by Talbot Mundy
“What are you men making all that row about?”
It was Grim’s voice. He had been sleeping quietly on some bedding heaped not far from mine, with the knees of an image between us. I went to look at him. There was no change that I could see. His face wore the same red Indian smile. There was the same quiet tolerance and resolution in his eyes.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Oh, we sat and talked for an hour or two.” “Nothing else?”
“Why, yes, we smoked — imported cigarettes. We had a good time.”
“No initiation?”
“Are you crazy?” he asked. “I yarned about our doings in the Near East and they told me some of the history of these caverns.”
“Are you lying?” I asked him.
“No, you old bonehead,” he retorted. “When there’s anything I don’t want to tell, I’ll say so.”
“Did the guru mention us three?”
“He said you might have an experience. I don’t know whether he meant tonight, or when. He wasn’t very definite. I vote we sleep; we’re moving on at daylight.”
“Did he tell you how to reach Rait?”
“No. He remarked you’re an elephant, but elephants, he said, go through things rather than around them, and though they sometimes fall into traps in consequence, they have been known to smash the traps. He said an elephant’s a foolish beast with streaks of wisdom. Why the devil don’t you turn in?”
“What do you suppose he meant by ‘an experience’?”
“Darned if I know. Go to bed, and go on dreaming. He said dreams are sometimes tests of character. Go back and dream you’re an elephant!”
I returned to the bed and sat there, having had enough of dreams for one night. Grim fell asleep at once. So did Narayan Singh and Chullunder Ghose, and they lay quietly; but Grim dreamed all night long, as I could tell by the way he twitched and muttered.
And until she arose, and lit a torch, and summoned us to breakfast, that old woman with the gray hair sat beside the entrance on her mat as motionless as if she had been carved of stone, her eyes fixed on infinity and an expression on her face as if she were listening to sounds none else could hear.
CHAPTER XVII. In which Narayan Singh decides an issue with the pistol instead of the sword.
You may be sure of this, my son: that no decision you may take, nor any course, will meet with universal favor. Though you turn to the right or to the left, or go ahead, or turn back, or attempt to stand still, there will come to you some critic to advise the contrary. For ten fail where the one succeeds; and some who failed are jealous, others vain, some full of malice. There are also honest men who, having failed, would warn you of the reef on which they wrecked their too unmanageable bark. I tell you, in the end you must decide all issues for yourself, and there is only one true guide, which is experience.
— from The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup
WE DID not see the great pearl-coated cavern again.
There was a blizzard blowing but the woman took no more account of it than if it were a mild spring zephyr. She gave us two sacks of barley for the ponies and led the way into the wind with a short, spiked staff in her hand and her hair blown backward in a gray stream.
We had hard work to keep up with her. Dry driving snow reduced our vision to a few yards and it was almost impossible to stare ahead into the stinging blast that froze the moisture on our eyelashes. Faces, hands, thighs and feet were numb. Teeth and ears ached. There were places where the narrow track was smooth ice under an inch or two of loose snow, and we had bewildering glimpses of crags upreared from bottomless ravines that howled, reechoing their own din, as the blizzard volleyed through them.
One pony, loaded with our canned provisions, slipped where the sheet ice sloped outward from the rock-wall on our right and for a second hung on with his fore foot toed into the cracked ice. Then the ice gave way. He vanished backward into a maelstrom of snow that whirled in the throat of an abyss and with him went the greater part of our provisions.
Soon after that we lost the way and Grim, who was leading, reined up short at the end of a ledge that hung sheer over a precipice. There was hardly room to turn the ponies and we nearly lost two more in the confusion as they crowded one another. By and by I found a cave — a miserable, draughty place that, nevertheless, afforded room and some protection from the storm. I drove the ponies into it and, yelling into Grim’s ear, urged him we should stay there until the storm was over. He agreed, but said he was still feeling fit, so would take careful bearings and go out and hunt for our guide. I objected to his going alone, and Narayan Singh volunteered to go with him.
Chullunder Ghose and I off-loaded the ponies and piled up the loads as a windbreak. We had no fuel and there was thick frost on the cave wall, but by sitting with our backs against the loads we found it more tolerable in there than outside. However, conversation was impossible because of the incessant shrieking of the wind between the boulders that littered the ledge; we sat close together to conserve our body heat and each pursued his own thoughts.
But Grim and Narayan Singh were gone a long time, and the storm grew worse if anything. Whenever the wind reached a certain pitch of violence it brought a booming sound out of the rear of the cave that threw the ponies into panic, so that we had to tie them all together by the head. Then I went to the rear of the cave and found a long low passage, through which it looked just possible to crawl, and out of which the hollow booming came at intervals.
It seemed worthwhile to explore in hope of finding a warmer place in which to wait for Grim, so I climbed up on the ledge on which the passage opened and crawled in. I meant to go alone, but as soon as Chullunder Ghose discovered I had left him he grew frightened and came after me.
Until he wedged his great bulk into the passage there was light enough to see by, but the dim light that had found its way past me was now completely cut off. However, by blocking the passage he also obstructed the wind, so I reached in my pocket for some matches.
Before I could strike one Chullunder Ghose called out to me:
“For God’s sake, Rammy sahib, I believe this roof is falling in!”
I crawled backward and tried to shove him free with my feet against his shoulders, but could not get sufficient purchase on the rock although I shoved hard enough to make him yell. He said he was quite sure the roof was squeezing down on him, but I ascribed that to panic and told him to lie still until Grim and Narayan Singh returned when they could pull him out backward by the feet.
I went forward again. The air continued fresh, although Chullunder Ghose had cut off the supply behind me; and in places it felt as if someone had enlarged the tunnel with a pick. I crawled a prodigious distance and struck matches until I had only half a dozen left, discovering no more than that the tunnel kept on curving toward the right, until at last the curve reversed itself and I saw a pin spot of yellowish light a long way off. It was certainly not daylight. I crawled closer to it and lay still.
For a long time I could only hear my heart beats. Then a noise from behind announced that Chullunder Ghose was growing weary of confinement, but that was only like a hollow murmur from the bottom of a well. It may have sounded like the far-away voice of the gale to those whose forms I now began to perceive, like dim ghosts, seated in a cave in front of where I lay.
Grim’s back was toward me. He had pulled off his Yak-skin cap and the shape of his head was unmistakable. Besides, presently I heard his voice and there was no doubt it was Grim. Sitting facing him was the gray-haired woman, the light from two small butter lamps reflected on her face, making it and her hair look almost lemon-colored. Narayan Singh was not there. The third member of the party was a man I had not seen before, although he vaguely resembled one of the older chelas who had sat by the fire in the stalagmite cavern.
I would have called to Grim, but there was something in his attitude and in the low-pitched voices that suggested secrecy. It occurred to me he might be getting information which h
e might not get if I disturbed him.
The first words that I heard distinctly were the woman’s.
“They will treat you as they treated me.”
“He said,” Grim answered, “you have been well treated and are grateful.”
The woman sneered. “He told you that? Look at me!”
Then the other man spoke: “Look at her! Longer and harder than any she has striven. She has been obedient. She has destroyed her own desires. Day-long, night-long she was watched — worked — ministered. Not even she can count the tale of years. Can she go? Then whither? She has thrown the world away, and her return for it is this that you have seen — servitude without thanks. Not even may she listen to the teaching. As for approaching nearer to the Mysteries she has abandoned hope of it. And they will treat you in the same way, letting you advance until retreat is out of the question, then nothing more!”
“Why should you trouble about my prospects?” Grim asked.
The woman laughed, with a crackle like the sound of dry brushwood burning.
“I warned you,” she remarked. “Deal plainly with him.”
“Am I not plain?” the man answered. “Everything is forbidden! We are forbidden even to talk of what we know. Grudgingly, little by little, we are taught some fragment and then are put to wearisome long tests to demonstrate that we can refrain from using what we worked so hard to win. Is it likely that you, who have not spent half a lifetime sitting at a guru’s feet, will be allowed to go beyond, for instance, me or that woman? I have a proposal to make.”
“I have a man to rescue,” Grim answered him.
“I offer to help to rescue him. Why not?”
Grim’s answer, like a bark, broke on the silence
“Why?”
“I have told you why. This chelaship is too long and too empty of results. I don’t believe that man you want to rescue, as you call it, is in trouble. Some of the dugpas may be devils but not all. The difference is this: our gurus make us miserable with what they call self-restraint. Dugpas all make use of what they know and have a good time doing it. Why not have a good time while it lasts? There is no such satisfaction as the use of knowledge.”
“Is it the quest after knowledge that’s making them torture the man!”
“Tshuh-tshuh! Do you believe that? Are you sure of it?”
“Rait wrote a letter,” said Grim.
“Are you sure? Dugpas can forge handwriting. Isn’t it likelier they are holding a door open for you? Since you haven’t been trained to interpret mental messages — although, for that very reason you are all the more amenable to mental impulse, which you can’t understand, but which governs you nevertheless — how should they make your approach to them easy except by some trick? They could goad you, but you might rush wildly in the wrong direction. What was it put the thought into your head to enter Tibet?”
“Yes! What was it?” said the woman.
Grim did not answer.
“Why should the White Lodge be willing to receive you, and the Black Lodge not?” the man went on. “Which would you rather have — knowledge now, or knowledge at the end of twenty or thirty lifetimes, which is all the White Lodge offers you and at the cost of endless self-discipline. And they don’t even offer it. They make you struggle for it. They withhold it. Whereas the Black Lodge makes things easy. They will teach you and send you back to the United States, where you will enjoy prosperity and influence. I hate this barren land, into which I was born and in which my die is cast.”
He paused, but Grim said nothing, so the man resumed:
“Listen: by being nobody and living like a louse a man may go through life and never even know there is such knowledge as I offer you — such opportunity. But you are not a louse. You must ally yourself with one force or the other or you will simply be torn apart as countries often are that try to keep neutral in wartime. The White Lodge is extremely difficult to enter, and if you should succeed in finding the place you seek, the odds are ten thousand to one you would not be admitted. If admitted, — well, imagine for yourself, if you can, what it means to be taught prodigious secrets, which you are not allowed to use! I assure you, virtue grows monotonous. And if your virtue grows weak, you are out like a sorefooted soldier — like me!”
Grim spoke at last:
“So that’s it, eh? You’re a chela dismissed for disobedience.”
The woman’s laughter crackled again like burning brushwood: “Didn’t I tell you he is no fool!”
“But if you choose the Black Lodge,” the man went on, “you will be allowed to use the forces whose nature will be revealed to you. The Black Lodge, too, is difficult to enter, because none but he who has strength of character is useful to them. But, once in, you are in the ranks’ of the magicians. You become a power. You are given work to do from which you see immediate results. You are on the side of the erosive forces, like the wind and flood, that are just as much agents of evolution as are those other forces that assemble the detritus and so slowly build up structures that shall only be destroyed again. So now choose.”
“I chose some time ago,” Grim answered.
The man stood up and I could see his face more distinctly. He was a thin- lipped, handsome fellow with a certain truculence about the angle of his jaw. His sheep-skin overcoat was open in front, showing what looked like expensive clothing underneath.
“Which way?” he demanded.
“I might tell you that, perhaps, when I have traveled it a bit,” said Grim.
The man sneered, and his smile was like the lip-lift of a panther. I pulled my pistol clear and waited.
“Look at her!” The man pointed at the woman, who kept her eyes fixed on Grim. “Unless you die of weariness you will look and be like her in due time — sexless — hopeless — hideous — neglected — nothing but a drudge for them who keep their secrets to themselves!”
Grim stood up then. I saw the corner of his mouth. He shook himself to adjust the heavy yak-skin overcoat.
“Is it storming still?” he asked.
He began to walk toward some exit that I could not see, the woman gave him the lamp to hold and stepped in between him and the other, who presently followed them.
I could not turn, so I went forward, in total darkness now that they had taken away the lamp.
I had reached what felt like the end of the hole and was groping for hand- and foot-hold to descend on to the cave floor, when something touched me. I was practically helpless, hanging downward by the legs. I tried to crawl back, but a hand took me under the armpit and a voice said in English:
“This way. You will fall badly unless you lean on me.” Another arm took hold of me. I felt myself being lifted.
“Jump!” said the same voice.
I supposed it was Narayan Singh, so let myself go confidently and was swung, legs outward, in a semicircle landing on level rock.
“There was a hole several hundred feet deep directly under you,” said the voice; and suddenly I knew it was not Narayan Singh, but someone whose clothes vaguely smelt of sandal-wood.
“This way. Hold this or you will never find the way out,” he said, thrusting the end of a girdle into my hand.
I could see nothing. He led me along a winding passage between smooth walls that grew gradually colder as they zigzagged, until finally I could hear the wind and saw dim daylight. Even so I did not recognize his back; like me, he nearly filled the passage with his head within two inches of the roof, so his figure was a mere black silhouette between me and the light.
It was not until he turned to face me outside on a platform sheltered from the storm by projecting spurs of rock, that I recognized Lhaten, with the old quiet, friendly laughter in his eyes.
“You are an elephant,” he said. “You blunder into things. It was lucky for you that I knew you were there.”
“How did you know it?” I asked him.
“Curiosity,” he said, “has been the death of many an elephant! We have ways of knowing things. What do you think o
f Jimgrim now?”
“Haven’t you a way of knowing that, too?” I retorted.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then why ask? Curiosity?”
He laughed. “No. I couldn’t read your thought before you did think. I gave you opportunity to mask your thought. That fellow in the cave was dangerous, and so were you. You might have shot him.”
“He was a fool,” I said, and was going to say more, but he interrupted:
“A dugpa and a fool are one, but a fool can be deadly dangerous.”
He began to turn along the track that led around the windward spur, but I stopped him and asked:
“Where did you learn English?”
“Cambridge University. German at Heidelberg. French at the Sorbonne. Why? Did you suppose we kept ourselves secluded in a cloud of ignorance?”
He turned again and led the way around the spur, leaning into the wind as if he liked it. The ledge grew gradually narrower until at last there was barely room to set one foot on it and we had to move crabwise around a cliff side with a howling gorge beneath us — clinging with our fingers to the rock wall.
When we reached broad track again he led for many miles around the outside of the mountain in which those caves were until when he paused to let me overtake him and rest a moment, I asked if he had seen Narayan Singh.
“He draws the sword too readily,” he answered and again led on, with the clear intention of avoiding further questions.
Now we climbed along the bare ridge of an escarpment with the full fury of the blizzard in our faces — time and again almost blown into the abyss — and even he grew weary of it. At last he took shelter, sitting on the snow that partly filled a hollow between tumbled crags, and I crouched facing him. The wind shrieked through the crevices and I had to shout even to hear my own voice
“Where are Grim and the woman?” I asked him.
He bade me look backward along the ridge across which we had come and presently, when a blast of wind lifted and rent the snow cloud, I saw three figures struggling toward us.
“Three?” he asked. “Then they have found the Sikh.” He seemed relieved to know it, as if he had suspected that Narayan Singh might be in difficulties.