CHAPTER VII.
A NIGHT’S LODGING.
For a minute or two the captives were left standing together while the brigands divided the spoil, each man stowing his share away in the bag slung knapsack-wise over his shoulder, and Wylie said hastily to Zoe, “You had better pick up what you can of the things they have left. Of course we shall be rescued to-morrow, but you will be more comfortable to-night.”
Obediently Zoe gathered together various odds and ends of clothing, one or two of Eirene’s hair-brushes, deprived of their silver backs, and such other trifles as the cupidity or ingenuity of the brigands saw no use for. Her note-books and writing materials, the contents of her travelling workbox, and the little “first-aid” case on which she prided herself, had all been seized upon as valuable spoils, and she found herself as destitute as the most heedless traveller could deserve to be. Eirene, brooding sullenly over her wrongs, gave her no help in her search, and she rolled up the poor remains of their joint possessions into a bundle and tied it round with a broken umbrella-strap. This was only done just in time, for the brigands, their delightful task accomplished with a good deal of squabbling and murmuring against the decisions of the chief, had leisure to think of their prisoners. Accompanied by two others leading the horses which had been taken from the carriage, the interpreter came towards them.
“Behold! we beneficent beings,” he observed genially. “We furnish even horses zat ze women may ride.”
“I fancied we provided the horses,” murmured Maurice, from his seat on the ground.
“I won’t ride,” said Zoe quickly. “Maurice must. He can’t walk.”
“Nonsense! I can walk perfectly well,” said Maurice.
“For goodness’ sake do what they tell you,” said Wylie anxiously. “It’s only for one night.”
“Your eyes most be blinded,” pursued the interpreter. Zoe gasped.
“He means blindfolded,” explained Maurice, as the man produced the dirtiest handkerchief any of the captives had ever seen.
“Oh no, no!” entreated Zoe, breaking down at last. “Why, they might take us and you in different directions, and we should never know. I’ll shut my eyes—anything, but don’t let us be blindfolded. Do speak to them,” she begged of Wylie. “They listen to you.”
“Pull yourself together,” he said sternly. “I should never have suspected you of being hysterical.” The accusation told, and Zoe, with both hands pressed to her chest, fought down the threatening sobs. Wylie turned to the interpreter. “Look here,” he said, “the ladies are frightened. If they think they are to be separated from their brother they will give you a lot of trouble. Why should you blindfold them? If you lead the horses they can’t possibly escape.”
“I know a treek——” began the interpreter airily, but here his memory failed him; “double valuable to zat one,” he concluded hastily, beckoning to another brigand for the rope twisted round his waist. Cutting off a short length, he fastened one end round Wylie’s neck, and made a loop at the other. “Ze lady may hold zat,” he said, chuckling.
“All right,” said Wylie, checking with a glance a horrified outburst from Zoe. “Quite mediæval, isn’t it, Miss Smith—mounted ladies leading captive knights on foot? Lucky for me that I’m not assigned to your sister, or she might avenge her wrongs by strangling me—accidentally, of course.”
“Will you endure it?” demanded Eirene fiercely of Maurice, as Zoe, trembling with indignation, submitted to be blindfolded and lifted on one of the horses, with a rug for a saddle.
“What can’t be cured must be endured,” he responded easily. “What would you suggest I should do?”
“Die!” she hurled at him. “I would, in your place.”
“If you really wish that, I can oblige you in a minute or two. You have only to refuse to be blindfolded or to mount your horse. The brigands will naturally proceed to handle you roughly, and I shall feel bound to throw myself forward in your defence. I think I could manage to get killed then. Wylie will be there to look after you and Zoe, and you will be able to think well of me.”
“You say that to prevent my offering any resistance!” she said angrily.
“Well, do you wonder that I prefer living to dying?”
“You English have no sense of honour! But I am unjust. You are not noble; why should you prefer death to disgrace?”
At this Maurice laughed, quite unintentionally, disgusting Eirene so much that she submitted as meekly as Zoe had done to be blindfolded and mounted, and slipped the loop of cord over her wrist with a kind of fierce satisfaction. After this humiliation, she thought, even Zoe could no longer pretend that Maurice and Wylie were her equals! The reflection pleased her, and she rode along almost contentedly, reviewing her own past conduct and approving it, which is always a soothing occupation. Maurice, his arm gripped by one of the brigands, who acted both as guide and guard, trudged silently beside her horse, which was led by another of the band. Behind them came Zoe and Wylie, similarly escorted, and the rest of the brigands acted as front and rear guards respectively, their moccasin-clad feet making no sound on the stony soil. The chief had commanded perfect silence, and the horses’ feet were muffled.
Zoe’s heart was full to bursting. The humiliations inflicted on her brother and Wylie touched her to the quick, and she experienced on their behalf all the indignation that they pretended not to feel. Most incongruously, the thought of the utter absurdity of the position afflicted her at times with an agony of mirth, and moment by moment she was forced to choke down the inclination to scream or to break into wild laughter. The occasional touch of Wylie’s shoulder against her knee as he stumbled over the rough ground comforted and calmed her, bringing a sense of the known and the ordinary into the fantastic circumstances of the present. Once or twice she put out a timid hand to make sure that he was still there, receiving a muttered word of encouragement in answer, and the friendly contact enabled her to repress the hysterical outburst she dreaded.
The journey seemed already to have lasted for hours when, after descending a very steep hill, the interpreter announced that there was a “reever” in front, and that Maurice and Wylie must submit to be carried across. With one voice they assured him that they would prefer to wade, but he explained that the chief’s solicitude for their health was so great that he would not hear of their running the risk of catching cold. Zoe laughed involuntarily on hearing this, and thus relieved her feelings a little, though horribly ashamed of her lack of sympathy. The brigands must either be adepts in the art of torture by pin-pricks, or totally destitute of a sense of humour. Maurice muttered that he did not see the joke, as he was carried off by two stalwart ruffians down a sloping bank, across, and up again, but Wylie manufactured a creditable response to her laugh. “A Gilbert and Sullivan melodrama, isn’t it?” he said, as he also was safely conveyed across the twenty feet or so of what must be presumed to be a rushing torrent, from the way in which the bearers slipped and tumbled about. The horses crossed with surprising steadiness, and the journey was resumed, the track now trending generally up instead of down. Zoe had lost all inclination to laugh by this time. She was cold and tired, and stiff and miserable, and full of terrible apprehensions. If Wylie had not been close at hand she would have defied the opinion of the brigands and cried like a baby, but she could not break down in his presence. He expected her to be brave, and she tried to forget her aching limbs and think only of the literary use to which she could put this disagreeable experience in the future. This was the way in which she usually comforted herself in her troubles, but it did not seem quite adequate now, and a weary sigh broke from her. The mere physical feat of sitting her horse without pommel or stirrup seemed no longer possible. If only she could slide to the ground and sleep!
“Keep up!” murmured Wylie. “Milosch—that’s the interpreter chap—says it’s only a little farther.”
Once more she pulled herself together and replied cheerfully, and before long the necessity for endurance ceased. A subtle change in the muffled sounds surrounding her showed her that the horse was being led into a building of some sort, and when he stopped she slid off helplessly, much to the amusement of the brigands. Amid their laughter, Milosch took the handkerchief from her eyes, and as soon as she could distinguish her surroundings she found that she was crouching close to a recently kindled fire in a low shed built of rough stones. There was a square hole in the roof, approached by a ladder, and the intense blackness above seemed to show that there was a second storey of some sort. Eirene, Maurice, and Wylie were standing near her, blinking in the firelight, and the brigands were arranging their cloaks on the ground, or rummaging in their bags.
“Ascend up!” commanded Milosch, seizing Maurice by the arm and pointing to the ladder. “We are charitable, we give you food when you deposited safe in supernal regions.”
“He can’t climb that ladder with his hands tied!” cried Zoe indignantly. “Why don’t you untie him?”
Milosch looked doubtfully at the chief, who shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and the cords were removed, care being taken not to cut them. “We tie you again morning,” observed the interpreter, with his cheerful smile. Maurice mounted the ladder, the girls followed, and Wylie, who had lingered to secure the rugs which had served as saddles, and request the loan of two of the brigands’ large overcoats, brought up the rear.
“It’s nothing but a hay-loft!” cried Zoe in horrified accents.
“Excuse me,” said Wylie; “it is a loft with hay in it, which is a much better thing, since it provides us all with beds. You’ll see, Miss Smith. While we are waiting until our friends below send us up some supper, we will curtain off the space at the end for you and your sister. Smith and I will keep close to the hole, so that if the brigands are up to any mischief in the night, they must wake us before they can get near you.”
His tone was so cheerful and matter-of-fact that Zoe forgot her fatigue and her fears, and held the rug for him while he tied one corner by its fringe to a jagged nail he had discovered in the sloping roof. The other side of the improvised curtain presented some difficulty, for there was nothing to which to fasten it, until she produced a stout hat-pin, which Wylie hammered into a crevice with the heel of his boot. Eirene disapproved of this use of the hat-pin.
“You should keep it for a better purpose,” she said. “Mine I regard as a dagger.”
“Do you mean to say that was all you had in your hand this afternoon?” cried Zoe.
“Why not? I would have used it, as I said, and it would kill if one struck hard enough.”
“I only wish I had known!” murmured Wylie, with heartfelt earnestness. “There, Miss Smith! now your room is ready, you see. You can make capital nests in the hay, and here are these two greatcoats to cover you. It won’t be luxurious, of course, but it’s only for one——” He broke off suddenly, and changed the subject. “Smith and I have this other rug, so we shall do well. We shall all sleep without rocking to-night, I think.”
“But can’t we manage to escape while the brigands are asleep?” said Maurice, lowering his voice.
“Scarcely, since they are safe to take away the ladder, and it wouldn’t do much good to drop down in the middle of them. The fire’s there, you know.”
“If we were in a Henty book,” said Zoe thoughtfully, “we should cut a hole through the roof and let ourselves down outside.”
“Unfortunately they have sentries all round,” said Wylie. “I heard the chief placing them. The only chance would be to bribe one, and we have nothing to do it with.”
Eirene laughed. “If you had not robbed me of my jewels this afternoon, we should not have been destitute,” she remarked, as if to explain her mirth.
“I shall begin to wish I had left you to be searched in Balkan fashion,” muttered Wylie.
“Now look here, Eirene,” said Maurice, in his most elder-brotherly tone, “just drop it. If you are our sister, you must put up with things, and not make yourself unpleasant to our friends. You were frightfully silly this afternoon, and might have risked all our lives, and you ought to thank Wylie for what he did. We are all in one boat, and it’s simply idiotic to keep up grudges in this way. Wylie is an old campaigner, and Zoe and I are quite content to put ourselves under his orders. You must do the same, content or not.”
He expected a fierce protest from Eirene, but the authoritative tone seemed to cow her. “You don’t understand what my jewels were to me,” she pleaded. “They were my whole fortune, and the pledge of my birthright, and now I have lost them. But do not fear. You shall all experience my gratitude in the future, and I shall bear no malice against Captain Wylie for his excess of zeal.”
“Much obliged, I’m sure,” grunted Wylie, looking as if he thought Eirene a little mad, and Zoe hastened to cover the indiscretion by remarking—
“When you talk in that way, Eirene, you always make me think of Miss Flite promising to ‘confer estates.’ Don’t you think it’s horribly unfair, Captain Wylie, that she should be able to patronise Maurice and me in this way?”
Wylie’s reply was fortunately anticipated by the arrival of Milosch, who came up the ladder bearing a small collection of lumps of black bread and very ancient cheese, and a skin bottle of water.
“Are we not beneficents?” he asked proudly, depositing his burden on the rug. “We give you our own food!”
“That’s all very well,” said Maurice, peering down after him as he descended. “They are eating the white bread and things we left in the luncheon-basket.”
“How can we eat such stuff as this?” asked Zoe in dismay, for bread and cheese were alike as hard as a rock.
“Ask them to send up a little white bread for the ladies,” suggested Wylie; and Maurice, who was sitting nearest the hole in the floor, obeyed, only to receive the answer, “You are our guests. We give you our own food.”
Prudently refraining from increasing the girls’ aversion for the food by mentioning that he had seen it collected from the sacks of the different brigands, where it had reposed in close contact with wax, tobacco, thread and leather for soling moccasins, rag for cleaning guns, and other useful articles, Maurice broke off a piece of the bread by knocking it against the roof, and tasting it, pronounced it not so bad when you were hungry. Eirene confessed to having tasted black bread before, when paying visits to peasants’ huts, but added contemptuously that she had never expected to find it actually set before her for a meal. However, since there was nothing else, they all managed to nibble a little, and then the girls, almost asleep already, retired behind their curtain, and were soon slumbering peacefully, undisturbed by the loud snores from below, which showed that however guilty the collective conscience of the brigands might be, it did not keep them awake.
It seemed to Zoe and Eirene that they had scarcely slept at all when they heard Maurice’s voice warning them that it was time to get up, and they looked at one another in dismay by the light which poured through the holes in the roof, realising that their faces were haggard and their hair full of hay.
“I suppose we can do our hair without a looking-glass,” said Zoe. “But do you think there is any hot water?”
The question sounded so absurdly incongruous that she was not surprised to hear it answered by a laugh from Maurice on the other side of the curtain. “There is a stream,” he said, “and you have leave to wash your faces and hands. You’re lucky to have kept your tooth-brushes, for Wylie and I have to use twigs, like the mild Hindu.”
“I shouldn’t have thought the brigands would care for tooth-brushes,” said Zoe.
“They don’t—for their teeth; they use them for cleaning their guns—I’ve seen them. So be thankful, and don’t shirk the cold water. I can even supply you with soap, for Milosch has just lent me a piece of our own, with strict injunctions to return it, and much self-congratulation on his generosity.”
“I think the estimable Milosch is becoming rather a bore,” said Zoe viciously, trying to shake the hay off her skirt. “Don’t go down until I have bandaged your head again, Maurice. I want to do it properly by daylight.”
“Considering the want of water and light up here, wouldn’t it be as well to do it downstairs?” suggested Maurice; and Zoe, agreeing, presently found herself and her patient the centre of interest to the brigands. This publicity had its advantages in that she quickly distinguished the man to whom her first-aid case had fallen, and with some difficulty obtained through Milosch its temporary restoration. While the interpreter strutted about, proclaiming loudly to the prisoners the magnanimity of their captors in thus providing them with surgical treatment, she cut away the hair round the cut, joined the edges with strips of plaster, and crowned Maurice with a turban of bandages, to the intense admiration of the spectators. As soon as she had finished, they hustled forward one of their number, who had received a somewhat similar wound in Haji Ahmad’s last desperate fight, and informed her, through Milosch, that he also required medical attendance.
“Don’t touch the dirty brute,” said Wylie. “I’ll tie him up roughly—quite good enough for him. He’s not fit for you to handle.”
“Oh no, I’ll do it,” said Zoe reluctantly, for the aspect of the wounded man was not alluring. “I never realised before ‘how very hard it is to be a Christian,’” she said, rather faintly, when the task was over, and one of the men filled the rough leathern bucket with fresh water that she might wash her hands.
“I don’t think practical Christianity need go quite so far,” said Wylie savagely, but the chief was calling to Zoe.
“Stoyan ze Voivoda say, ‘Here, girl!’” explained Milosch, and Zoe hesitated. The chief held out a piece of her own chocolate, with an attempt at a smile, and after a struggle with herself, she advanced and accepted it. It was better than the black bread and hard cheese.
“Lo, ze munificence of our autocrat!” exclaimed Milosch, striking an attitude of reverential admiration. “He provide his guests with sweetmeats!”
“Oh, stow that, Milosch!” entreated Maurice; “it’s getting stale. Considering that the things are our own, it would be in better taste to say nothing about them.”
Milosch smiled uncomfortably, and joined Stoyan for a murmured confabulation, returning quickly to the prisoners, who were mitigating their hard fare with minute fragments of the chocolate.
“Ze Voivoda say he not tie your hands to-day if you plight your gentlemanly faith to try not to escape,” he said to Maurice and Wylie. “We going into mountains, where ze women most walk, and zey need your help.”
“To try not to escape?” said Zoe. “Oh, he means not to try to escape. You can promise that, can’t you?”
“No, no,” said Eirene eagerly. “It is a deception, a snare—I am sure of it. Doubtless the way is easy, and lies through villages, where it would cause suspicion if you were seen to be fettered, and the brigands think they will make us appear as tourists guided by them. Surely you won’t cripple yourselves by such a promise?”
“It does seem rather insane,” agreed Maurice. “What do you say, Wylie? We should feel pretty small if we found we had debarred ourselves from accepting a good chance of escape.”
“I confess I don’t quite see how we are to escape with two ladies through a country which we don’t know and the brigands do,” said Wylie. “Even Miss Smith’s Henty heroes would have found it a large order. But don’t think I want to back out of any unpleasantness that’s going.”
“Well, let us split the difference,” said Maurice, “and refuse to give our parole until we see the sort of way they take us. If it is very bad for the girls, we can still ask to be undone.”
“You fools one and ozer,” remarked Milosch sardonically, when he heard their decision. “Behold our slighted consideration avenge itself in severity.”
The meaning of this cryptic sentence appeared immediately, for the brigands, offended by the rejection of their offer, bound the two men’s arms behind them so tightly that the cords cut into the flesh. Wylie laughed grimly. “We can’t choose to be bound, and then complain because they bind us,” he said. “I am sorry to be unkind, Miss Smith, but the sooner you find the track too difficult for you, the better we shall be pleased.”
Even now there was some time to wait before the start, while two men, detailed for the purpose, removed the ashes of the fire and other traces of the night’s occupation from the cattle-shed where it had been spent, and the rest of the brigands made up their loads, those who carried the rugs complaining angrily because the prisoners were obviously unable to do so. Then the procession set out, with the captives in the middle, the girls uneasily silent, frightened by the unpleasant result of Eirene’s advice.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HISTORY OF A DAY.
Eirene’s ingenious idea had been signally mistaken. This was evident almost as soon as the little clearing in which the cattle-shed stood had been left behind, and, indeed, it could never have been entertained if the prisoners had been able to see their way and the nature of their surroundings the night before. Far from being an easy road, leading through villages, the path was a mere goat-track, plunging into the very heart of the mountains. To the active brigands, in their flexible moccasins, it presented no particular difficulty, but it was full of perils and alarms for inexperienced climbers wearing boots. At first, Zoe and Eirene shrank nervously from the gaps in the pathway, and the narrow ledges on which they were expected to creep round corners of rock; but the curses and threats which followed the slightest hesitation soon drove them on in blind terror. The brigands were worse than the mountain. Realising that Maurice and Wylie were helpless, the girls maintained sufficient resolution not to appeal to them, even by a glance, as they stumbled painfully up the track, their arms tortured by the cords. Not only curses, but blows, were showered on them whenever they missed their footing; but the treatment meted out to the girls was what they found hardest to bear. At last, when Zoe slipped and almost fell, and the nearest brigand’s grimy paw clutched her and shook her savagely, Wylie could stand it no longer.
“Smith, we must give our parole!” he called to Maurice. “Your sisters can’t get on alone. Here, you interpreter, tell them we’ll promise not to try to escape.”
A halt was called, and a good deal of discussion ensued among the brigands. There was an evident disposition to allow Maurice and Wylie to bear the consequences of their refusal to the bitter end, but the men who were carrying the rugs objected, and so did the two who were charged with seeing to the girls’ safety. It was unreasonable, they pointed out with much cogency, to expect them to be bothered with these troublesome women and their parcels, when the task could be imposed upon their natural protectors, and the plea commended itself at length to the rest. While Milosch delivered an oration on the unsurpassed kindness of the brigands in allowing the captives to change their minds, the chief cut the cords with his knife, and ordered an immediate advance. Chafing his numbed wrists, Wylie joined Zoe.
“We may have prevented you from escaping!” she said miserably.
“Not a bit of it. At least, if you see any chance of escape here in these atrocious hills, I must say I don’t. Take my arm, won’t you? the path is wider just here. Oh, I say”—he had caught sight of tears in her eyes—“please don’t! You’re not fagged out yet?”
“It’s—not that,” came in a series of gasps. “It’s seeing you—and Maurice—knocked about—and not being—able to do—anything. I hate—being a woman.”
“It’s all in the day’s work,” with discreet evasiveness. “Come, now, make up your mind you’re campaigning—‘climbing the Afghan mountain-track,’ you know.”
“In the Khoord-Cabul disaster?” with the ghost of a smile.
“What a cheerful mind you have! But after all, the captives were rescued that time, so it’s a good omen. There! that’s right,” as Zoe stumbled and saved herself by catching at him. “Don’t make us feel that our tremendous sacrifice was in vain. I’m afraid your sister hasn’t forgiven me yet. She refused my help so decidedly just now that I had no choice but to leave her to your brother.”
“She has rather strained ideas of honour,” said Zoe hesitatingly, “and I think she imagines you lead Maurice wrong. You see, it was you who offered to give the parole, and I suppose that sends you down in her estimation.”
“Well, it’s a good fault, at any rate—too keen a sense of honour. We English are too ready, no doubt, to think that because a thing is a compromise it must be right. Your sister will be a fine woman when her angles are a little rubbed off, if she sticks to her creed.”
“But she doesn’t stick to it in little things!” broke out Zoe involuntarily. “Oh, I oughtn’t to have said that!” she cried in distress, realising how her speech must sound from Wylie’s standpoint. “We have been brought up so differently, you know; she is always surprising us.”
“It was rather an experiment bringing her on a trip of this kind, wasn’t it? Take my hand across here. I mean, some people are all right as long as everything goes well, and they have all their own things about them; but trouble or strangeness of any kind seems to bring all their rough edges to light. Of course, she only wants to knock about a bit—that’ll make all the difference,” he added hastily.
“I—I can’t explain all the circumstances,” said Zoe, in some confusion, “but it seemed the only thing we could do, to have her with us. And she really means to be sisterly, I am sure. It’s only that she doesn’t quite understand things. And we must all sink or swim together, of course.”
“Quite so; and I hope I may be considered a brother in that particular sense. You wouldn’t all make your escape, and leave me in the hands of these fellows, would you?”
“Do you think it likely?” asked Zoe indignantly. “And I don’t think we should have much chance of escaping without you, either. Oh,” lowering her voice, “do tell me why you suddenly changed your mind about our being rescued? At first, you said over and over again that we should only be prisoners for one night, but when we got to the shed yesterday evening you stopped in the middle of a sentence and seemed to remember something, and since then you have made no more prophecies.”
“It wasn’t that I remembered something, but that I realised something,” said Wylie, shifting the rugs he was carrying from his arm to his shoulder, and speaking under their shelter. “When I expected to be rescued to-day, I thought we should still be inside the triangle formed by the road, the railway, and the river, in which we were captured. When we did not arrive last night, the people across the river would inquire by telegraph whether we had started, and it would be seen at once that something had happened to us on the road. There are enough soldiers and gendarmes within easy reach to sweep the triangle thoroughly from the road and railway to the river, and we were bound to be discovered.”
“And it was after we crossed the river that you saw we were no longer inside the triangle? But I thought the country to the south was much more settled. Would the brigands really take us there?”
“Ah, that’s their artfulness. Did you truly think it was the river we crossed last night—only twenty feet wide, and shallow enough to wade through?”
“But what else could it have been—just a stream? Then we should still be inside the triangle.”
“It was not water at all; it was the railway.”
“Oh!” said Zoe blankly. “How could you tell?” she added.
“Didn’t you notice that there was no sound of water? One would have expected a good deal of noise from the way in which the brigands pretended to stumble about, as if the current was a swift and broken one. That struck me at one, and I listened hard. If the men carrying me had been wearing boots, I should have heard them crunching on the ballast, or knocking against the rails, but of course their moccasins made no noise. But I noticed that they lifted their feet to avoid something four times, and by calculating the length of their steps I found it was just where the rails would naturally come. Then I was sure.”
“Then it’s no good our hoping to be rescued soon?”
“We won’t give up hope, certainly. But it’s a stern-chase now—no chance of our being surrounded. And this is the brigands’ own country, where the Grand Seignior’s writ can hardly be said to run.”
“Then it may be days—or weeks—or months?” breathed Zoe faintly. “How can we stand it?”
“Only a day at a time, at any rate, and any day may be the last. Think you are on the North-West Frontier, as that appeals to you so much. I’ll fight my battles, or rather scrambles, o’er again for your benefit. Do you mind telling me why it should be more comforting to be climbing, under equally unpleasant conditions, in the Suleiman Koh than in the Balkans?”
“I don’t know; it’s just the feeling,” said Zoe. “Oh!” stepping on a rolling stone and clutching at him wildly. “Oh, what shall we do? Look at that place in front!”
“It’s a bad bit,” said Wylie judicially. “I shall want both my hands free.” He was twisting the rugs rapidly into a long roll, which he passed over one of his shoulders and under the other arm. “Now if you could lend me the hat-pin I honourably restored to you this morning, I shall have nothing to think of but getting you across. Your brother has done some climbing, hasn’t he? Otherwise I had better take you over first, and come back for your sister.”
Zoe’s lips moved, but no sound came from them as she returned him the hat-pin, a good deal bent by its use as a peg, and he fastened the ends of the rugs across his chest. “Now, don’t be frightened,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll get you across all right. You may be quite sure you are much too valuable to the brigands for them to let you get killed here. Here’s your own particular pet ruffian coming to our help. What a blessing it isn’t Milosch! He would stop in the middle of the most awful places to gas about his self-sacrifice in lending his aid. And Zeko has a rope, too. This is first-class.”
Zeko, the brigand whose head Zoe had bound up, made signs as he came that Wylie and he would fasten the ends of the rope round their own waists, and take Zoe between them; and thus they started on their perilous journey. For a hundred yards or so the path was non-existent, the bare rock running sheer down with only a very slight slope. Happily, the stone was soft enough to allow the cutting of holes for feet and hands, but the brigands had not considered the comfort of ladies in preparing these. It was almost impossible for Zoe to support both feet or both hands at the same time, and she spent some of the most frightful moments in her life in standing with one foot wedged into a crevice while Zeko, hanging in some miraculous way below her in front, guided the other to the next foothold, and Wylie, gripping the rock firmly with one hand, held out the other that she might cling to it as she swung herself on. The brigands in front were sitting down to watch and criticise the performance, and those behind were quarrelling who should pilot Maurice and Eirene, for Zeko had refused contemptuously to trouble himself about them. A man was impressed into the service at last, and Zoe, now safely on the path again, but sick and faint after her terrible experience, hid her eyes that she might not see the transit. It seemed impossible that Maurice could accomplish it successfully, for, in addition to the difficulties Wylie had surmounted, he had the brigand rearguard pressing on his heels, cursing him for not quitting each foothold quicker, and even striking his hands with their sticks to make him loose his hold of the rock. He paid no attention to them, and would not allow Eirene to hurry, as she was inclined to try to do, finally bringing her safely across.
“I couldn’t have done it,” whispered Wylie to Zoe, and she welcomed the tribute to Maurice gratefully.
This was the worst experience in the day’s journey, but the track still wound round projecting rocks, above precipices, and up torrent-beds. The girls were utterly exhausted before the end was reached, and Maurice and Wylie could only drag them ruthlessly on, scolding, encouraging, even threatening, though not with the cold-blooded realism of the brigands, whose untranslated menaces betrayed an ingenuity springing from long practice in torture. At last a thick patch of wood in a sheltered cleft on the mountain-side was pointed out as the halting-place for the night, and two of the brigands, who had gone on in advance some time before, rejoined the rest with a couple of goats, which they mentioned casually that they had requisitioned from a goatherd who was so unfortunate as to pasture his flock in the neighbourhood. Instantly the wood became a scene of pleasant bustle. Some of the band cleared a space for a camp, others began to prepare huge fires where the trees would prevent the lights being seen from the valley below, and the rest devoted themselves to culinary operations of a brief and sketchy character.
The prisoners were left to themselves, in the comfortable security that they could not possibly run away, however much they might wish it. The girls sat obediently where they had been placed, leaning against a tree, and went to sleep forthwith, while Maurice and Wylie, with a knife borrowed from Zeko, cut down branches and bushes and built a hut for them—an attention which it had not occurred to the brigands to offer. The hut was just large enough to hold the two comfortably. Its floor was of pine-boughs covered with a rug, and it had a kind of screen of twisted branches for a door. In front of it the captives were allowed to kindle a small fire of their own, and at this Wylie began to cook their supper. Milosch, with much ostentation, had brought them a piece of goat’s-flesh as a proof of Stoyan’s solicitude for their welfare, and Wylie cut this up into kabobs, which he toasted on improvised wooden skewers. The smell was so savoury that it penetrated the girls’ slumbers and woke them, and they sat up and displayed an intelligent interest in Wylie’s proceedings as they waited till the meat was ready. Never had they tasted anything so delicious in their lives, they declared, as the scorched morsels of meat, eaten as fast as they were ready, without plates or knives and forks, from the skewers on which they were cooked. Zoe even began to moralise on the readiness of civilised humanity to revert to savagery, which was a proof, as Maurice said, that she was getting over her fatigue already. After the meal the girls refused to go to bed at once, declaring that they wanted to enjoy the sensation of resting instead of losing it in sleep, and the faithful Zeko brought them an offering of four cigarettes to round off the entertainment. Zoe felt obliged to light hers and pretend to smoke it, though she dropped it into the fire as soon as Zeko’s back was turned, but Eirene smoked as calmly and with as much enjoyment as the men. The cigarettes, though treated with the utmost tenderness, were soon finished, and Maurice and Wylie stretched themselves luxuriously upon the carpet of pine-needles which covered the ground, to enjoy a well-earned rest after their labours.
“If I may offer a piece of practical advice,” said Wylie to the girls, “it is that you should take off your boots, and rest your feet as much as possible.”
“It’s quite clear that you have been here before, so to speak,” said Zoe, as she prepared to comply. “When the commanding officer advises just what one was longing to do, it’s delightful to obey.”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Eirene, with an ostentatious groan, as she pulled off a sadly disfigured little shoe. “I have heard you talking in that way for hours—pretending, always pretending. ‘These are the Shinwari Hills, all brown and burnt and bare. Below in the valley is the tower of a Waziri chief. There is an Afridi force waiting for us round the next corner. We are carrying rifles and rations and water-bottles and all sorts of utterly useless things——’”
“I appeal to you,” protested Wylie to Zoe; “did I really talk such piffle as all that? If I did, our misfortunes must have turned my brain.”
“Oh, you didn’t say exactly those things,” said Eirene—“though I heard the names so often that I know they are right—but it was always that sort of thing, pretending that there was eternal snow on one side and a precipice a mile deep on the other, instead of disagreeable rough hills, covered with ugly trees, which are always either tripping you up with their roots, or knocking off your hat with their branches. In a day or two I shall have to wear a handkerchief on my head like a peasant woman,” and she contemplated ruefully the remains of her hat, which had started in life as a smart straw, with a peculiarly deceptive and Parisian air of simplicity about it. “And instead of noble, chivalrous Orientals”—a protest from Wylie—“with snow-white robes and splendid turbans, we have these detestable rogues who call themselves Christians, with kilts black with dirt, and no more feeling than a stone. What is the use of pretending about it?”
“It seems to have called up heroic and romantic visions in your mind, at any rate,” said Zoe, “and that ought to have lightened the tedium of the march.”
“And, anyhow, I didn’t inflict it on you,” said Maurice.
“Indeed you did not. You were too cross or too miserable—I don’t know which—to talk, so that I heard the others the whole time.”
“Awfully sorry to have bored you,” said Wylie. “You see, I thought it might help your sister along if I drew on my recollections of old days.”
“It did,” cried Zoe. “I don’t believe I could have kept up without it. Why did you listen, if you were bored, Eirene?”
“It wasn’t that exactly,” explained Eirene; “but it seemed so silly. We are not children; what good can it do to pretend?”
“If it helps us to bear things more cheerfully, surely that’s some good?” suggested Zoe.
“But what is the use of pretending to be cheerful? All the first part of the day, before I was too tired myself to care to listen, I used to hear Captain Wylie say to you, ‘Awf’ly fagged?’ and you conjured up a sprightly voice, and said, ‘Oh dear, no—hardly at all.’ It wasn’t true, and he knew it. What good did it do to pretend?”
“It was true,” said Zoe stoutly. “The mere fact of being asked the question made one feel less tired for the moment. And you do say the horridest things, Eirene.”
“She is like the old woman whose clergyman remonstrated with her for bearing her troubles so badly,” said Maurice. “The old lady told him that when chastening was sent us, it meant that we should be chastened, and she wasn’t going to pretend not to be.”
“Well,” said Wylie, rather tartly, “it has grown to be a sort of tradition, I suppose, among English people that each should keep up for the sake of the rest, and all I can say is that I hope it’ll go on. I don’t see the use of asking questions and speculating about it.”
“I am inquiring into national character,” said Eirene, undaunted. “The people I know, when they are asked if they are in trouble, acknowledge it at once, and point out what a dreadful trouble it is, and how no one was ever quite so sorely tried before——”
“And turn it round and inside out, and hold it up to catch the light,” put in Zoe.
“But if you ask an Englishman, he looks down at you as if he was a mile high, and says with an icy smile, ‘Not at all. Rather enjoy it than otherwise!’” with a very fair imitation of Wylie’s displeased manner.
“How awfully smart you are this evening, Eirene!” drawled Maurice. “Hairbreadth escapes seem to sharpen your wits. But I think it’s about time all good little girls were in bed.”
“I could talk all night when I am interested,” persisted Eirene.
“I haven’t the very faintest, slightest shadow of doubt of it. But Zoe is half-asleep, and Wylie is nodding, and my eyes would shut of themselves if they were not fixed on your speaking countenance. Hullo, what’s up?”
There was a commotion among the brigands feasting round the other fire, caused by the sudden arrival of a man, who was gesticulating violently towards the direction from which they had come. By the firelight the prisoners recognised him as their treacherous driver of the day before.
“Is it help? Are we going to be rescued?” cried Zoe eagerly.
“No such luck; I wish it were,” said Wylie, who had caught some of the newcomer’s words. “Never mind about me,” he went on, rising, “just go to bed. I want to hear what this chap has to say.”
He went towards the other fire, and to the horror of the three left behind, the brigands sprang at him like one man, with howls of fury. Curses and execrations were poured on him, he was hustled and dragged hither and thither, and angry men threatened him with pistols and drawn daggers.
“What can it be?” murmured Zoe, with white lips.
“I don’t know. Keep quiet,” said Maurice, buttoning his coat and squaring his fists. For the girls’ sake he would keep out of it as long as he could, but if Wylie was struck he must go in and back him up, little as two unarmed men could hope to do against a crowd with knives. To his relief, order was presently restored by the intervention of the chief, after which Milosch made a long and evidently moving oration, and Wylie returned to his friends, scowls and murmurs of hatred following him.
“Oh, what was it?” cried Zoe as he reached them.
“Nothing; merely the penalty for playing the fool,” he replied. “You know how long they kept us standing about with our hands tied before we started this morning? I was standing rather by myself, and the ground was sandy, so the bright idea seized me of leaving our rescuers a clue to the way we were going. With my boot I drew ‘N.W.’ fairly deep in the sand, shuffling about as if I was tired of standing so long. Unfortunately, the gentleman who has just arrived reached the place before the rescuers, and twigged what the letters meant. This diffusion of Western learning in the East is a nuisance. Hence all the fuss. Milosch was particularly severe on my ingratitude in trying to betray the brigands after all they had done for us, and I had to remind them of the way in which we were tied at that very moment. So they calmed down, as you see.”
“I should have done it if I had thought about it,” confessed Maurice. “And yet—these chaps can make things so beastly uncomfortable for the girls, you know.”
“Oh, Maurice, don’t be so ungrateful!” cried Zoe. “If it had succeeded, we should all be saying what a splendid idea it was, and how clever Captain Wylie was to think of it. And, at any rate, it’s over now.”
“Is it over?” asked Eirene. Wylie hesitated.
“Well,” he said, “I believe they are taking the night to think about it. But, after all, what can they do? It wouldn’t be to their interest to treat any of us badly, you know. They might refuse to accept my parole and tie my hands again, but they haven’t, so far. So let us be cheerful.”
CHAPTER IX.
ONE TOO MANY.
“Oh, I say! It can’t be time to get up yet,” groaned Maurice, rolling over resentfully on his couch of pine-needles as a hand was laid on his shoulder. But the hand shook him slightly, and Wylie’s voice said, “Wake up, and don’t make a row.”
Throwing off the rug, Maurice sat up, blinking in the grey light of dawn. He and Wylie had chosen their sleeping-places in front of the hut, so that the girls might know they were at hand in case of an alarm in the night; but Wylie was now beckoning him away from it. On the other side of the ashes where the fire had been stood the brigands in a row, grim and silent, with their rifles ready. Maurice stared.
“What’s up?” he asked in bewilderment.
“We desire not so moch to guard,” responded Milosch. “You too many for us. Ze women are precious, and zere most be one man for to attend upon zem. Ze ozer most go. We make you draw ze lot.”
“All right, all right! but you needn’t do it where the ladies can hear you,” said Wylie impatiently. “Come along, Smith.” Wide awake by this time, Maurice rose, and they followed the brigands into the wood, Wylie grasping Maurice’s arm to draw him out of earshot of Milosch. “Look here,” he said. “If the lot falls upon you, of course I’ll take it, for your sisters can’t do without you, but I’m pretty certain it’s only a trick to get rid of me. They’ve been planning this all night.”
“But you don’t think they’d dare—to kill you?”
“Why not? They killed Haji Ahmad without compunction. Their lives are forfeit already, you see, and so long as your sisters are alive, they know that no Government will dare to hunt them down.”
“Zese woods of different shortness,” said Milosch, advancing with a couple of twigs. “You select each, and we tell you which has drawn ze black ball.”
“But which represents the black ball—the long one or the short one?” demanded Maurice.
“Zat not for you to know. We tell you when ze lot is drawn.”
“I told you so,” murmured Wylie. “Whichever I draw is the fatal one. Here, Milosch, let me choose.”
He took one of the twigs, the shorter, and Maurice found himself with the other in his hand. Stoyan, coming forward, measured their length with great deliberation, and announced that the lot had fallen upon Wylie. Maurice sprang forward furiously, but Wylie pinned his arms to his sides.
“Now don’t let us give ourselves away,” the doomed man entreated. “I know what you feel like, and what you would like to do, but your business just now is to think of your sisters. They must not be left in the hands of these scoundrels without a protector. You’ll have to look after them both now. Don’t let them know what’s happened to me if you can help it. Can’t you let them think I have been taken away to be kept safe somewhere? Remember, they have a lot to bear already.”
“I can’t stand by and see you murdered,” panted Maurice.
“I don’t want you to. Go back to the hut. Your sisters will be terrified if they wake and find us both gone. Good-bye, and good luck to you. I wouldn’t ask for a better comrade at a pinch than you have been all through this.”
“Any messages?” asked Maurice shortly.
“No, I have no one to trouble about me, and my affairs are all in order. Some day you might tell your eldest sister that I was sorry to leave without saying good-bye to her.”
“Ze Voivoda say he exhausted of waiting,” said Milosch, coming up with a handkerchief, which he proceeded to tie over Wylie’s eyes.
“Now go, go!” entreated Wylie of Maurice. “You must think of the girls, as I ought to have done yesterday instead of playing the fool.”
Maurice wrung his hand and withdrew, slowly and reluctantly. At the edge of the wood he turned, hearing his friend’s voice raised angrily. “For heaven’s sake, leave me my hands free!” Wylie cried, but Maurice gathered that the demand was refused. He went on into the clearing, and sat down beside the extinguished fire, a prey to the deepest despondency he had ever known. Without Wylie, how were he and the hapless girls to face the trials before them? He himself might be the next sacrifice to the savagery of the brigands, and what would then become of Zoe and Eirene, since neither fear nor avarice seemed potent to restrain their captors? Wylie’s resourcefulness, his restless energy, his cheerfulness, and the underlying force of character which manifested itself only occasionally, but was therefore all the more telling, had made him a tower of strength, and Maurice felt bitterly his own comparative futility. His life had taught him to exercise a certain amount of initiative, clogged by the habit, inculcated as a duty, of weighing the merits of a question before deciding on it, but while he was thinking, Wylie would act—would have acted, rather. The thought swept over Maurice with desolating effect. The man of action was taken, the man who could only feel sure of himself in the humdrum routine of daily life was left. It did not occur to him that Wylie had not grown to his full mental height in a day, or that he himself might draw from the depths of his present desolation the experience which would complete the measure of his manhood.
“Maurice, how slack you look!” cried Zoe, putting out a dishevelled head gingerly at the door of the hut. “Mind you tell Captain Wylie that he must give us some more kabobs for breakfast.”
“All right. They’ll be ready. Provided,” with a sudden happy inspiration, “that you promise faithfully to eat them before you begin to talk. It’s no good my—our cooking if you let the things get cold when they ought to be eaten at once.”
“I promise, honour bright!” said Zoe, and Maurice began to collect wood for a fresh fire, half fearing that orders for the march would be issued before he had time to do any cooking. But the brigands came back into camp and sat down round their own fire with the evident intention of taking their ease, and when the girls came out of the hut they found Maurice busy toasting his face as well as a bountiful supply of kabobs.
“Where’s Captain Wylie?” they cried.
“What did you promise?” asked Maurice repressively. “Sit down and begin at once, and I’ll be doing some more.”
“Maurice, you are eating none yourself,” cried Zoe, having kept her promise until hunger was satisfied. “And where is Captain Wylie? He didn’t get his face nearly as much burnt as you do.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere about, I suppose,” mumbled Maurice. “Have some more?”
“No, thanks; I don’t want any more. Maurice, has anything happened to him? Do you really know where he is?”
“Can’t you let the poor chap alone?” demanded Maurice desperately. “He hasn’t escaped by himself and left us in the lurch—I can tell you that, at any rate.”
“No, but has he been taken away? I believe something has happened. Tell me honestly, Maurice; where is he?”
“They took him away early this morning,” admitted Maurice. “He thought himself it was out of spite for his trying to get us rescued. He asked me to say how sorry he was not to bid you good-bye.”
“Good-bye? Then he thought—— They weren’t going to kill him?”
“How can I tell? They didn’t do it when I was there.”
“But you think they have done it? And you let them?”
“Look here,” said Maurice; “I’d better tell you all I know, and you can see what you think.” He told his story as fast as he could, with involuntary pauses here and there.
“Then there can be no doubt,” said Zoe slowly at last. “He is dead now.”
“I admire you both,” said Eirene, with her gracious air of distributing praise impartially. “Your duty was to the living, and he knew it. He could only die, and he did that well. Some day——”
“Eirene,” said Zoe, with concentrated bitterness, “if you say you will raise a memorial church in his honour, I shall hate you till I die.”
She rose and went into the hut, and Eirene turned to Maurice.
“You think he is dead?” she said.
“Why, of course. What else could I think?”
“I don’t believe it in the least. I think they were trying to frighten him—as a punishment for yesterday, you know. I think they will blindfold him and tie his hands and pretend to take him to the edge of a rock and throw him over, but he will only fall one or two feet.”
“Good gracious, Eirene! how can you think of such diabolical things?” cried Maurice.
“But it is not as if it would hurt him really. They would wish to see him show fear; that would be most natural. It would be foolish for them to kill him. If they found themselves hotly pressed—do you say?—they might kill one of us as a warning to the pursuers, but to do it without any purpose would only diminish their power of bargaining for a ransom and an amnesty.”
“Well, if you’re so certain, why don’t you tell Zoe?”
Eirene shrugged her shoulders. “She is determined that he is dead; how could my sole opinion change her mind? If I thought it would comfort her I would tell her; but suppose that we see him no more again until we are all ransomed and set free? She would determine again that he was dead, and suffer twice over.”
“I only hope you may be right, and that he is alive,” said Maurice gloomily.
The brigands had finished their meal, and were peacefully employed in mending their clothes and moccasins, while the chief was seated under a tree, in close confabulation with Milosch. A sentry was stationed at the head of the track leading to the clearing, there was another on the brow of the mountain above, and a third, as Maurice knew, at the lower end of the wood. Everything seemed to portend a quiet day, without further wandering, and Maurice felt the fact an added trial, welcome though the prospect of rest was. If Wylie was not already dead, where was he, and what fate was intended for him? It was maddening to think of repeating these questions for a whole day, uninterrupted by any possibility of useful occupation.
As Maurice sat engrossed in his dreary meditations, Zoe came out of the hut, red-eyed and gruff-voiced, but overflowing with nervous energy.
“Do let us find something to do, Maurice, if we are to stay here all day,” she said. “Let us make a hut for you. I’m sure it will be better for you than sleeping in the open another night.”
Maurice rose at once, receiving a wholly unnecessary glance of advice from Eirene, which said, “Humour her; she needs something to divert her mind,” and going into the wood, began to choose fresh branches, and cut them down with the useful knife which served so many purposes. Zoe threw herself into the work with determination, and Eirene sat enthroned on a hillock at the foot of a tree and gave counsel.
“Make it large enough for Captain Wylie as well,” she said, as Maurice, thinking he had cut enough twigs, was gathering them into a bundle to carry back to the clearing; “he may be back to-night.”
“Eirene, how can you?” cried Zoe indignantly, and stopped, unable to say more.
“Look here, Eirene,” said Maurice, exasperated, “can’t you get something to do? It’s all very well to sit there looking on——”
“Oh, she can’t,” broke in Zoe. “Her arm got strained again in crossing that awful place yesterday, and it was rather bad when I dressed it this morning. Let her alone; I suppose she has her own idea of a joke.”
Eirene’s glance at Maurice said, “What did I tell you?” as she rose and picked her way daintily back to the clearing. When they returned thither with their burdens, she retired to a rock at some little distance, with an ostentatious air of leaving them to their obstinate ill-humour in peace. Finding that they took no notice of her, however, she came gradually nearer, in order to give them the benefit of her valuable advice, which proved more useful than might have been expected, since, as she said, she had often watched her father’s foresters build huts of birch-boughs in her childhood. When she repeated her suggestion that the hut should be made large enough for two, however, Maurice felt obliged to intervene with a pacific compromise.
“We have all day to spend over it,” he said, “so we can make a better job of it than the one we ran up in a hurry last night. You girls shall move into it, do you see? and I’ll succeed to the old one.”
Zoe accepted the suggestion in silence, and they went on with their work, interweaving the slanting branches which formed the sides with smaller boughs and twigs. They worked hard most of the day, and talked so little that Eirene found them very dull company. At last she left them in despair, and wandered up the hill towards the rock where the sentry stood, taking care to keep within sight of the clearing. They saw her seat herself on a convenient stone and begin to study the landscape, and then they forgot all about her until an exclamation from her, simultaneously with a shout from the sentry, made them start to their feet and the brigands grasp their rifles.
“Can we have been traced after all?” cried Maurice.
“A day too late!” murmured Zoe. “Oh, if they had only come up with us last night!”
“Well, all our work won’t be much good, for they’ll be sure to hurry us away somewhere else,” said Maurice, noticing that the brigands were hastily cramming their possessions into their sacks. But presently another shout from the sentry, following on a faint hail from the distance, announced that only three men were in sight, and they were friends. Almost at the same moment, Eirene came rushing frantically down the hillside.
“It is himself! I told you so!” she cried. “It is Captain Wylie and two of the brigands. I was sure of it. They were only trying to frighten him, and he is coming back.”
“Oh, let us go and meet him!” cried Zoe.
“Let Maurice go,” said Eirene primly. “Your eyes are so red, Zoe,” she added in a low voice.
“Don’t be Early-Victorian, Eirene,” was the crushing reply. “Do you think I mind his seeing that I cried because I thought he was killed? I should be ashamed if I hadn’t!”
They went down the track in the wake of the brigands, who were jostling one another in mingled surprise, irritation, and alarm. The two members of the band who accompanied Wylie began to pour forth explanations and excuses at the top of their voices long before any words could be clearly distinguished, and while they were seized and cross-examined by their fellows, Wylie was able to reach his friends.
“You haven’t quite done with me yet!” he said, giving one hand to Zoe and the other to Maurice, while Eirene waited for a more ceremonious greeting. “I shall be able to cook one more supper for you before I am sent off.”
“Then it was all a trick?” asked Maurice.
“Well, in a way. You would have been left to think that I was dead, as a warning to you against playing the fool, I suppose, but what I was really picked out for was a very serious matter—getting your ransom. The brutes over-reached themselves utterly in the way they went to work, and the result is that here I am.”
“What a lot you must have to tell us!” said Zoe. “Wait till we get to the camp, so that we can listen comfortably.”
“Why, you must have spent the day in house-building!” said Wylie, as they reached the clearing.
“That’s exactly what we did—to drown our misery,” said Maurice. “Now begin. Did they pretend to shoot you, or any vile trick like that?”
“No, only cuffed and hustled me down these goat-tracks for ever so far, which was no joke with my eyes covered and my hands tied. I really do wonder that I’m here to tell the tale, for I did more slipping than walking. At last we seemed to come to a comparatively level place, and they took the handkerchief off my eyes and set me free, and instructed me to make the best of my way back to civilisation and tell your friends to send fifteen thousand pounds by this day month if they wanted to see you again alive.”
“Fifteen thousand pounds!” gasped Zoe.
“Yes, it sounds a large order, but that wasn’t what stumped me. It was that I really know nothing about you, except that I gather you have a place in Homeshire. I know that Smith was at Cambridge and won a prize for poetry, but I could hardly go there and open a subscription list, or ask the Dons to mortgage the college revenues for his ransom, could I? It sounds absurd that after all we have gone through together we should know so little about each other, and I couldn’t make my guards believe it. They evidently thought that we lived next door to one another at home, or something of that sort, and laboured to explain to me that if there had been only three of us they would have made us write a letter, but as there were four, they sent one of us instead. But at last I managed to make them understand that nothing could induce me to show my face in Therma without proper credentials, and that unless I knew who to apply to, there would be no chance of their getting the money, so they decided to send back here for instructions. But when it came to the point, neither of them would be left alone with me, and as I declined to remain where I was and wait for them, the only thing to do was to bring me back.”
“You said you were no longer blindfolded?” said Eirene, for Maurice and Zoe were looking at one another in consternation. “Ah, yes, that is it. The guards were afraid of you—of your eyes. They hate them.”
“Horribly bad taste in them,” said Wylie lightly. “Why, here’s our friend Milosch coming—bringing us something for supper, I see.”
A sheep had been procured during the day—by nefarious means, of course—and Milosch brought a portion of its flesh for the captives; but he carried also Zoe’s safety inkstand, a leaf torn out of one of her note-books, and a pen of unknown origin.
“You write now, before ze sun falls,” he said to Maurice, “a letter signified by all of you. Ze ransom we demand is fifteen sousand Ingliss pounds, to be placed in gold zis day month on a spot zat will be indicated to your messager. If ze ransom comes not forth, or if deception is adventured, we shall kill you, beginning wiz”—he looked round with a calculating eye upon the three, who all afterwards confessed to feeling cold shivers down their backs, and then laughed—“No, I say not who we begin wiz. Perhaps we let you draw ze lot again. From zis time you hold no communion wiz your messager but in my presence; zerefore seek not to cook up fraud among yourselves.”
Maurice looked at Zoe in despair. How could they let Wylie proceed on his quest in absolute ignorance of their real name? and yet, how could they reveal it in the hearing of Milosch, who possessed the disconcerting faculty of being able to understand English much better than he spoke it? Zoe came to her brother’s help.
“Captain Wylie had better go to Professor Panagiotis,” she said.
“Professor Panagiotis!” said Eirene sharply. “What do you know about him?”
“He is the friend we were going to stay with,” answered Zoe, in surprise. “Do you know him?”
“He was an acquaintance of my father,” said Eirene, with some hesitation. “I don’t remember that I have ever seen him.”
“Well, if he wouldn’t remember you we needn’t mention you separately,” said Zoe quickly, wondering if Wylie was trying once more, as she herself would have done, to reconcile the relationships of this remarkable family. “If you will just say that we are all here together?” she added to Wylie.
“Yes, I think the letter had better go to the Professor,” agreed Maurice, “and then he can post you up, Wylie. There are some things that can’t very well be explained here, but that have a tremendous bearing on the case.”
The letter was written, duly signed by Maurice Smith, Zoe Smith, and Eirene Smith, and addressed to the Professor at his villa at Kallimeri. Milosch was highly entertained by the idea that the head of the Greek party in Emathia should find himself compelled to finance his Slavic opponents to so large an extent, and shouted the news to the rest of the brigands as a huge joke. They chuckled over it without him, for he did not quit the prisoners again. It was evidently his business to see that no one exchanged a word with Wylie that might cover any suggestion designed to cheat the band of their destined spoil, or lead to their being hunted down, and even when Maurice and Wylie rolled themselves up in their rugs to sleep, he sat between them, revolver in hand.
CHAPTER X.
THE OTHER SIDE.
“Good-bye. I’m awfully sorry to leave you like this,” said Wylie to Zoe, as he shook hands with her before his departure, while Milosch, for the twentieth time, read over the letter to make sure there was no deception about it.
“But how much better than the way you left us yesterday!” she said, smiling.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that. I meant that I feel I am deserting you personally. You and I have always been comrades, haven’t we? And I don’t quite see how Smith is to squire two ladies at once along these paths.”
“Perhaps we shan’t be moved on,” suggested Zoe. “I should think this place is as safe and secluded as any they could find.”
“I only hope it may be so. Do you know”—he lowered his voice—“I almost think I could find my way up here from the place to which they took me yesterday? They forgot to cover my eyes again, you know. If they take me down the same way to-day, I shall be quite sure of it.”
“But what good would that be?”
“Why, you don’t imagine I shall be content to leave you in these fellows’ hands a whole month? I shall kick up the biggest row that ever was, and simply force the Government to take action. I have a little account of my own to work off with the brigands, you must remember, and I don’t feel like putting fifteen thousand pounds into their pockets.”
“But if we are not ransomed they will kill us.”
“Not if you are rescued first,” said Wylie promptly. “Don’t be afraid. You don’t think I would let a hair of your head be hurt, do you? But if I can save you three weeks or a fortnight of this sort of thing, and at the same time do the brigands out of their prospective gains, do you honestly expect me to lose the chance?”
He waved his hand to her gaily as he went down the hill-track with his custodians, and Zoe fell into a reverie, from which she roused herself with a vigorous mental shake.
“It’s a good thing he’s gone,” she said to herself. “We have been comrades, as he said, and it has been very nice. In a few days more I shouldn’t have been able to do without him, and that is out of the question. I have the world to see and my name to make before I think of anything of that sort. Yes, it is a good thing.”
But this decision was no sort of justification for Eirene’s taking it upon herself to remark that she was glad Captain Wylie was gone, because he ordered Maurice about. A coolness ensued between the two girls, which lasted until Eirene, who wanted to mend her torn shoe, was obliged to apply to Zoe to obtain a needle and thread from Zeko.
Very early on the morning after Wylie’s departure the other prisoners found that the brigands were not quite so simple as he had hoped. They had no intention whatever of remaining at the spot where he had left them until he might choose to return. The clearing and the huts were forsaken before dawn, and another day of painful wandering and climbing by devious tracks followed. Zeko, in a lordly and contemptuous way, hauled Zoe over the worst places, so that Maurice was free to look after Eirene, but both girls were utterly spent before the crowning trial of the march occurred. This was a long stiff climb up the bed of a torrent, which, in spite of the summer weather, had quite enough water in it to make the girls miserably wet, and destroy the last possibility of usefulness in their shoes. They were practically bare-footed when they staggered into the little valley from which the torrent flowed down the hillside, and discovered that they were now so high up in the mountains that cold was to be added to their other discomforts. Even the brigands were stirred to pity by their white faces and chattering teeth, or perhaps they feared lest hardship should release their prisoners before they could be ransomed, for they helped Maurice to collect wood for a good fire, and made the girls sit down close to it to dry their skirts. The chief went so far as to administer a small quantity of a potent, if smoky spirit, which took away their breath and made their eyes water, and he also requisitioned a pair of moccasins for each of them from two members of the band who were unwary or fastidious enough to carry more than was needed for immediate wear. The trees up here were too sparse to allow of building huts, but in the rocks by the side of the stream there were hollows which might almost be called caves, and Maurice swept one of these out with a branch, made a smaller fire in it, and arranged the rugs for beds. He himself was accustomed now to sleeping outside, wrapped in one of the brigands’ greatcoats, but although he was allowed to lie near the fire, he never forgot the piercing cold of that night, while inside the cave the girls lay close together with both the rugs over them, and shivered in spite of all. Their appearance alarmed the brigands in the morning, and greatcoats and leggings, such as the men wore, were allotted to them in addition to the moccasins. Their feet were so badly bruised that they could not walk alone, but they were helped up to a sort of ledge on the sunny side of the gorge, where they were at last able to feel warm again. Needles and thread were lent them to alter the clothes into some approach to fit, and on the return of three of the band from an absence of some duration, the chief presented them with large coarse handkerchiefs to replace their battered hats. Maurice, whose broken head was now sufficiently recovered to dispense with bandages, was invested with a fez, from which Stoyan solemnly removed the tassel with his knife, on the ground that it was unbecoming for a captive to wear a tassel to his fez.