The Valley of Eyes Unseen 15 – Collins · Library Across
Literature · Adventure
The Valley of Eyes Unseen 15How I Crossed the Mountains
18
Literature · Adventure
The Valley of Eyes Unseen 15
How I Crossed the Mountains
CollinsEnglish
As I have already written, I offer no explanation of the incident with which my last chapter closes, but whatever it was, it caused me to do something I had certainly never done before over a mental shock. I must have fainted. When I recovered consciousness I was lying on the marble floor of my bedchamber, chilly and stiff, and with a very palpable throbbing of my forehead, where, on examination, I discovered a big bruise. So much for the outside of my head. Within, my brain was also throbbing, partly with bewilderment, but a good deal more with exultation. I might be the sport of an hallucination, but I flatly refused to believe it had no foundation in fact. If I didn't know, I felt that help was coming.
I rose silently to my feet and stole across to the tracery-window. From that spy-hole I could see two of the watchers standing at some distance away, motionless but clearly awake, alert but seeming to have no suspicion that anything out of the common had happened inside the house. They could have heard neither my talk nor the thud I must have made when I fell. I then crept back to my couch, and went carefully over the events of the night. I wanted to fix them on my brain, for I had a very pronounced impression they were going to be of use to me. I determined, too, that to-morrow I would get ready to escape exactly as if the chance were really on its way.
The day passed without much in the way of incident, but it was one of the most exciting I ever spent, and long before nightfall I was in a downright fever. I watched myself minutely for any recurrence of the great depression, but there was no hint of it; my brain remained clear, my spirits buoyant, and had it not been for the very noticeable discoloration of my bruised knees, I should have found it difficult to believe I'd been through the unspeakable tortures of the past week.
There was one fact that struck me at once as unusual--even significant. My attendant, or gaoler as he was now become, had been accustomed to occupy one of the servants' chambers at the back of the house; here he took his meals and slept, entering the living rooms only to bring me my food. To-day the fellow posted himself on a couch in the main hall and remained there practically all the time. I pretended to take no notice of his presence, but I couldn't fail to see the meaning of it; and the thought raised my hopes still higher. It looked as if there was a plot on foot to further my escape, and my enemies, having got wind of it, had ordered this fellow to remain where he would be in a better position to raise an alarm.
The man said not a word to me all day, but sat for the most part still as a statue, and as handsome. He was only a servant in this valley of Olympians, but he had a face that in any drawing room in Europe would have forced the eyes of every man and woman upon him like a magnet. At somewhere near eight o'clock, he brought his evening meal to the main hall, laid it on the low table, and began to eat. I withdrew to my bedchamber as if to sleep, though I'd not yet eaten my own supper, which I was in the habit of taking about nine. After a while I became conscious of a curious stillness in the large room. I crept to the doorway and peeped between the curtain and the marble jamb. To-night the great hanging lamp had been lit, and was filling the place with a soft fragrance usual with the luminant oils used in the valley, and by the light of this lamp I could see my gaoler quite clearly--could see his face and the uncommonly languid expression it wore. The man was dozing. Two minutes later he was asleep, and five after that, I knew from the deep stupor he had fallen into that his food had been drugged.
So far so good. Now to get out. I rapidly searched him for the keys of the building. They were not on him. Nor could I find them in his quarters. I made a swift exploration of the whole place, but so far as escape went, I seemed to be no better off with my gaoler insensible than before: the main door, and the one other door at the back of the house, were locked, and far too strong to be forced. However, the drugging of the attendant proved that friends were stirring for me--very capable friends at that, for the tampering with this man's food could only have been effected by extreme craft and daring; and I must apparently possess myself to sit down and wait to be rescued.
The hours dragged on, each seeming a week. I was getting desperate. I watched that attendant's face for any sign of returning consciousness, and had he given it, I veritably believe I should have strangled him in cold blood. But he remained quite motionless, sprawling on the couch where he had eaten, and at last, to my inexpressible relief, I heard a gentle grating sound in the front of the house. A moment later the main door came ajar. I stared at the form that sidled through the opening, but though his face seemed curiously familiar to me, I couldn't recognise him at first. His skin was of the usual fairish tint of the valley, his lawn robes might have been the garments of any casual passer-by in the street, and if his hair was a little straighter than that commonly seen about the city, it was at least cut to the common pattern. Yet for all the cosmetics and pomatums he had lavished on himself, I'm much afraid his low stature and high cheekbones would always militate against Lo Eng looking like a genuine native of Hellas.
'My master's wish, sir,' he said, in his quaintly exact English, 'is that you should follow me at thirty paces without seeming to follow.'
In an instant I had darted into my bedchamber and snatched up the very small bundle I purposed to take on my flight, and had followed Lo Eng into the open air. There was no sound, no sign of movement; I think I have mentioned that it was rare for the citizens of the valley to be abroad long after nightfall, and it was now, I judge, about eleven o'clock. Even the sentries outside the house appeared to have been withdrawn, but as I stole across the courtyard I saw this was not so. I couldn't understand at first those white heaps lying on the marble flags; then I saw they were my guardians. Whoever had attended to the drugging had carried out the work comprehensively and well.
The light was uncertain, but I had no difficulty in keeping Lo Eng's swiftly retreating figure in view. At last he stopped, and when I came up with him I found two litters waiting. These we entered and resumed our rapid journey across the city and out towards the plain beyond; soon, peeping through the curtains, I saw we had come to the outskirts, and some while after that we were clear of houses altogether. The bearers halted. As I climbed out of my litter I saw them drop simultaneously with their faces to the earth. A figure had emerged from a grove of fruit trees, approaching us, and a moment later Saunders Philipson was grasping my hand; he bade the bearers withdraw, then began to speak, hurriedly and earnestly.
'Listen closely, Mirlees,' he said, 'for everything depends on speed. If you are to leave this valley you must leave immediately. Are you prepared to risk it?'
'Anything is to be preferred to my last week,' I said.
He laid his hand on my shoulder. 'I am to blame for that,' he said, 'I who brought you here. But then--ah, it was all so vague and uncertain--how could I know? However, that is past. I am doing what I can to make amends. Believe me, Mirlees, it is not without risk to myself that I am helping you to get back to your own world. When the populace learn that you are gone, fear of invasion from without may overwhelm even their devotion to me, and if both the people and the Nine turn against me, I am like to lose kingdom and life in an hour. After Poyning and you broke into the tomb, Kalliboas went straight over to the party of Kalliphanes, and worked for the death of you both. But'--here Philipson passed his hand over his brow, as if recollecting something he would have been glad to forget--'there were powers in this valley greater than those of Kalliboas. My rival's faction have made great head, none the less, and at this moment my fate actually swings in the balance. However, I am prepared for either destiny. Many times you risked your life helping me to a kingdom, Mirlees, and I will cheerfully risk mine helping you out of it. Now, as to affairs in the outer world. When you reach Chungking, show this seal to En Chin, and he will hand over the launch to you--it may be of service. Here is a signed deed of gift which makes you the possessor of that boat and such monies as still stand to my credit in the Bank of Cathay. There will be more than enough to repay you for the time you have spent on this adventure, though your services to me not all the money in Asia could requite. But one thing--as you value your life, be constantly on guard. The enemies who tracked us up from the sea may have lost sight of us, but they have not forgotten. They will wait years for vengeance if necessary, and it is possible that watchers have been left at the last point to which they followed us, on the chance of our returning by the same way. You may even deem it safer to avoid Chungking altogether--to strike northward for the Koko Nur route across Mongolia--that I must leave to your own judgment. But wherever you go, as soon as you enter the known world again, beware of the Holy Brotherhood of Shigatse!'
'That's well enough,' I said, 'but I have to get to the known world first. I seem to remember that the trek this way was tremendously difficult, even with a party of us to help one another.'
At this moment there was a sound of footsteps approaching. Philipson drew me swiftly in under the shadow of the orchard, and we waited, with held breath. Then I felt him give my arm a gentle squeeze.
'Friends,' he muttered. 'All's well. Come with me.'
I followed him out on to an open plot of grass land, where we found two men carrying between them something like an enormous cigar. This they laid on the ground, and one of them turned and came towards me with outstretched hand.
'After many days, Mirlees,' said Stephen Poyning. 'You've just got out?'
'Not half an hour ago.'
'It's my first night loose too. I've put it to good use. Philipson didn't want to take more servants into his confidence than he could help, so I went with Ah Sing for this.'
He pointed to the cigar-shaped object, which I now saw was a folded pair of wings of the largest type, fitted with that peculiar "carapace" above the hinges.
Philipson had stooped in silence, and was examining the structure all over.
'You should be a skilled flier by now, Mirlees?' he said briskly, looking up.
'Pretty fair with the wings of the school. I've never used this pattern.'
'Kneel down here, and I will show you the difference. These are harder at first, but afterwards there is no comparison--they will carry you far faster, and the greater wing-purchase will give you longer rests. On these wings, barring accidents, you should get over the worst of the heights before daylight. Then the dawn-wind will set in from due west--your very course--and blow steadily all day, as it almost invariably does at this time of year. With the help of that and the power you should get so far across by sunset as to be well down off the ridges and over a spot where you may risk resting in the open. As soon as you come into inhabited country again, burn the wings and make your way on foot. There--it's risky enough, but our people have often done as much and more. What do you say?'
'How about the cold?'
'I have prepared for that. Here is one of the suits used by our own fliers when they go over the heights. Once you have put it on you must get out of this valley quickly, however, or the heat of it may overcome you.'
'And the power?'
'That is quite easy. This lever sets it in action, this connects it with the rib; both are moved by the right hand reaching up, the arm flexed double.'
Simple as the device obviously was, I didn't care to trust my life to it without trial. Philipson noticed my hesitation.
'Never fear, Mirlees,' he said. 'You shall take a preliminary turn here--but it must be a short one. If you do not think you can manage the wings, come down again, and I will hide you until I can devise other means for your departure.'
'And you, Philipson?' I said. 'You remain here?'
His voice sank to a solemn whisper. 'It is my destiny,' he said. 'I remain for good or ill. My servants also--they are already married to women of my people.'
'And you, Poyning?'
'I have not changed, Mirlees,' he said. 'I shall never change.'
I shook the both of them by the hand, then called up the Chinese servants and bade them good-bye also. Philipson helped me into the suit, a light garment but astonishingly warm, which fitted close to the body all over, leaving nothing exposed but the mask of the face; round my waist were strung my little bundle, a parcel of food, a packet of rough silver, and a flint with which I was to burn the wings when they had served my purpose. The latter were then opened out and strapped to my shoulders, and everything was ready for the attempt.
Despite the ghastly experiences of my imprisonment, I felt surprisingly vigorous and alert, whipped up, I've no doubt, by excitement; and though I found these heavier wings were indeed harder to use than the unpowered type--particularly when it was a question of first getting up from earth--I managed to rise on a light puff of wind and swept round once or twice with fair ease. The power was easy to manipulate in the extreme. I had barely moved the second lever when I heard something swing into place with a sharp clink and felt the wings suddenly begin to flap without any help from my arms. Though I had seen this pattern of wing before and speculated long on its secret, I must admit my first experience of it at close quarters filled me with the utmost stupefaction. That strange power-box, emitting nothing but a faint clutter which was almost drowned in the rustle of the wings themselves, was working strongly and steadily within two feet of my head, yet not for all the wealth in the world could I more than vaguely guess how. Amazement gave way almost at once to confidence. It was incredible, of course, that I should really be able to cross tremendous ranges of mountains on this apparatus, yet I know that at that moment I was profoundly convinced I could. Then, remembering Philipson's injunction I turned off the power; even so I was astonished to find how far my wings had taken me from the spot where Philipson and Poyning stood waiting.
I drew near, hovering in the way I had been taught, and swept my gaze back over the lost city of Hellas where it rose calm and magnificent, its white roofs gleaming in the moonlight. At that instant I saw something that set my pulses tingling with more than the exhilaration of flight. Away over the city, three or four black bat-like shapes had appeared in the sky. In a second I had begun to rise again, wheeling round short.
'Look towards the city!' I cried. 'Good-bye and good luck to you all!'
I heard a sharp answering cry from below--
'Fly for your life!'
That was the last word I was ever to hear from the lips of the man I had known as Saunders Philipson.
My mind had been instantly made up. As in a lightning flash I saw my escape, which by this time had become a mad, overwhelming desire in me, suddenly threatened by those sinister shapes against the wan-gold sky of the night. All the horrors of my captivity of the past week rose again before me, and I determined I would make my dash for freedom now, pursuers or none, and that I would never be taken alive. So, with Philipson's last cry ringing in my ears, I pushed back the power-lever of the wings to its fullest, and swept furiously away into the night.
I climbed fast, but long before I got into the cooler air above I was perspiring from every pore; the material of that garment, I imagine, must have been treated by some cunning chemical process, for it seemed to envelop the whole body in a strong glow of heat. And then began a chase which, like so much more I experienced on this adventure, would need the pen of a Poe or a De Quincey to describe. For some time I flew on in a downright delirium, unable to think this flight was not another wild, fantastic dream. The wonderful thrill of hurtling through the air at such speed; the uncanny power of these wings that bore me so easily and so well; the contrast between this swift retreat and our plodding, agonising tramp over the snows a month or two back--all combined to destroy my belief in the reality of what was happening. I had risen above the highest point of our route in what seemed a few minutes--though it can hardly have been less than an hour--and was whirling at a prodigious pace over the long gutter-like depressions which, fortunately for me, preserve in this region a general east-by-west trend. On either hand towered majestic peaks, wilder and grander in this eerie light even than they had looked to our fevered eyes when we came, and though my own altitude was far below their summits I knew I must be little short of four miles above sea level. Height-sickness I certainly felt: I could taste blood as it trickled down over my lips, and my breath came in long, violent gasps; yet this malady seemed to attack me far less dangerously than when moving on the ground--which I attributed in some degree to the glow of warmth I felt all over me from my clothing, and to the fact that I kept my arms for the most part through the thong loops of the wings, thus producing a violent exercise and augmented body-heat.
I had glanced back several times for any sign of pursuit, but there was none. No doubt it was that that made me over confident. I must certainly have relaxed my vigilance, for now, suddenly looking up, I saw quite distinctly a figure flying ahead of me. How that form could have got past without my having any suspicion, I was utterly at a loss to imagine, yet there it was; and more uncanny still was the fact that when I now looked behind I saw three figures only a few hundred yards from me. These were apparently the three pursuers I had seen over the city.
I plunged furiously on. It seemed certain enough that if four enemies could "bracket" me in this way both behind and in front, they would have small difficulty in heading me off if I turned out of my course; moreover, to do that would necessitate climbing over the enormous ridges to north or south, at a height where the thin air might and probably would cause me to collapse altogether. In any case, safety lay to the east, safety and inhabited if uncivilised lands, and I knew that every minute was bringing me a mile nearer to it.
The mysterious chase went on. I don't think my pursuers were any longer gaining on me from behind, but I seemed to be steadily closing up with the figure in front, and was at last so near that I could almost distinguish the outlines of the body borne by those wings. It may be the moonlight and the wild frenzy of the escape deluded me, but the longer I looked the deeper grew my impression that what I saw was the figure of a woman. Moreover, though I was now a good deal nearer to this figure than to those behind, it seemed curiously less distinct, and grew less and less distinct the nearer I came. At any other time this would no doubt have amazed me, but amazement was a faculty of which I was no longer capable.
Then the figures behind grew indistinct also. They seemed to be melting into a veil of grey mist, which was approaching me a good deal faster than they. Then all became dark, the moon was blotted out, and I realised what that strange mistiness really meant.
With a blow that struck like something solid the tempest overtook me, hurling me forward with a frightful access of speed. I summoned every ounce of strength and nerve that was in me, and hung on. In an instant I was whelmed in the blackness of the Pit, whirled literally like an autumn leaf in a scurry of wind, conscious of nothing but the screaming wrath of the elements all round me and blank despair within. This, it seemed, was the end of all. I had lost control, was borne on and held up by the strength of the storm alone; sooner or later some devilish caprice of the wind must drop me, as a wanton child may break a plaything it is tired of, and then it would only be a matter of moments for me to be dashed against the cliffs and crags of the mountain side and find a death mercifully instantaneous. To steer was utterly out of the question, even to keep my equilibrium impossible; once I was tossed high and flung over and over like a bounding ball, until my head spun and my eyes were full of blood and I thought the straps of the wings must tear out the shoulders from my body; yet even here the very force of the tempest was my salvation, for though I fell, long before I neared the face of the mountain I had been caught up in a fresh blast of wind and hurled forward more furiously than before.
How long the storm lasted I would hesitate to guess within hours, but this much I can be tolerably sure of: that of all the amazing experiences I underwent during my quest of the lost land of Hellas, nothing came so near the miraculous as my escape through that tremendous tempest on a pair of artificial wings the use of which I did not fully understand. That I escaped at all I can only ascribe to the marvellous skill with which the wings had been constructed: they resisted that frightful wind by yielding to it; so well-knit were they, so cunningly blending rigidity with elasticity, so cleverly copying the wings of the feathered creation, that I imagine I must have been pretty much like a gull in a hurricane at sea, whirled along helpless on the storm, but at last recovering wing-purchase and flying again on its own power. Not least astonishing was the fact that through all that terrific buffeting by the wind the mechanism of my wings had remained unbroken and continued to work--to that also I no doubt owed in part my deliverance from a ghastly death on the crags.
At last the wind suddenly fell, in the abrupt way these mountain tempests will drop; the sky had cleared and the moon shone out again, and by its light I could see the mountains below me white with great drifts of snow. Of my three pursuers and the mysterious figure who had preceded me there was no sign, and who they were or whether they perished in the storm I was never to know; but I don't fancy the form in front of me met with destruction, or could do so in the nature of things. When I say I believe that form was no bodily presence at all, but a vision sent to guide my escape, not to hinder it, I may be charged with superstition. If so, it won't distress me, or even shake my belief.
I came to a stretch of mountain that looked tolerably even, and decided to make a landing, for I was not only exhausted but ravenously hungry. I succeeded in alighting, and there, without even trying to loosen my wings, I squatted under them in the snow and ate several handfuls of food from the bundle strapped at my waist. The cold was terrific--far more than I had felt it in the air; and a moment later when I struggled to my feet and strove to ascend, I was within an ace of final disaster. So stiff had I grown even in that brief interval of rest that I came near crashing for want of a few sweeps of my wings to get me clear of the earth. Luckily, I had just strength enough to reach up and touch the power-lever. The broad wings answered faithfully to it, and within a few moments I was hurtling towards safety again as fast as ever. That was the last descent I was going to risk until I had done with flying for good. I knew that while I might yet remain in the air a long while, my strength was no longer to be trusted for purposes of rising again. Moreover, barring the danger of absolute collapse, those wings were the very best means of locomotion I could have wished, and might save me many weariful weeks of tramping over the pitiless heights.
A wind rose with dawn, not like the tempest of the night, but the steady day-wind of summer, and on this I made marvellously good progress. I kept at barely a hundred feet from the mountain, and though there was no descent appreciable to the eye in that enormous elevated region, I knew by the rising temperature of the air that I was getting down. Beyond that, I knew little of what happened to me during that day. I flew on and on, in a sort of half coma. At times, I veritably believe, I was asleep, and had there been any more demanded of me than simply to rest on my wings, I must have assuredly come to grief. It was hunger that drove me down at last. I was now past the limits of weariness, but I was hungry as I had never known hunger before. How long I had been in the air I couldn't even guess from my own recollection of the day, but I remember being drowsily amazed to notice that the sun was now beginning to dip behind the highest peaks westward of me. Also, I had a hazy impression of having once or twice during the last hour caught glimpses in the distance of what might have been rude human habitations. The time was come to destroy my wings, and seek shelter and rest.
I got to earth, loosened the straps and struggled out of them, and looked around for fuel. There was a fair quantity of coarse withered scrub sticking up through the snow here, and I soon had a pyre built big enough for my purpose. On to this I dragged the wings and held my flint ready to kindle the strange sacrifice. Up to the present, be it noted, I had acted under a sort of blind impulse to perform a duty, as required of me by my oath; I didn't think, I couldn't. The long-deferred sleep was sweeping over me in waves; I was hard put to it to stand, and I retained just sufficient consciousness to know that if I fell I should lose it immediately. Then, however, as I stared at those wings, sleep for a moment retreated again, pushed back by an overwhelming curiosity. I could not bring myself to destroy that marvellous mechanism without one last attempt to probe its secret. I knelt beside it and began tugging at the power-box with my hands. I could make no impression either upon the box or the slender connecting rods that protruded from it. Time was short. The irresistible sleep might come upon me at any instant. I found a fragment of rock about as big as my clenched fist and set about breaking the box open with that. Standing at the head of the folded wings I raised that stone and hurled it down on to the wings with all the strength left in me. The next instant I was hurled down myself, while something spread itself above me, darkening the sky, and then was gone. The wings had sprung up and flown away.
I lay on my back, gasping. Of all the uncanny shocks ever meted out to a human being, I question whether any could have been more startling than that one of mine on those lonely mountain slopes. For an instant I was veritably inclined to believe those wings embodied not only a mysterious force, but a sentient mind and will, and that finding themselves attacked they had sprung up to attack me. It was a fantastic notion, yet at the time and in the circumstances I imagine anybody might have been excused for harbouring it. What had really happened, of course, was simple enough. In trying to wrench open that box with my hands I had unwittingly pressed it down on to the brushwood; the jar of the stone forced it down still farther, thus causing the levers to turn and setting the power in action, and the wings, obeying the law of their construction, had immediately unfolded and started to flap.
At first I thought the apparatus must come to earth for want of guidance, but there I had greatly under-estimated the cunning of the builder. So perfectly poised were the wings that they preserved their equilibrium from the start, automatically, and all the difference the absence of my weight seemed to make to them was that they rose far more swiftly and easily. They had lain on the pyre of scrub pointed due west, which direction they kept, and I wasn't long realising those wings would come to earth only when the power in them was exhausted. How long that would take I had no notion, but when they finally disappeared into the sunset they appeared to me to be working as strongly as ever. Somewhere, no doubt, far out on those trackless mountain wildernesses, buried in blown dust and driven snow, there lies the wreck of certainly the most amazing and ingenious device ever perfected by the brain of man.
I was staring blankly after my lost pinions when I became aware that a party of natives were spying me from behind a big boulder at some distance away. I called to them, but they seemed a good deal readier to run away than come near; it was pretty obvious they had witnessed my dealings with the automaton and set me down for a wizard of the mountain conjuring up familiar devils. Like Saunders Philipson, I knew something of this breed and how to treat them; and without taking any further notice of them I turned away and lit my fire and sat warming myself and counting over one or two pieces of my rough silver. It had the desired effect: they gradually gained heart and drew near. I told them I was a traveller who had strayed from my party, and that being without food and seeing the great bird perching on the mountain I had attacked it with a stone, but that it had escaped from me. They listened politely if awesomely to my tale but obviously didn't believe it, and without Philipson's very serviceable rough silver I don't imagine I should have got much help from those natives. As it was, they helped me down to their wretched hill-village, and thence, after I had rested several days, set me on my way back towards civilisation. The journey, which took three or four weeks on foot, was totally devoid of incident, and I pass it over in silence; but before leaving this phase of my adventure I will record one thing which may be of interest as indicating, however roughly, the geographical position of the lost city of Hellas. Since my return to the outer world I have made many calculations of the distance I covered in making my escape. The result is pretty amazing, but I have checked and re-checked my reckonings--the journey there as against the journey back--and if the figures err, it is probably on the side of under-statement. During the eighteen hours of my flight from Hellas to the point on the mountain side where the party of natives found me, I must have travelled not less than nine hundred English miles.
I hurry on to the end, for I know that little time is left to me to complete this record. At Chungking the boatman, En Chin, handed over the launch on production of Philipson's seal, and believed readily enough that I was the sole survivor of our party--a tale to which my extremely weather-beaten appearance must have lent support. From En Chin I learned that only two days after we left for Kiai a Tibetan had come to him inquiring our whereabouts. En Chin had had his instructions from Philipson, however, and observed them; said we had gone on up the main stream, destination unknown; and he thought the man had then left in that direction, for he saw or heard no more of him.
I spent a day overhauling the launch, engaged a native to help me run her, and went to bed in En Chin's house by the waterside. That night I dreamed of Hellas, long and confusedly. The city was in vast turmoil, out of which emerged at last the face of Saunders Philipson, sombre and foreboding--I almost felt in my dream that he was striving to warn me against something. I woke with a start, full of a strange but very urgent impulse to get gone. I rose, roused En Chin and my native boatman, threw some provisions into the launch and ran her down from the yard into the river. I had made most of my other preparations overnight, and within five minutes we were dropping down stream, drifting, for there was little petrol to be got so far inland and I wanted all I had for the rapids below. It lacked still an hour or two till dawn, but suddenly, a little while after we had left, we both noticed a queer light in the sky behind us. I didn't know the cause of it then. Some weeks later I learned that En Chin's house had caught fire and been destroyed, with many other native houses, barely an hour after our departure. It may have been accidental, but I don't think so.
Arrived at last in Shanghai, I settled down in my old hotel, living very quietly--but not for want of funds; setting aside Philipson's bank balance, which was substantial, that little bundle I had kept by me all the way back from Hellas would, I knew, see me through to the end of my days in a good deal greater affluence than I wanted. I heard no mention anywhere of the affair that had immediately preceded our flight from Shanghai, and it seemed that so far as the police were concerned, that episode had been let drop. I soon got to know, however, that in other quarters it was neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Three days after I arrived, a shot was fired at me from the window of an empty house in the suburbs. The police investigated that matter, but they never knew who fired the shot. I knew without investigation. A week later, returning to my hotel after dark, I was very cleverly lariated and three-parts strangled by two natives, one of them I fancy a Tibetan, working from a dark doorway; and two days after that, as I walked in broad daylight down a crowded street in the Chinese city, a knife whizzed past my ear and buried itself an inch deep in a pillar of hard wood.
From that time onward attempts on my life were frequent.
I drew more and more into seclusion, keeping to my rooms at the hotel for days together, yet even here I wasn't safe. One day, when lunch was brought up to me--I never used the public rooms for meals--I noticed as I shook some cayenne pepper from the caster that the stuff was curiously light in tint. Now since my return I had often dreamed of Hellas both by night and day, and before long it became too obvious to escape remark that shortly after these dreams I was invariably in danger from my enemies. Coincidence, or some subtle warning conveyed to me from that mysterious land beyond the snows--I've no time to discuss the point now; but the fact remains that on the night before I detected that curious pallor about the cayenne pepper, I had dreamed of Hellas very vividly indeed. I called up the manager, and had the stuff analysed. The chemist reported a rare and very deadly alkaloid, the name of which I have forgotten. The manager of the hotel was greatly distressed. He investigated the business thoroughly, but without discovering any hint as to how the poison could have been introduced into my private pepper-caster. The chef and all the servants had been with him a long time, bore excellent characters, and denied all knowledge of the attempted poisoning. The manager at last offered me a solatium to say nothing of the affair. I refused his money, of course, and wouldn't even let him sack the cook, but that night, alone over a briar, I thought out the whole position.
By midnight I had come to a pretty far-reaching decision--no less than to write a full and accurate account of my visit to the lost land of Hellas. My reason for doing this was simply that I was unwilling my secret should die with me. That I must die before long, I was fully convinced. My enemies had made it quite clear to me by this time that they would only be satisfied with my death. I might--though this is doubtful--prolong the hunt by fleeing from China, but that I declined to do. The great Yellow Land which has been the subject of my life-work has been my home for many years now. I have few friends in it, but none at all outside, and there is at this moment, I believe, no relative of mine left living. I would stay where I was, and pray that time might be left me to complete the record.
I write these final words as fast as pen will travel over paper, for I know the end is near.
I began to write, working night and day whenever my brain was clear enough to think and remember. It was not so always. I think it was on the night I finished my chapter describing our descent into the valley of great birds that the first attack came upon me. I have no time here to describe the visitation, nor is there need, for it was a recurrence, three-fold intensified, of that paralysing oppression of spirit I had known during my imprisonment in Hellas. I knew what it meant. I was paying the penalty of my broken oath, to a people more terrible by far than any secret organisation of natives in the outer world. Almost have I expected to see materialise, in this room where I write, the tall, stern, accusing finger of some wise one from the Hall of Wandering Souls, but that horror at least has been spared me. As before, the onsets have steadily increased in fury, but as before they have been intermittent; and it is during the dwindling intervals of peace that I have rushed on with this narrative, to which I now write finis as the crowning work of my life....
May God have mercy upon my soul.
EPILOGUE
So ends, in a hand markedly hurried and scrawled in comparison with the earlier portions of the manuscript, the narrative which was brought into my room on that bitter Peking morning so long ago: a narrative which, leaving out of consideration the ingenious but confessedly fictitious compositions of the professional romancers, struck me and strikes me still as the most remarkable record of human experience ever set down in black and white. I have already written, in my preface to the manuscript, that the reader must judge for himself of its truth or falsity; but I may perhaps fittingly add a few lines as to my own view and the circumstances under which this narrative now comes to be published.
Firstly, regarding Ronald Mirlees, the writer of the manuscript. I had had personal experience of him in the past, and found him to be a man of the staunchest trustworthiness. No one who had known him would, I am convinced, ever credit that he could be guilty of deliberate falsehood; indeed, his greatest handicap in advancing his repute among scholarly Europeans of the East had been a too dogmatic manner of stating what he believed to be the truth. Critics who were reluctant to accept the fruits of his researches on sight he treated invariably with a cavalier outspokenness approaching to contempt--an attitude which may have been at times in some degree provoked, but was certainly not calculated to make him popular with other orientalists. As for engineering an elaborate hoax and planting it on a former friend and comrade in adventure, I should eternally believe him incapable of this, if only for the reason that to the best of my knowledge he was totally devoid of a sense of humour. So much for the character of Ronald Mirlees.
Then as to his proofs. These are admittedly scanty. Yet the uncut diamonds which he sent to me were real enough and, as I found when I came to have them polished and weighed, of extraordinary value. This fact alone must be accepted as ample evidence that he had visited a region yet undiscovered by the world. As is well known, there are tracts of the wild mountainous land to the west of China where valuable minerals are found in plenty--particularly the minor precious stones such as amethyst and jade; but anything like the rich diamond field from which these magnificent stones must have come has certainly not yet been brought to light.
Next, I endeavoured to find out something about the men whom Mirlees describes as having accompanied him on his adventure, paying a special visit to Shanghai for this purpose. At the Consular offices I discovered that a British subject named Stephen Poyning had indeed been registered as a newcomer to China but very shortly before the time when Mirlees' narrative begins; and some months later an Indian Army friend employed in the Intelligence Department at Delhi, to whom I had written for information, replied that there was a Major Poyning who had mysteriously vanished from his regiment on the frontier some years before. Of the man known as Saunders Philipson I was able to collect several scraps of hearsay. Most of the evidence represented him as a person of wealth and extraordinary habits, believed to be profoundly versed in the languages of the East and to have spent much time travelling as a native in the interior. He had apparently shunned European society even when resident in the Treaty Ports, and what few men had known him were unanimous in describing him as a dark horse--"shady" even was the expression used by one of my informants. The manager of the Bank of Cathay told me that he had known Saunders Philipson, but not intimately, and that he believed him to be now absent on one of those long journeys up country which had been customary with him for years: beyond that, I would of course understand the affairs of his clients were not a matter he could disclose to strangers. I did not deem it discreet to push my inquiries further in that direction, but so far, I had to confess that the evidence bore out well enough the truth of Mirlees' narrative.
I pass on to his discovery of the highly civilised white--or rather hybrid--race hidden away in a valley of Central Asia. This would seem on the face of it to be an astonishing claim, yet when I came to weigh up the probabilities I found myself less and less confident to reject it out of hand. In the first place, Mirlees' story seems to me to be told with a plain straightforwardness that has the distinct ring of truth. Secondly, we of the outer world know practically nothing of those regions through which he travelled, and are therefore hardly in a position either to indorse or contradict any assertion regarding them. The profundity of our ignorance can perhaps be represented by an illustration. If half a dozen ants were set down at intervals on one side of Hyde Park, and crawled once to the other side, but avoided the central area altogether, their tracks might very well stand for the mere threads of country observed by the half dozen or so white men who have ever won across the barren heights of Northern Tibet; and the ants' knowledge of Hyde Park at the end of their journey would be fully as extensive as our acquaintance with that other region of the globe. Moreover, no one familiar with the writings of our greatest authorities on Central Asia--allowing that any man can be counted an authority on lands which remain to this day practically unexplored--need be reminded that among the native tribes of the lower, inhabited districts there are persistent traditions of buried and lost cities. And from what known history tells of Greek penetration into the regions around ancient Baktria--the modern Balkh--it would seem not too great a stretch of the imagination to suppose that other bands of adventurers thrown off from the main current of Alexander's advance penetrated farther east still.
But admitting the existence of the Greek-descended race to be possible, one comes to the real strain to credence when Mirlees goes on to say that this nation had been founded by Alexander the Great in person. I am open to admit that I was at first disposed to put aside this notion as the merest, wildest legend, unsupported by historic fact or even probability. After a while, however, it began to appeal to me with a peculiar fascination, which deepened the more I pondered over it. I became interested. I ordered in books for which the stores of our far corner of the world were seldom troubled and had to keep me waiting long. They arrived at last, however, those tomes of ancient history, and I devoured every word that has come down to us regarding the last years and the last hours of the great conqueror; yet nowhere in any authentic record was I able to find one fact by which the claims of this lost race of Hellas could be disproved. To their theory of Alexander's "death," history itself would seem if anything to lend colour. We know that there has been down through the ages an uneasy, vague feeling that the fever which was supposed to have carried him off was insufficient to account satisfactorily for his end; that long after the event there persisted a widespread suspicion that the real cause was poison. We know that the conqueror's features were remarkably like those of his friend Hephaistion, and from this may reasonably assume that his was a type of personal beauty not uncommon among the Macedonians who followed him into Asia. It is tolerably well vouched for, too, that the commanders of his army were at the time engrossed one and all in their own greedy designs on the empire; they wished Alexander dead, and seeing that no live Alexander came forward to refute the story of the dead one, it would hardly have occurred to them to stop and verify that the body on the royal bier was really Alexander's and not that of a "double" from among his own comely Greeks.
I had also to confess that the reason given by the people of Hellas for Alexander's abdication from the world seems plausible enough. Even a cursory reading of the history of his last years makes it quite clear that the great conqueror was a disappointed, a disillusioned man. He wept not because--to quote the tag of our schooldays--there were no more worlds to conquer, but for the failure of the great ideal which had inspired his conquest of this one: a union of the races of East and West not only by political fusion but by actual inter-marriage, and an overthrow for good and all of the barbarous fetich which would set the people of either continent necessarily in a position of superiority to the other. It may even be that among ourselves the time will come when this humane ambition is held, more than all his marvellous military adventures, to be his true claim to the title "great." During his life Alexander strove to put the ideal into effect; and history tells us how he failed. His ideas were many centuries ahead of his time; there seems likelihood, indeed, that were he alive now--leaving aside for a moment his supposed reincarnation in the person of the man called Philipson--he would find the world little farther advanced towards a liberal and truly civilised outlook on these questions than in his own day. His generals gave lip-service to the ideal of race-fusion, but it was from mere submission to the will of the king, and without true sympathy or understanding.
But that Alexander, despairing of his followers and abandoning the struggle against intolerance, gathered a handful of enlightened spirits and voluntarily disappeared from the known world to found a new kingdom in the unknown, remains to my mind a riddle which written history is incapable of solving. The historians who place his death in Babylon in the year 323 B.C. wrote merely what was currently believed in their day. Mirlees, in the foregoing remarkable narrative, records the belief of a people in the secret interior of Asia that Alexander brought his small band of faithful to that fertile valley in the midst of the eternal snows, where his ideal of blending European with Asiatic blood might be realised without interference from the outer world. It will be noticed, however, that Mirlees does not quote proofs beyond the universal belief of the people of the valley, the inscription on the obelisk, and the statue said to have been by the hand of Dinocrates. Of these, the first two do not appeal to me as strong evidence. Supposing the original settlers were Macedonians, it is quite possible that among their descendants the tradition may have arisen in the course of the centuries that among those who first came to the valley was Alexander himself, and that this tradition finally crystallised into accepted history. Probably, too, it was at some such later date as this that the obelisk recording the tradition was erected: Mirlees, it will be remembered, describes the carving on the monument as easily legible, which could hardly have been the case had it dated from Alexander's own time. The statue, however, is a much harder nut to crack. From its perfect resemblance to the features of Saunders Philipson, who, as Poyning noticed on first seeing him, was astonishingly like the extant effigies of Alexander, it seems likely that the statue was done from life, and it certainly must have been done in the valley, since the first settlers would neither want nor be able to carry a heavy iron image across the mountains. Altogether, after a long examination of the evidence, I was driven to the conclusion that while it might be rash to allow the claim of the people of Hellas, it could be scarcely less rash to deny it.
To the remarkable powers of mind with which Mirlees credits this people, again, it would seem unwise to oppose a blank unbelief. Admitting that they had lived secluded from the world for twenty-two centuries, undistracted by the wars and turmoils and oppressions which have crippled the rest of humanity during the same period, one might not unnaturally expect that their energies, turned inwards, would lead them to great advances in science and the arts. The race, it must be remembered, brought into the valley the highest civilisation then known to the world, and thereafter, to build upon this solid basis the wonderful superstructure of enlightenment which Mirlees describes, would be merely a question of time. In two things, the art of flight and the prolongation of human life, they appear after all only to have anticipated by some centuries the surprising discoveries made by ourselves during recent years. In psychics, a marvellous advancement is ascribed to them, but is this beyond belief? We ourselves have sanely and soberly studied the subject for barely half a century, yet already we have made some progress; we have even recorded cases of projected personality, though in most instances the act was probably involuntary and the power unreliable. Is it too much to suppose that a race originally of great intellectual and nervous force, which had studied these matters for centuries, should have so perfected their control of the human mind as to be able to launch it forth at will? I think not. Nor, I fancy, is it unthinkable that an actual visible shape of the projected personality might appear to the person who was the subject of the visitation. But that the mind-wizards of Hellas, by willing such a visitation and infusing it with hostile intention, should be able to cause the death of the person visited--on this point, I must confess, I am sceptic.
That brings me to the death of Ronald Mirlees. Frankly, in spite of the mysterious and inexplicable nature of his end, which baffled doctors and public alike, I incline to think that he himself was under a delusion as to its cause--particularly as a far simpler explanation occurs to me. Men of Mirlees' stamp, who in their quest of knowledge plunge into the perilous underworld of native life, with its secret organisations and obscure religious cults, often meet with a fate as dark as the matters they went out to explore. Many such cases lie buried in the dusty official files of the East. Sometimes it is a jealously guarded secret filched, sometimes a criminal betrayed to justice, but always there is the possibility that sooner or later the rash foreigner who has ventured into such deep waters will pay for his temerity with his life. Mirlees, as I knew, was in the habit of thus diving into the underworld, where his knowledge of native life and language enabled him to move in a way that would have been possible to few other foreigners living; and he was, as I also knew, a man utterly devoid of fear and not greatly gifted with common prudence. In this manuscript he represents himself as having incurred the wrath of a secret, semi-religious society whose members were also on the track of the hidden land of diamonds. Blood had been shed--it may have been the blood of men highly placed in the organisation; and his story of the renewed attempts on his life when he had ventured back into China bears to my mind the character of extreme probability. Also, I am inclined to believe that one of these attempts finally succeeded. The murder may have been effected by means of some subtle native poison which no European doctor could detect--it will be remembered that he records an attempt of the kind as having been already made and frustrated. His own belief--that he was being done to death by mental force acting at a great distance--seems wild enough, but by no means hard to understand after the experiences through which he had passed. The amazing powers of the people of Hellas had obviously left a profound impression upon his mind, so much so that he was able to put forward the astonishing hypothesis that the mechanism of those artificial wings on which he fled from the valley was actuated by isolated brain force; the grim mystery surrounding the death of Major Poyning would still further deepen this impression; and Mirlees' dream-interview with the Princess Euphrosune--I prefer to regard this as merely a dream, since at his meeting with Saunders Philipson on the following night the latter appears to have made no mention either of it or of Mirlees' supposed oath of secrecy--may well have rendered the delusion complete. All this, taken in conjunction with the cumulative horror of the several attempts on his life, would seem to me to afford an adequate explanation of Mirlees' extraordinary belief.
I come, in conclusion, to my reason for now breaking the silence of thirteen years and giving Mirlees' manuscript to the world. When the document reached me I read it several times from beginning to end, with astonishment that deepened rather than dwindled, and then put it away in a place of safety as the writer had requested. This was not because I believed--to quote Mirlees' words--there was "a doom in it"; as I have made clear in the foregoing paragraph, I found myself unable to accept that theory. But there were other considerations. It seemed to me that the statements made by Mirlees were so daring, so sensational, so flatly contradictory of what has passed for history during two millenniums, that they would be greeted with incredulity--perhaps even resentment--on all sides, and that the ultimate result would be to damage Mirlees' well-earned repute as an orientalist and scholar. There were, as I knew, rival "authorities" who would possibly even welcome such an opportunity to throw discredit on the whole of his life-work.
Now, however, the aspect of affairs is rapidly changing. With the great strides recently made in the art of air-travel it seems likely that before long the last secrets of this vast continent of Asia will be wrenched from her. Where previously a mere handful of indomitable adventurers have been able to cross the awful heights of Northern Tibet on foot, taking months of the most tremendous exertion and peril in the crossing, soon the perfected swift planes of modern explorers will be traversing that unique region of the globe in a few days. Then the race which Mirlees describes as lurking hidden beyond the great mountain barrier will be discovered willy-nilly to the world at large; and it is my most earnest wish that the fame of having first placed upon record a description of this people and their supposed origin and history should be awarded to the man who struggled so gallantly and suffered so much in winning through to their secret land. I knew Mirlees as a trusty comrade, a brilliant scholar, and a most disinterested seeker after truth. He deserved greatly of his fellow man for his services in exploring and making better known these little-known portions of the earth, and it is no more than common justice that the credit for his last and greatest discovery should go to him and no other.
Whether subsequent exploration will confirm his assertions, only the future can show. For myself I will say candidly and without fear of derision that I believe that somewhere deep amid the mountain solitudes there does exist that Navel of Light; that it is peopled by a race from whom the outer world has much to learn, not only in scientific ingenuity but in breadth and humanity of ideas; that it is ruled by a modern Greek of great personal beauty and strength of body and mind, whom the folk of Hellas believe, rightly or wrongly, to be the reincarnated personality of their great founder. Whether my belief is warranted or not, let the reader of this narrative decide. I have done my part in publishing, literally and without so much as the addition or removal of one comma, the manuscript which reached me from the representatives of Ronald Mirlees shortly after his lamented and most mysterious death.
Terminat hora diem: terminat auctor opus.
DUCKWORTH'S FICTION.
THE GREAT MOMENT
BY ELINOR GLYN
THE PRIMROSE PATH
STORIES BY ARTHUR MILLS
THE MARSDEN CASE
BY F. M. FORD (FORD MADOX HUEFFER)
OUT OF BONDAGE
BY OLIVE MARY SALTER
THE ROAD BY LADY DOROTHY MILLS
BODIES AND SOULS
BY SHAW DESMOND
THE VALLEY OF EYES UNSEEN
BY GILBERT COLLINS
REVOLVING LIGHTS
BY DOROTHY RICHARDSON
BLOWING WEATHER
BY JOHN T. MCINTYRE
THE VALLEY OF EYES UNSEEN
By the same Author.
FLOWER OF ASIA
A NOVEL OF NIHON.
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