Chapter X: Below the Cliffs

It was past four o’clock when Forsyth woke me up, and I rolled out of my blankets into the cold dawn. The wind had dropped now, however.

“Time to turn out, old thing,” he said. “We’ve got to be under way by six. How’s the face?”

“A bit sore,” said I, as I tightened up my _chaplis_. “Where’s John?”

“Still sitting up at the end of the pass. He’s not coming back. We’re to pack up and start off to the east. He and Payindah will stay there till it’s light, and then come away following us as rear-guard. Nothing happened all the time I was there. But old Wrexham’s a hard nut. Wish I had half his nerve. He went crawling among the bones nearly up to the gate to look-see.”

Firoz was setting out cups and plates on the _yakhdans_ by the light of a hurricane-lamp. In the moonlight I could see the camels kneeling down and Sadiq carrying up loads. Evidently Forsyth had been busy since he came back.

“First thing is to get some clothes for the lady,” he continued. “You’re the nearest size; I’m too long and John’s too fat. What can you raise? That pair of grey flannel trousers you keep for state occasions and your other shooting-coat will do as a start.”

“I’ve got a Jaeger sweater, too, and a pair of old tennis-shoes.”

“Good, and I’ve got my one and only silk shirt. Don’t suppose she’ll want to wear your sweater next to her skin. Thank goodness, I’ve got a lot of safety-pins in my outfit. That’s the chief essential as far as women go. Well, if you help Sadiq, I’ll go and wake her up; I’m glad she got to sleep. I was afraid she might break down if she didn’t.”

Ten minutes later, he returned chuckling to where I was helping Sadiq rope things on to the camels.

“D----d lucky you have a fellow with you who’s been brought up by a crowd of sisters. I wonder what the wretched girl would have done if she’d been handed over to the tender mercies of you and John.”

Considering the trouble I’d taken to collect the lady, and the fact that I have a perfectly good sister myself, I thought the taunt was unmerited. So I merely asked:

“Whose sisters?” whereupon Forsyth answered in quite a peeved way that he meant his own.

By a quarter to five, we had everything loaded up save the food _yakhdans_, the tent, and my valise, which Aryenis was using. We cast anxious eyes on the tent as time went on, but it was just on five when she emerged and came over to us, rather shyly, I thought. I got up (Forsyth, seeing her coming, had gone to get Sadiq to strike the tent) and said good-morning, inquiring after her shoulder and arms.

“My arms are all right now, and my shoulder’s not hurting much,” she said, and asked after my face.

Being a woman, she had done a lot with the miscellaneous outfit, mostly mine, which Forsyth had presented to her. I noticed that, as he prophesied, the silk shirt _was_ inside the sweater, and, being a mere man, wished it was the other way about. You see, the sweater was mine.

I felt sorry for her having to make her appearance like this, with my baggy grey trousers tucked into a pair of very old stockings ending in my tennis-shoes, about four sizes too big. She had swathed her hair in a big silk handkerchief, rather moth-eaten, but an old treasure which had outlasted me many _dhobis_.

I made her put on my _poshtin_, which came right down to her feet, and I think she was glad of the warmth. Then I offered her Wrexham’s valise to sit on, and sat down on one of the _yakhdans_. She looked a great deal better than the night before, though still a bit worn. I expect she was feeling the strain of all she’d been through.

Firoz appeared with a teapot, some _chupattis_, and a dish of salmon, the kind that grows in tins. As he put them down, he greeted Aryenis with, “Salaam, Miss Sahib. _Ab achhe hain?_” It was noticeable the way the men treated her from the very beginning as a person of consequence. I explained that he was asking if she was feeling better, and she smiled at him and thanked him in Greek. Doubtless Payindah had told him how brave she had been, and they were both her very devoted slaves ever afterwards.

I poured out some tea and helped her to some fish. I noticed that knife and spoon were familiar enough, but that the fork rather defeated her, and could see that she was watching carefully to see what I did with mine.

“Did you sleep last night, Harilek? You must have been cold out in the wind.”

“Pretty well, thanks. And you?”

“More than well, as I ought to have, since you have given me your tent and all your things. And this morning when the doctor brought me the clothes, he gave me the most wonderful mirror I have ever seen. I thought I was looking at a real person, not a mirror, when I looked in it. It was like the glass round the lamp, but I’ve never seen glass that you can see through before. Ours is thick and coloured, and we only make plates and beads of it.”

“What do you do for mirrors, then?”

“Metal. I’ve got two of bronze, but they are not nearly as good as your glass ones. Yours must be a wonderful country if three men travelling on a journey in the desert have all sorts of things like that with them.”

“Yes, I expect our things must seem strange to you, having been cut off from the big world so long.”

“What am I eating, Harilek? This pink stuff?”

“That’s a fish of our country.”

“But you said your country was ever so far away! How could you bring fish with you?”

“Oh, we seal it up in boxes, and it keeps for months and years. It tastes all right, doesn’t it?”

“Quite. But how very wonderful.”

“Not half as wonderful as finding some one like you here, just like our own people.”

“Am I like your women?”

“Yes, only nicer-looking than most.”

“Nice compliments, Harilek, considering the things I’m wearing. _I_ know what I look like to-day. If you wanted to make pretty speeches, you shouldn’t have let the doctor give me the mirror. But I mean are your women fair like me? And what sort of clothes do they wear?”

“Don’t ask me. All sorts.”

“I see. Not trousers like these things, I hope!”

“No; not trousers like those. Skirts. I hope _you_ don’t wear trousers--like that.”

She gave a sniff of disgust.

“No, Harilek! _Skirts._ Nice short ones.”

Having loaded the tent, Forsyth came over, made a hurried breakfast, looked at his watch, and said:

“We’d better finish packing up. It’s twenty-five past five, and I told John we’d get away by six.”

“What’s left to pack?” I asked.

“Only the mess things, but that’ll take a quarter of an hour, at least. Hi, Firoz!”

“Look here, we’d better take a hand at washing up these things. We don’t want to pack ’em up all dirty,” said I. “I’ll just dip ’em in the stream.”

Forsyth had turned Aryenis off the valise and was roping it up. Seeing me with my hands full of plates going to the stream, thirty yards away, she gathered up the remaining cups and saucers and followed. I was on my knees by the stream when she arrived, evidently anxious to help. She said something about that being woman’s work, from which I imagine she thought I might be doing something more useful. However, we finished the job together, and, coming back with the lot washed up, packed them into the _yakhdans_. Then we roped on the last loads, and cast a final glance over everything.

Firoz brought up the spare camel and made it kneel down. You remember it had a riding-saddle on. The grunts and gurgles and the long, writhing neck and open mouth rather frightened Aryenis, who drew back a pace. She was evidently not familiar with camels, for she had been looking at them curiously before. At last she asked me what beasts they were.

“Camels,” I said. “Have you none in your country?” I had to say the word several times in different forms before she understood it.

“Camels. Yes, I have read of them in old books. No, we have none.”

I was just going to make the camel get up, having settled her as comfortably as I could in the saddle, when Forsyth told me to mount.

“You’d better ride as well, Harry,” he said. “You can see better aloft, and it’ll be company for the lady. It may also be less painful for your face than stumbling along over the stones.”

As that camel had carried nothing for its keep for the last fortnight, I was very ready. Besides, it would give me a chance of talking a bit more to Aryenis. Since she was, so to speak, the captive of my bow and spear, or rather of my pistol and my particular slave’s rifle, I did not see why Forsyth should do the talking. So I swung myself into the front seat, made her hold on tight, and pulled the camel to its feet.

The coming dawn had lightened the sky, and everything showed ghostly in the faint mixture of moonlight and dawn. I looked at my watch. It was five minutes past six.

“All aboard,” I called to Forsyth.

“Right-o. All ready. Lead straight along, hugging the cliffs.”

The camel stepped out; behind me the big black leader’s bell tinkled, and looking back I saw the long line of swaying necks, with Firoz with his slung rifle and Sadiq trailing the shot-gun on foot beside them. Forsyth was evidently at the tail.

We crossed the _tangi_ mouth, and passed on beyond under the frowning cliffs. Aryenis looked up the gorge with a little shiver as we passed. She must have been glad to see the last of it.

The going was not bad at the foot of the slope on the edge of the sand. Above us towered the cliffs, gaunt, bare rock, grey in the light of the growing dawn, and on our right was the trackless ocean of rippled sand with the dunes growing in height toward the horizon. The sky was colourless, and the stars, already faint in the moonlight, were rapidly paling before the coming sun, hidden from us as yet by the giant wall above. But the western sky flung back a faint reflection of the coming glory, and soon the western edge of the desert grew golden as the sun swung up and the mountains’ shadow shortened eastward toward us.

“The dawn is very beautiful, Harilek,” said Aryenis, pointing to the translucent sky and the golden light on the desert’s fringe. “I never thought to look on it again yesterday. Think you will be able to get me back home all right?” There was an anxious note in her voice.

“I hope so, Aryenis. But you’ve got to show us the way. Still, I don’t think we should have found you if we weren’t going to get you home. Some day I’ll tell you how we came here. To my mind it’s all too wonderful to be nothing but chance. I think it must have been meant. No, I think we shall get you home all right to the people who are waiting for you; your father and--who else?”

A sudden thought had struck me, a most unpleasing one. I’m not more sentimental than the average Englishman is underneath his veneer, but, after all, I had taken some trouble over Aryenis, and the idea of having salved some one else’s property was naturally unattractive. Besides, every moment seemed to show her as a person exceptionally worth taking trouble over. I had expected to find--if we did find white folk--something half-barbaric, and here was a distinctly cultured and exceptionally attractive girl.

“There’s my brother Stephnos and old Uncle Paulos and heaps more people. I’ve got lots of friends.”

I breathed a distinct sigh of relief. I didn’t mind taking trouble about salving people’s daughters or sisters or mere friends.

“Oh, Harilek. You said you thought you were meant to find me. What did you mean? Who meant it?”

“Who meant it? Why, who could mean a thing like that except one person? God, of course.”

“Did you say God or the gods?”

“God. We only believe in one. How many do you believe in?”

“We only believe in one, although some of our people believe in many, a thing that brings strife sometimes. My father says part of the Shamans’ enmity comes from this, since they believe in many very evil gods.”

This was a bit of a surprise. I had hardly expected to find monotheists in this country. It was fairly clear that these people were some old prehistoric survival of the original white races, and could hardly have received Mohammedanism. Anyway, Aryenis’s independence showed clearly that the tents of Islam had not reached her country when they had swamped the greater part of Central Asia.

“But, Harilek, you say you only believe in one. How is He called?” She seemed very interested.

“Just God. But if you can understand, we also believe that He had a son Christ, who came into the world in the guise of a man--”

“But,” she said excitedly, “then you are Christians even as we are!”

I could hardly believe my ears. It is true that there are scattered Nestorian Christians in Chinese Turkestan, but how on earth could these isolated people be Christians! I turned round to Aryenis in bewilderment.

“You seem surprised.”

“So are you, Aryenis.”

“Well, it is _rather_ wonderful. I think--with you, Harilek--that all this must be meant.”

She was silent for a minute. Then she went on.

“Are all of you Christians? The doctor and the other, and the darker-faced men?”

“The darker-faced men are not, though they also believe in one God, but they do not believe in Christ, saying that He was only a great prophet, not God. My two friends are Christians by birth, but the doctor says that such things are beyond him, and he will not believe in anything he cannot see or handle and prove for himself. Wrexham--the stout man you saw for a minute last night--believes in God, I think, but he pretends he is not sure, and so, like many people, from wanting to be quite sure of everything, he is not even sure of not believing.”

“That must be very sad for him.”

“It is, since he is such a good man. However, if we get to heaven we shall find him and lots more up above us, all right, for all the good things they have done so much better than we who, knowing more, should be better than they.”

“True, Harilek. You, like me, are clearly a believer in the faith. I am more than glad.”

We were silent a little after that, and then she asked where Wrexham was, so I told her what he was doing, and how he had tried to get the old chief’s body back to bury.

“He is clearly a brave man. Fancy crawling right up to the gates like that,” said Aryenis. “Is he also a soldier?”

“Not always, though he has fought much. He is an engineer, one who has knowledge of building and mines, and the making of all kinds of metal-work and such things.”

“And the darker-faced men?”

“Yes, they are soldiers. One of them--the one who spoke to you this morning--is one of the kind skilled in making forts and in attacking them. He was with Wrexham in the wars. The other is an ordinary soldier who was under my command. Both are very brave and have seen many battles.”

“But why have they darker faces than you? At least, their faces are not much darker than yours, Harilek, but their skins are, as I can tell by their hands and feet. But your face is only dark from sun, for your skin is white like mine. I could see that when your hat was off. Are they of a different race?”

“Yes. They live in a very hot country which is ruled by my people.”

“And were you a commander of many men there?”

“During the war I was a commander of a thousand men, like the one who helped us in the gate.”

This was a bit of an exaggeration considering the frequently pitiable proportions of my battalion in the more hectic days of the war. Still, at the dépôt I once commanded nearly thirteen hundred, so the average was not too bad. Besides, “commander of a thousand” sounded something like an old Greek title I remembered, and I couldn’t go into details of modern military organization.

“‘Commander of a thousand.’ Then you must be a big chief.”

“Not a bit. Only quite a little one. My country is very big.”

“Well, when you were older--for you are not old, any of you--you would have been a commander of many more--a really big chief,” said she, with feminine ignorance and optimism.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. But, anyway, I gave up being a soldier, and was going back to my land in my own country where my sister lives. Then Wrexham persuaded me to come with him to look for these hills which were once seen by one of his ancestors.”

Just then Forsyth came up and suggested our halting for a while. Wrexham and Payindah ought to be up with us, for we had been going over two hours. If not, we ought to wait, and, if they did not come soon, go back.

We dismounted and caused Aryenis intense astonishment with our pipes. Evidently tobacco was unknown in the Sakae country. However, a shock or two more was nothing after the number she’d had. But the box of matches intrigued her tremendously. I think, after the mirror, the matches were the thing which took her fancy most of all. Both were articles of practical utility, whereas guns and watches--especially watches--were obviously inconsequential frills to the feminine mind, playthings for the stupider sex, but of no use to the more practical one intent on much bigger problems of dress and the household. Aryenis, like most women, had only three times she took notice of--past, Present (with a capital P), and future. The idea of a finicky division into hours and minutes struck her severely logical mind as absolutely unnecessary.

The more I saw of Aryenis, the more convinced did I become that woman--the ever-changing--never changes at all in reality. Except that Aryenis is much nicer-looking and cleverer, there is not the slightest difference between her and the various women I used to meet at home.

Half an hour later Wrexham and Payindah came up, the latter carrying the steel cap of the first fellow I had killed. The irrepressible Wrexham had collected it as a souvenir. Nothing would have induced me to crawl out into the clearing under the gate merely to gather a useless bit of loot.

He said that they had seen no signs of life all night, save for the lights mentioned in his note. At daybreak some arrows had been fired rather aimlessly from the loopholes toward the gorge, whereupon he and Payindah had opened rapid fire at the arrow-slits, and the arrows forthwith ceased for good.

After spending an hour sniping the gate at longer and longer intervals, they had connected up the booby-traps Wrexham had prepared with his little tin of powder and slipped noiselessly away.

He reckoned the enemy would not venture to follow us for a while, and if they did the booby-traps would stop them the first time they tried, even if not indefinitely. All five of the men in the clearing were dead now, and no effort had been made from the gate to get them in, so the enemy were obviously pretty panicky. Still, for the rest of the time we were under the cliffs we never dispensed with a sentry at night.

We travelled steadily for three days, following the line of cliffs, which curved very gradually toward the northeast, with, to our right, always the waste of sand. Aryenis told us that, as far as she knew, the whole country was ringed with hills and surrounded by desert on all sides. According to her, it was a big country, since it was six days’ journey from one side to the other even on horseback. Allowing twenty miles a day as a maximum, and taking off something for the roads being winding, as they must be in a country obviously hilly, that meant at least a hundred miles across. As a matter of fact, our estimate proved pretty accurate, for later on Wrexham made a rough survey of it, and it was over the hundred in length and nearly seventy in breadth.

The marches were as monotonous as the one across the desert had been, and we saw no signs of life and found no water. It was lucky we had been able to water the animals and fill up our tanks before we started from the gate. The camels were now very gaunt and getting weak, for we had had to reduce their ration to a minimum. It was clear that, if we could not get into the country, our chances of ever getting back home again were small, since the camels would be too weak for the long marches back across the desert, even although we had water. They wanted rest and grazing badly. Still, I think that none of us felt really depressed, since up to date things had worked out so extraordinarily well. The rain in the desert and our finding Aryenis both served to strengthen our idea that we were meant to get through.

Aryenis herself kept our spirits up. She had quite recovered her own, and the prospect of getting back to her home, of which she was clearly passionately fond, kept her ever cheerful, even despite the trials of her wardrobe.

I never wish to meet more cheerful company. She was _bonne camarade_ from the very beginning. She had apparently sized us up the first night; had come to the conclusion that for mere men we were quite respectable beings, and treated us accordingly. By the end of the second day she had taken command of the table, and especially of the teapot. Tea, like tobacco, was unknown to her, but she took to the former at once, and, when Wrexham had instructed her in the art of making it, made it herself at every meal, Firoz coming obediently with really boiling water. It was a notable change from the gun-fire type which we had drunk hitherto.

I was afraid at first that Firoz might resent her taking charge, remembering the speedy disappearance of the old servants of my various bachelor acquaintances when their masters took unto themselves wives. But Firoz took it absolutely lying down, until Aryenis--not knowing a word of his language--superintended all our meals. The third day, while we were fixing up camp, I saw her over at Firoz’s fire, much gesticulating going on, and the lady herself apparently cooking something.

That night she was first at table, and, after the inevitable corned beef, Firoz uncovered with great pride two plates of crisp cakes and some sweets. Aryenis, investigating our kitchen arrangements, had inquired concerning our _chupattis_, which she considered extremely nasty, and the upshot had been Forsyth’s producing some baking powder, unheeded since the flight of the cook, and explaining its use. She annexed it forthwith, as well as a tin of condensed milk, a discovery that delighted her when she was told what it was.

“There,” said Aryenis, “those are worth eating. I made them myself, and I know. Why do men when they do not have a woman to nurse them content themselves with anything that a servant puts in front of them?”

We were dumb, as always, when Aryenis reproved us. I’ve never seen two unattached men lie down to be kicked so meekly as did Wrexham and Forsyth once she announced--not in words, of course--her intention of ruling the place as long as she honoured us with her presence. I, myself, having for many years been under a masterful elder sister who took me over at the age of three when my mother died, had long since learnt the folly of pretending to have a will of my own, except when I could get out of range, and, of course, situated as we were, we could not get out of range of Aryenis.

The first evening out she commandeered all our available stack of needles, thread, and the like, and proceeded to overhaul our frayed and much-worn clothes, so that by the third day there were buttons where buttons should be, and patches where had hitherto been only openwork.

Yes; she took charge of us as if we were a trio of small boys mislaid by their parents, and--we liked it.

She gazed upon us in turn after her remarks about our manner of living, as though defying us to produce any reasonable reason, and, seeing that we were suitably worm-like, passed the sweets round. Sugar was evidently familiar enough to her. We had only the coarse bazaar article, and found much the same in Sakae land.

We began once more to consider our personal appearance, even though water was so scarce. Forsyth wore a tie at every meal, for instance--only a khaki one, it is true, but still a tie. This excited Aryenis’s emulation, and, searching among our kit under pretence of repairs, she found an old regimental tie of mine which had somehow failed to get lost or stolen during our six months’ march. She forthwith took it into wear, knotted about her throat rather _à la Montmartre_, and asked me why I had hidden such a treasure when I was getting clothes for her.

Despite anxiety about the future, the weakening camels, our limited water-supply, and the possibility of not finding a way up--a possibility we did not like to reflect on overmuch, since it spelt something not unlike a two to one chance of dying in the sand trying to get back, we were, thanks to Aryenis, a comparatively cheerful little party, especially in the evenings. We had picked up a certain amount of fuel by the stream banks outside the gate where there were some small trees and a good quantity of thick reeds, and after the evening meal each night Firoz brought us over the remains of his cooking fire and a handful or two of fuel, and we sat round it under the starlit sky. Aryenis, with the firelight playing on her face, my old tie making a splash of colour in the big black collar of her _poshtin_, the skirts of which mostly concealed the offending blot of the flannel trousers, curled up on the rugs we spread for her; the rest of us sitting round smoking, while we answered her endless questions about our country, or Forsyth strummed to us on his tiny banjoline, and gave us _revue_ selections in his pleasing baritone, and then Aryenis in a real clear soprano sang us haunting snatches--music like old, old Western chant. And in the background the dim forms of the camels, the silhouette of the little tent, and the low murmur of the men’s talk round their bubbling hookah.

We might be going to leave our bones in the sand at the end of it all, but taking Aryenis’s cue, we lived in the Present (with the capital P), and three very pleasant days they were, and evenings that ended all too soon when Aryenis finally retired to the tent, and we rolled into our blankets under the open sky.