Chapter XI: Too Much Zeal

“Take your dirty hands off her, you brute!” growled Maurice, struggling ineffectually with the two men who were holding him down. Milosch smiled again.

“You ze next,” he said. “We leave you at ze camp--dead, oh, yes! and ze Roumi dogs will see how you died. Zere will be tree--four hours while zey find ze way, but for you it will experience tree or four days. And ze ozer girl,”--he cast a critical eye upon Eirene, who shivered in spite of her utmost efforts to maintain a firm front,--“we not kill her, no. We leave her also at ze camp, but living, to tell what she see.”

The strain was too great, and, with a little gasp, Eirene fainted away. Milosch chuckled. “Make not no mistakes,” he added impressively to the furious Maurice. “It may be your friend achieve to discover you--yes; but you will compensate in blood for ze ransom he hope to defraud.”

Maurice turned away with as much impassivity as he could muster. “Don’t you go and faint too, Zoe,” he said to his sister; “he’s only trying to make our flesh creep. But don’t trouble about Eirene. I don’t suppose it will hurt her to stay as she is for the present, and it can’t be any pleasure to her to hear him talk.”

Zoe, who had been trying to get to Eirene, ceased her struggles, and let her eyes return to the moving figures in the valley below. This was evidently a critical moment, for the brigands were watching their progress with strained attention. At last, when Wylie had passed a particular point, a gasp of satisfaction showed that, in the opinion of the band, the immediate danger was over.

“It’s the stream that has thrown him out,” muttered Maurice. “He’ll go on ever so far looking for tracks before he guesses where we turned off.”

“But how has he tracked us?” asked Zoe, who had now been released, and was holding Eirene’s head on her knee, as the younger girl struggled slowly back to consciousness.

“By the marks of our boots, of course,” said Maurice. “No one else in the mountains wears boots, and there has been no rain since we came up here. I say, I shall tell Wylie what I think of him when I see him next. He has no business to sacrifice us to his grudge against the brigands. That’s the worst of him, he’s an unforgiving brute, and the trick they played on him the day they pretended they were going to kill him rankles.”

“Maurice, you are absurd!” Zoe was engrossed in her ministrations to Eirene, and could only talk in snatches. “He has some special reason for this. I am sure of it. He may have a grudge against the brigands, as you say, but he will wait to work it off until we are safe.”

“Then what’s he up to now?” demanded Maurice, and Zoe could offer no explanation. Eirene laughed weakly.

“Zoe would say to him with her last breath, ‘I know you couldn’t help it,’ and Maurice, ‘You brute! it’s all your fault,’” she said.

[Image: images/img_138.jpg Caption: “_Take your dirty hands off her, you brute!_” _growled Maurice._]

“And you?” asked Zoe, rather tartly.

“It is not to be my last breath, you know”--Eirene shivered again as she rose shakily to her feet, with the help of Maurice’s hand--“but I should say to him when we met, ‘You see, sir, the results of an excess of zeal.’”

“Awfully scathing!” said Maurice, guiding her along the ledge. “I’m coming back for you, Zoe; wait for me. No wonder you feel shaky, after that sickening rascal’s talk.”

The camp seemed a haven of refuge after the experiences of the last half-hour, and the girls sank down thankfully on their straw bed, while Maurice seated himself on a stone at the door, and tried to make conversation and distract their minds, not very successfully. Stoyan succeeded where Maurice failed, however, for he made his appearance suddenly, and saying something in his own language, threw down a pair of leggings and moccasins before him, and held out his hand.

“He says I’m to put these on, and give him my boots,” explained Maurice ruefully. “I’m afraid Wylie has let us in for it. He says, ‘No sleep to-night, thanks to your friend.’”

“I suppose we had better pack up,” said Zoe, as the chief retired with the boots.

“How I admire your common-sense, Zoe!” said Eirene, not offering to move. “Why don’t you rest as long as you can, like me?”

“Because she knows you would look pretty blue if there were no coats and things at the next halting-place,” said Maurice. “Come, get up. You can luxuriate in the straw as long as they’ll let you, but we must roll up the rugs.”

The rugs, wrapped round the scanty possessions of the party, were Maurice’s burden, while the girls carried the coats, rolled up as Wylie had shown them, so as to leave their arms free. But when they were summoned to start, about an hour before sunset, the brigands made them unfold the coats and put them on, drawing the hoods over their heads, so that they could not be recognised from a distance. They felt some surprise at starting in daylight, but the reason was soon evident. They were to climb down the torrent-bed, up which they had come to reach the valley, and not even the brigands cared to risk the descent in the dark. Scouts had been sent to follow Wylie and the Roumi force, and make sure that they were not returning, and these brought word that the troops had taken up their quarters in a village for the night, so that the move might safely be made. Going down the torrent-bed was rather worse than going up, so far as slips and tumbles and sudden sousings went, and the girls were bruised and drenched when they reached the bottom. They were only allowed a moment to wring their dripping skirts, and then the brigands set out briskly in the dusk, taking the direction in which Wylie had gone. They knew the rocky paths, and how to take advantage of the smoothest places, but to the prisoners, unused to walking in moccasins, every step was a lottery, which might prove painless, but was far more likely to be agonising. Even when a rare stretch of comparatively soft ground appeared, they were not allowed to take advantage of it, the brigands casting about carefully until they found a way past it on the rocks, lest any trail should remain to show that a number of people had passed there after the soldiers. Darkness came on, and the prisoners stumbled painfully along between their guards, who never stretched out a hand to help them, but reviled them horribly when they slipped. Regardless of dignity, the girls were reduced at last to clutching the sleeves of the men on each side of them--more the brigands would not permit, for fear of finding their arms encumbered in case of danger--and even Eirene made no protest. After what seemed weary hours of walking, the brigands suddenly stopped and closed round the prisoners, two of the band stealing off into the darkness.

“We are going right through the village,” whispered Maurice. “Those fellows are off to quiet the dogs.”

“And if you raise exclamation, we quiet you,” muttered Milosch, unsheathing his long dagger.

It was some time before the two men returned, with the assurance that all was well. The troops were comfortably quartered in the houses and cattle-sheds, and they had located the watch-fires and the sentries, and could guide the rest past them. Wylie and the Roumi officer were at the house of the chief man of the place, and Stoyan breathed a vehement and highly coloured aspiration that it had been prudent to creep in and make an end of them. But as this was impossible if the prisoners were to be placed in safe keeping, he repressed his bloodthirsty inclinations, and the scouts led the party in and out among huts and sheds, sometimes creeping on all-fours across a space dimly illuminated by a watch-fire, sometimes pausing behind a wall while a sentry passed. Every man among the brigands held his dagger unsheathed, ready to strike if any of the prisoners made the slightest attempt to raise an alarm, and the precaution was sufficient. Warmth, shelter, safety, friends, were in the village, and with bursting hearts the girls passed them by, and went on again into the dark cold night. They were so tired by this time that their immediate guards were forced to sheathe their daggers and take each of them by the elbows to help her on, and as if to crown their misfortunes, a cold, drenching rain began to fall. It put the finishing touch also to the brigands’ ill-humour, and they pushed and dragged their shivering captives roughly along, muttering angrily at every step.

“Maurice, tell them we can’t go any faster!” cried Zoe at last. “We are keeping up with them on these awful roads, and we can’t do more.”

“Oh, that’s not what’s the matter,” returned Maurice from behind, in a Mark-Tapleyan tone of voice. “They’re calling us names for making them turn out of their nice comfortable camp and go wandering about the mountains in the dark and the wet. They say they have taken such care of us, and treated us as honoured guests, and our ingratitude is something detestable.”

“Anybody might think we wanted to come!” said Zoe.

“Well, it certainly is our fault in a way,” said Maurice. “If we didn’t exist, or weren’t here, they wouldn’t be running away from Wylie.”

They relapsed into silence again, and the grumbling curses of the brigands were the only sounds to be heard above the plashing of footsteps and the swish of the rain. The girls were half-unconscious with fatigue and want of sleep, and stumbled on in a kind of waking dream. It must have been drawing near dawn, though the blank black skies showed no sign of it, when the brigands paused again, in the shelter of a clump of stunted trees, hardly more than bushes, and the scouts glided forth on their errand. They returned unexpectedly soon, and their report called forth ominous curses.

“There are soldiers holding the path in front,” explained Maurice in a whisper to the girls. “Wylie knows what he is doing, bad luck to him! He’s got us between two fires, with all his precautions.”

For the moment it looked as though Wylie had actually brought about the death of his friends, for the brigands were now thoroughly roused. “Kill the European dogs, kill them and get rid of them!” was the murmur. “They have brought us to this pass. Let us kill them and leave their bodies here on the track for their friend to find.” Daggers were once more unsheathed, and revolvers drawn.

“Why don’t you pray? Are you an atheist?” demanded Eirene of Zoe, breaking off in the middle of a catalogue of saints, whose aid she was audibly imploring.

“No; I am praying,” said Zoe, but she felt curiously resigned. Death would be such a rest after this dreadful night. But the reference to Wylie, which Maurice translated under pressure, disturbed her. He would never be able to forgive himself if he realised what he had done. If only one of them could escape, it might make him a little less miserable. She sat up with an effort, and grasped Maurice’s arm.

“Maurice, even if they kill us, you might escape. You can run, and your things don’t cling so. We will make as much fuss as possible, to give you time to get away to the soldiers.”

“Don’t be an owl,” said Maurice brusquely. “Is it likely? I ask you, is it likely?”

“But so much depends on you. We don’t signify.”

“What depends on Maurice?” demanded Eirene, with keen curiosity. Zoe recollected herself, in part.

“Oh, well, he is the last of the name, you know,” she said.

“The last of the name of Smith?” asked Eirene innocently.

“No--er--the last of our Smiths,” Zoe managed to say, and broke into hopeless laughter, until Maurice shook her, and asked her whether she wanted the brigands to think that terror had driven her mad. It seemed that their fate was no longer in suspense, since Milosch, of all people, had come to the rescue. This was not through any softness of heart, but because, representing, as he did, the Thracian committee which directed the brigands’ movements, he had been able to paint in vivid terms the wrath and disappointment which would pervade that august body on the discovery that the prisoners whose ransom was to have added so largely to its funds had simply been wasted.

“There must be a way up the mountain,” he said, “so that we could turn aside from the path without even approaching the Roumi dogs.”

“There is,” said Zeko, “but it is such a way that a man must cling to the rocks with both hands and his toes and his teeth. How can women climb it?”

“Women can do what they are obliged to do,” said Milosch, with his evil grin.

“This settles it,” said Zoe, as Maurice translated the words. “If our lives depend on our climbing up there, or even walking any farther, why, we shall have to be killed. Look, Maurice, our moccasins are cut to pieces, and my feet are bleeding--so are Eirene’s. We can’t walk another step, and you can tell them so.”

It was unnecessary for Maurice to speak, however, for one of the brigands came in to report, with much indignation, that Zoe’s feet had left spots of blood on the track, which the rain had not quite washed off, and the rest were forced to perceive that the girls were really incapable of walking farther. Again there were suggestions of a short and sharp way out of the difficulty, and again Milosch interposed as _deus ex machinâ_.

“You say that these Roumi swine have two sentries on the path, and that the rest are sheltering in the ruined hut below? Well, be sure that the sentries will join the rest as soon as it is daylight, for what sane man would stand out in the rain when he might be in shelter? They will not expect us to break through by day, and if the saints only grant them sleep after they have eaten, we may pass without their even seeing us. If they should seek to prevent us, we can use the prisoners as a screen against their bullets, and escape ourselves.”

“It is well said,” remarked the chief, whose own financial stake in the matter was considerable. “At least we will do what we can to save the ransom. We will remain here for the present.”

The prospect was not very cheering, for the rain dripped down from the sodden trees on the soaked ground, and everything was wet. Maurice took matters into his own hands. Gathering together some fallen branches, he arranged them on the driest spot he could find, and asked Zeko for matches. The brigands laughed grimly at the request.

“If you must kill the ladies, you may as well do it at once,” he responded promptly, “and not leave them to die of cold and wet. No one could distinguish smoke in this mist, even if there was any one looking out.”

Unless the suggestion had accorded with the brigands’ own inclinations, it would probably still have been scouted, but in the prevailing cold and discomfort the idea of a fire appealed to them powerfully, and they collected more sticks, and laboured strenuously to get the wet wood to burn. It was a very smoky and cheerless fire, at best, but it put a little warmth into the girls’ shivering frames, and Maurice toasted the soaked morsels of black bread and dingy cheese which were thrown to them, and induced them to eat. The brigands had been consulting together during the meal, and at its close Stoyan called Maurice aside, addressing him in a reasonable, “man-and-brother” way, which amused him by its cool assumption that their interests were the same.

“You must see clearly,” he said, “that we cannot remain here. At any cost we must pass the soldiers in front. Out of consideration for your sisters we have refrained from dragging them up the rocks, and you must, therefore, make them understand that they must walk a little way farther. Let them bind up their feet, so as to leave no track, and once beyond the pass we shall be able to procure horses for them. We are bound for a safe hiding-place, where they will find rest and comfort, and women to attend upon them. Surely you can see that it is better for them to make this slight effort than to be left dead upon the road?”

“I do quite see it,” responded Maurice, after a moment’s thought. It was clear that, for the moment, their interests did indeed lie with those of the brigands, since any attempt to reach the soldiers or delay the march meant death. He went back to the girls and explained things to them, and they set to work wearily to tie up their wounded feet in such rags as they could muster, replacing the torn moccasins over them. Presently one of the scouts came in to report that the Roumi sentries had rejoined their comrades at the ruined hut, thus leaving the way above clear, and the march was resumed immediately, the girls tottering as best they could on either side of Maurice, who alone had an arm to spare for them. The brigands had all unslung their rifles and looked to the cartridges, and were proceeding in a rough open order, with the scouts a little way in advance. Suddenly they came to a standstill, with an involuntary gasp of astonishment. Facing them, climbing the slope from the ruined hut, were the Roumi soldiers, whose surprise was equally patent with their own. It would have been difficult to say which party had less expected to see the other, but the brigands were prepared for the emergency, while the soldiers were not. Their rifles were slung on their backs for convenience in climbing, and they were scattered on the face of the slope. A sharp order from the brigand chief confronted them with the muzzles of twenty rifles, and with a howl of horror they turned and fled. Half of the band pursued them--the rest remaining to guard the prisoners--firing off their rifles and whooping with delight. The pursuit was not a long one, for Stoyan’s whistle recalled his men quickly, and sending one back to discover whether the sounds of the skirmish had penetrated to the force with which Wylie was, he led the rest forward for some distance, till they came to a place where two tracks met. One man was sent on down the lower and left-hand path, while the main body disposed themselves among the rocks, well out of sight of the road, and Milosch, approaching the prisoner, said to Zoe--

“You give ze Voivoda cutting.”

This mild horticultural request was so surprising that Zoe looked at him in perplexity, whereupon he pointed impatiently to her dress. The neat striped flannel coat and skirt on which she had so long ago prided herself was now in sadly reduced circumstances, the skirt especially having been curtailed to the most approved “mountaineering length.”

“Oh, give them a piece of yours, Eirene, can’t you?” she said. “You really have more left.”

“Oh no, it is yours he wants,” said Eirene quickly. “He thinks Captain Wylie will recognise it.”

Zoe glared at her for this tactless speech, and reluctantly tore off a strip which was hanging loose between two of the brown patches she had put in. Watching the chief with some curiosity, she saw that he tore it in two, and dexterously entangled one piece in a thorny bush some little way up the ascending path on the right, and then went on up the hill, evidently intending to do the same with the other farther on. The intention of the manœuvre was obvious, and the prisoners did not know whether to sigh for the deception to be practised on Wylie, or to rejoice that his perilous presence was to be removed from them. After some time, the brigand who had gone down the hill reappeared with an ancient horse, very thin and almost blind, and the girls were, without ceremony, mounted one behind the other, with the rugs as an apology for a saddle. They and Maurice were then blindfolded, and the descent began, the brigands displaying their usual distrust of smooth or soft ground, and leading the horse down the rockiest places, which was good strategy, but made exceedingly uncomfortable riding. For once, each girl was really thankful that her companion’s eyes were unable to see the shifts to which she was put in order to maintain her balance. At length the descent became somewhat less steep, and the old horse stumbled gallantly along a fairly level track, his two riders almost asleep, in spite of their uneasy position. They stopped with a jerk at last, and heard some one pouring forth an exciting narrative to the chief. Maurice came up to them softly.

“It is the fellow who was sent back,” he said. “He followed the retreating soldiers until they came to the village, and met Wylie’s force just setting out in this direction. Wylie meant to sweep the country, you see, and if the sentries above here had not left their posts, the two detachments must have caught the brigands between them. Of course, it’s just as well for us personally that they didn’t.”

“What did Captain Wylie say?” asked Zoe.

“When he heard we had broken through? Oh, Demo says, ‘Their own Bimbashi beat the flying soldiers with his sword, but the Capitan cursed them in bitter, biting words, far worse than any beating, for if the evil eye ever rested on any man, it did on them!’”

“If I were Captain Wylie, I should curse myself,” said Eirene succinctly, just as Milosch summoned her and Zoe to dismount. Followed by Maurice, they were led a wearying round, in and out of doors, up and down stairs, into a tower, a farmyard, a granary, and a kitchen (as they judged by the smells that met them), until they were hopelessly confused as to the direction in which they had come. Then they were pushed in at a low door, and the bandages were suddenly removed from their eyes. They were in darkness, but other senses than that of sight convinced them that they stood in a cattle-stable.

“Oh, Maurice, the dirt!” gasped Zoe, as her foot sank into yielding mud.

“Go on! go on!” cried Milosch behind, prodding Maurice in the back with the muzzle of his rifle--an action which has a distinctly disquieting effect upon the person acted on--and Zeko’s voice in front called them to come forward. Following the direction of the words, they saw a faint glimmer of grey, defining the shape of another doorway, with the outline of Zeko’s beckoning arm dark against it. Stumbling through the mud, they reached the threshold, and found themselves in a cave or underground room hewn out in the rock. Part of the ceiling was of rock, the rest, through which the light glimmered, was apparently the badly fitting flooring of a room above. Sacks and large earthenware jars, with various boxes, seemed to show that the place was the receptacle for all the household valuables, but there was nothing that could be called furniture. Zeko shut the door with a bang, and they heard him piling up fodder--or something else that deadened sound--against it on the outside. They were imprisoned underground.