by John Buchan
“We’ve struck a queer place,” he told his companion, but Hamilton turned a blank face. He had almost lost the power of sight; his whole mind was bent on forcing his sick body into movement.
As they began to descend, an oppression seemed to lift from Archie’s soul. The horror of the place where he had landed left him, now that he had come into a clean bright country. Also the band of iron round his brow fretted him less. He found that he moved with greater ease, and he could lend a hand to his tottering companion. When they reached the first grass he felt hungry, and they sat down complete their breakfast. But Hamilton could only manage a single raisin, though he drank thirstily from a stream.
The whole place was a riot of blue light, the heavens above and the lake beneath; even the rim of silver sand seemed to catch a turquoise reflection. The air, too, was no longer the dry, throat-catching thing of the high snows, but fresh and clement. The sun warmed them gratefully, and Archie’s eye recovered its old keenness. He saw a bird at last and the ornithologist awoke in him.
“By Jove, a black snipe,” he cried. “The first I’ve seen.”
The road they had followed skirted the northern edge of the lake and led them straight to the ruins near the western end. At close quarters the strangeness of the latter was increased. This had been a castle, like any Scots peel tower, the guardian of this fair valley. It had long been deserted, but the keep still stood foursquare, of a masonry which time and storm could not crumble. Archie examined it curiously. No mortar had been used, and the stones fitted into each other with such mathematical exactness that a knife could not find a lodgment. There were no signs of windows. Whoever dwelt here must have dwelt in darkness unless he had some means of artificial light...Archie remembered a story which Luis had told him of the old lords of the mountains, who controlled the Poison Country. They dwelt secure, he had said, for they made a belt of poison round them, and in their windowless dwellings they lived by candlelight. No, not candles, Luis had added, something stranger — natural gas, or perhaps electricity — for he believed that they were great men of science...
At the recollection this clod of masonry, solid as a single boulder, seemed to link him up again with the vale of horrors behind him. The sunshine had become less bright, the place less innocent.
Beyond the keep was a meadow where the stream from the lake issued. Here Archie saw something which had been hitherto hidden by the ruins, and which made him drop Hamilton’s arm and hobble at his best pace towards it. It was an aeroplane — a sea-plane, drawn up just beyond the sand of the shore.
Archie recognised the make — a Wentworth B — of which there were none in the Gran Seco. His next observation was that it was out of action. The floats had been damaged, and the propeller was bent. Had it crashed?...It was D’Ingraville’s machine beyond doubt. Had Janet travelled in it? What had befallen her?
With a sinking heart he examined the thing, and presently he was reassured. The machine was damaged, but there had been no serious accident. It must have alighted in the lake, for it had been drawn by human hands up on the shore. He saw the grooves and ribs which it had made in the sandy beach...He examined it carefully. There was still a good supply of petrol in the tank. Could he use it? A further inspection convinced him that he could not. Repairs were needed, and he had no means of repairing it.
His first impulse was to destroy it. He could easily set it on fire and reduce it to a ruin of bars and wires...But what good would that do? If Janet had come in it and was now somewhere not far off, this might be a means of escape. How, he did not know, but there was no point in burning a possible boat.
Then a few yards off he saw something white on the grass. It was a tiny fragment of cambric, with a monogram in one corner. Janet was always dropping handkerchiefs; he spent his time retrieving them.
He stood with the thing in his hand, and a lump rose in his throat. He wanted to cry, the first tears since his childhood. Janet had sent him a message, Janet who had disappeared into the darkness. By some miracle he had found touch with her, the one chance in a million had succeeded. A great wave of longing and tenderness engulfed him. He stood blindly, as visions of Janet passed before his eyes, her dancing grace, her whimsical humour, her friendly courage. He had picked up her handkerchief, here at the ends of the earth, as he had so often done at far-away Crask...
Then suddenly, for the first time since her loss, there came to him hope. An unreasoning hope, but as vivid as a revelation. She was somewhere near — two days ago, not more, she must have stood on this very spot. He would find her. Nay, he would rescue her. The Providence which had led him thus far so strangely would not fail him.
With this new confidence something returned to Archie. He became his normal self again, and felt desperately sleepy. He had not slept for days. Hamilton sprawled limply near the ruined tower, his burning head pillowed on his arm. Archie got a piece of tarpaulin and some broken struts from the sea-plane, and made him a shelter from the sun, which was now very warm in that bare place. He stretched himself at his side, and in an instant was sound asleep.
He woke to the sound of voices. The covering had been lifted, and around them stood a group of men. Hamilton was sitting up and looking at them with sick eyes.
The men were Indians, but of a type which Archie had never seen before. They were not of the Gran Seco breed, for those were bullet-headed and muscular, whereas these were of a leanness which made them seem inhumanly tall, and their heads were the heads of white men. Instead of the dull beady eyes of the Gran Seco, the eyes of these men were large and bright and lustrous, as if they lived in a perpetual in fever. Their faces were so emaciated as to be almost skulls. Unlike the Indians of Olifa and the Gran Seco who favoured black ponchos, the ponchos of these men were of a dark red — the colour of the raw earth in the Pais del Venenos.
Yet, to his surprise, Archie felt no shrinking from them. They were armed — with blow-pipes and slender lances — but they seemed to have no hostile purpose. They stood in a circle looking down gravely at the awakened sleepers.
Archie scrambled to his feet, and held out his hand as the best gesture of friendship which he could think of. But there was no movement in response. Their hands hung stiffly by their sides.
He tried them in Spanish. He told them that he had flown thither from the Gran Seco, and pointed to the sea-plane to illustrate his mode of travel. He asked them if they had seen any white man in the neighbourhood — especially if they had seen a white woman. Archie’s Spanish was apt to be of a biblical simplicity, and he explained his meaning with an elaborate pantomime. He was like a man who has a desperate message to deliver, but who finds himself stricken with partial aphasia.
It appeared that they understood something of what he said, for they began to speak among themselves, in voices pitched so low that they sounded like the murmuring of insects. Then one, who seemed to be their leader, spoke. It was a kind of Spanish, oddly pronounced and very hard to follow, but Archie gathered that he was ordered to accompany them. The speaker pointed down the ravine towards which the stream from the lake flowed.
“Right, my lad,” said Archie, “I’ll go with you fast enough,” and he nodded and grinned and waved his hand.
Then one of them bent over Hamilton, who had lain back on the ground again with his hands pressed to his head. It looked as if these strange people knew something of medical science, for the man felt his pulse and the beating of his heart. He spoke to the others, and they moved apart. In a few minutes a little fire had been made of driftwood and thorn-scrub, while two of them took charge of Hamilton. They stripped off his great-coat and tunic, and bared him to the waist, and then they proceeded to knead and pinch certain muscles, while his head hung limply over their knees. Then they prepared a queer little greyish pill which they induced him to swallow.
Meantime an iron girdle had been put on the fire, and on it a number of little dried kernels roasted. Archie was given a share, and found them palatable: they tasted like crayfish, but m
ay have been a kind of caterpillar. Then a rough litter was made, out of their lances and the tarpaulin, and Hamilton, now in a deep sleep, was hoisted thereon.
Archie made a last effort to get some news to allay his anxiety and nourish his hopes. “White woman,” he repeated, pointing down the glen of the stream. But he got no answer. The leader, whom he addressed, faced him steadily with his bright, inscrutable eyes. But before they moved off they did the thing which Archie had decided against. They spilled petrol over the wings of the sea-plane and applied to them a flaming brand from the fire. As Archie looked back, he saw beside the blue lake in the serene sunshine the bonfire burning garishly, like a sacrifice before the altar of the immemorial tower.
XI
The third day after Archie’s departure, the threat to the Courts of the Morning became urgent. The first word came from Escrick’s Intelligence; there had been a succession of small fights in the Loa district, and Grayne was warned to extra vigilance. His planes patrolled in a wide radius, and Grayne himself was confident that no enemy machine could reach them. “D’Ingraville might, if he isn’t otherwise engaged,” he said, “but they’ve gotten nobody else of his class.” But definite news came by was of Olifa that there would presently be an attack in force from the sea, and that Lossberg had relinquished his Fabian tactics and was now clearly pushing northward. Loa might have to be abandoned any hour, and then would come the advance up the shelves of the foothills. It might be made a slow and costly business, but in the end it could not succeed, for the defence could not indefinitely oppose his superior numbers, his Schneider batteries, and his ample machine guns. The time was drawing near when they must give up their mountain base.
The strangest thing about the new situation was its effect on the Gobernador. It might have been expected that the approach of his friends would put him into a state of extreme restlessness, that he would wait eagerly for news of each stage and welcome the hope of escape. Instead he seemed to resent it. He spoke of it with irritation, as if impious hands were being laid on something sacred. He was resentful, too, of Sandy’s failure — for he was certain that he had failed.
“Lossberg has got his skirts clear.” he told Barbara. “He feels himself strong and secure enough to take the offensive. That means that Lord Clanroyden’s scheme has miscarried. Lossberg, in spite of his pinpricks, is getting all the supplies he wants, and has leisure to make a bold attack on our base. He is neither rattled nor embarrassed, and he has no notion of making peace. Clanroyden’s was an ingenious plan, but it was bluff, and the bluff has been called. Once it fails, we have no second string. It is our turn to be driven from post to pillar...and there’s far more against us than Lossberg. We have no news of Lady Roylance?”
There was more than exasperation in his tone as he spoke, there was an aching anxiety. Barbara, who in these last lays had become a tense, silent being, looked at him curiously.
“I think that we have succeeded in one thing, Excellency,” she said.
“What?”
“We have made you an ally. This war was directed against you. Now you speak as if you were sorry that it was not going better.”
“Nonsense,” he said sharply. “I am anxious about Lady Roylance.”
Next day there was disquieting information. Loa had been evacuated in the night owing to Lossberg’s pressure, and that general was now beginning his movement northward on scientific lines. His mounted troops were clearing and guarding his flanks, his pioneers were pushed forward to improve the roads for his batteries, and two of his mechanised battalions were already in the foothills. Their progress could be delayed, but with Sandy and the bulk of his force engaged at the other side of the Gran Seco it could not be seriously opposed. Sandy had long ago decided that it was no part of his business to resist any movement of Lossberg’s too long.
Grayne rapidly calculated.
“He will take four days at the earliest to get here. We could lengthen them out to six, but it isn’t worth it. That gives us plenty of time, for we’ve got all the details of the evacuation settled long ago. The stuff we’re taking with us has already begun to leave for Magdalena...No, Miss Babs, I guess Lossberg can’t hit off that road, It’s our covered Valley of Virginia, and he could no more stop our using it than General Banks could stop Stonewall Jackson. It’s way out of the reach of his patrols. But we can’t cut it too fine. Before his first troops get to the place they call Three Fountains, every soul here has to be on the road to Magdalena and this place one big bonfire.”
Barbara asked about the sea-ravine.
“We’ll get early news of that from the air,” was the answer. “I’m not going to waste one solitary man on holding it. We’ve had it mined and monkeyed with, so as it will be a steep mountaineering proposition for the dago sailormen, but it’s not going to be anything more. We’ll retire shelf by shelf and watch the fireworks.”
Two nights later it was reported by wireless that destroyers had left Olifa for the north, and the following morning they were sighted by Grayne’s air scouts about twenty miles south of the Courts of the Morning. This news enabled Grayne to adjust his time-table. The destroyers entered the gulf at 11.30 a.m., but they seemed to find difficulty with that uncharted coast, and it was well into the afternoon before they attempted to their men. Corbett and his garrison had been withdrawn from the shore, and the hut left apparently intact. But the first mariners who entered it had various unpleasing surprises, with the result that the occupation of the beach became a matter of careful reconnaissance, and darkness had fallen before the last of the landing-parties was on shore. Corbett, now at Post No. I, waited grimly for the morning advance.
The last day in the sanctuary was for Barbara like some strange motion-picture seen from uneasy stalls. She had nothing to do except to wait and watch. The Courts been dismantled till they looked like a disused builder’s yard. The tall poles of the wireless installation had gone, the huts were empty, the great storehouse was bare except for the inflammable material which could be fired by a single fuse. One solitary aeroplane patrolled the sky. White mechanics, troopers, mestizos, Indians, all had gone except the guard which was to accompany herself and the Gobernador. It was a clear brightly-lit day and rather cold. From the sea-ravine could be heard an occasional rumble and sputter of fire, but the only garrison left there now was Corbett and two of his lieutenants. The Olifa advance was three-quarters of the way up the ravine, and Corbett had been ordered, after seeing to the last great explosion, to make his best speed to the huts. As Barbara looked round the deserted camp which for weeks had been her home, she wanted to cry.
Departure seemed a farewell both to her hopes and her friends.
The Gobernador, muffled in a great blanket-coat, joined her. He too looked at the bare walls and the desolate compounds.
“That is the curse of war,” he said. “It makes one destroy what one loves.”
“I feel as if I were leaving home,” said Barbara.
“I did not mean this place,” was the answer. “I was linking of Lady Roylance.”
Presently there fell on their ears a dull roar from the direction of the sea-ravine. Grayne appeared with his watch his hand.
“Time to start now, Miss Babs. Corbett will be here in five minutes. Lossberg is a mile short of Three Fountains.”
They mounted their wiry little horses, while the guardian aeroplane flew very slowly to the south. It was almost dusk, and as they turned into the forest trail they stopped instinctively for one look backward. Suddenly the Courts were bright with tongues of fire, and Corbett and his assistants joined them. It was to the accompaniment of roaring fires behind, which made a rival glow to the sunset, that party disappeared into the gloom of the trees. As they bent eastward under the skirts of the mountain the crackling and the glow died away, and presently, at a headland above a deep glen, Grayne halted. From far away in the muffled foothills to the south came the chatter of machine guns.
“That is the last word,” he said. “Lossberg is at T
hree Fountains and our defence is falling back to join us. I’m sorry. I’d got to like the old place.”
For hours they rode through the dark forest. There was no moon, and the speed was poor, for they guided themselves only by contact. The Indians who led the way had to move slowly to keep pace with the groping, jostling cavalcade behind. Barbara and Castor rode in the centre of the group and, full of their own thoughts, spoke scarcely a word to each other, except of apology for a sudden jolt. The Gobernador had accompanied them without protest. He seemed to have no ear for the distant rat-tat of the machine guns of his friends.
About ten o’clock they halted to bivouac for the night.
It was a hollow tucked between the knees of the mountain spurs. Some summer thunderstorm had once set the forest alight, and for acres beside the stream there was bare ground carpeted with moss and studded with the scarred stumps of trees. Half a dozen fires were soon burning, and supper was eaten from the saddle-bags. Barbara had her sleeping-tent, but she ate with Castor beside one of the bivouacs. She noticed how clumsily he dismounted from his horse, and how stiffly he moved. This was not the life he knew, and he was no longer young.
It was a quiet night without a breath of wind, but chilling towards frost. The sky was ablaze with stars, which there in the open gave light enough to show the dim silhouettes of the overhanging hills. As the two sat side by side in the firelight, Castor smoking his pipe, his figure hunched in that position peculiar to townsmen who try to reproduce in the wilds the comfort of a chair, the girl realised that something had happened. Hitherto she had felt it a duty to entertain the Gobernador, making conversation as one does with a stranger. Now she found that there was no such need. She could be silent without impoliteness. He had become her friend, as he had been Janet’s, a member of her world, whose thoughts she could instinctively discern, and who could anticipate her own.