of fact. You noticed the ledge as you came in, all along the edge cut out of the rock as though people once sat here and wanted a sort of guard like a window-railing at home?”

“I wonder who first used the place. It does not seem to have been used lately; there are no footmarks in the floor dust.”

However, we hadn’t much time to wonder about things then. I looked out and saw Wrexham roping up Aryenis, and a minute or two later her clear call came up to ask if we were ready.

We shouted back, and then up she came, just like a cat, we pulling the rope up as she came, so that if she slipped she would only fall the least possible distance. But Aryenis never slipped. She seemed to have eyes in her feet when it came to going over bad places. I reached out, and caught her hands and pulled her into the cave.

As I was unknotting the rope she said: “This is the place. I remember. The way is there,” and she pointed along the right-hand side of the cave.

It took us a little time longer to haul up our belongings, which Wrexham and Payindah had tied up in three bundles, wrapping the rifles in the _poshtins_ to prevent damage against the rock. Then we let down the rope: the others fastened it below, coiled up the slack, and waving us good luck started back down the hill.

We opened up the bundles, divided the kit, lit the hurricane-lamp, and told Aryenis to show us the way. From the pillared part, which stretched about a hundred feet, we passed through thickening grey gloom into the darkness and silence--darkness and silence that you could feel--of a long, narrow, winding passage with smooth wall and a rounded roof.

Under foot the rock was covered with loose dust, the dust of many, many centuries, I think. The wall showed tool marks in the lantern’s dim light, and I remarked to Forsyth that the passage was obviously artificial.

“It is here,” he said, “but it may not all be.”

Later on we found rough parts, which showed clearly that the original finders of the pillared cave and the smaller ones that led out on either side of it had discovered a line of natural fault and improved it, making the passages big enough to walk in.

Our way wound steadily upward. Luckily there was but the one passage, or Aryenis might not have remembered her way so easily. We passed through two large open spaces, where the light, instead of being reflected back from the rock walls, dimmed and died in the circle of darkness. In one of them there was what looked like a rough altar cut in the wall.

We had been going for nearly half an hour when we remarked a faint grey light ahead. It grew and grew, until rounding a bend we found ourselves in a little open grotto veiled by trees and thick undergrowth.