Chapter VIII: Ready for Invasion

“Well, the thing to do is to push on,” decided Nick Carter briskly, as Jai Singh handed back the soapstone ear to him. “We’ll keep this pretty relic as a sort of cue for what we are to do when we get to the Land of Golden Scarab. Are we on the right road to that interesting place?”

“Straight up this river till we get to where it pours out of the sacred rocks among the Himalayas,” replied Jai Singh.

“It is on the borders of Nepal, isn’t it?” asked Chick.

“Not far from there,” returned Jai Singh. “It would be well to take up the anchor and go on.”

“Aren’t we going to have another mix-up with that bunch of coffee-colored robbers over there?” grumbled Patsy.

“They have gone away,” Jai Singh told him gravely. “We may meet them when we get to the city beyond the snow. They are not likely to follow us now. No doubt they know a quicker way to get to the place where the Golden Scarab is supreme. But I do not know it. We can only go the way I will show.”

The anchor was lifted, and the four oarsmen settled down to their work in the dogged, matter-of-fact manner characteristic of them.

It was the middle of the next day when they reached the headwaters of the branch of the famous Ganges up which the boat had been toiling.

They had not seen anything of their enemies of the day before, and it seemed as if the men who had been with the medicine man were none too eager to avenge his death.

Soon the rest of the journey would have to be done on foot, with the men carrying such supplies as they might need on the way to the home of the Golden Scarab.

Although they had neither seen or heard anything of the men belonging to the medicine man who had given them such a lively tussle when the snake charmer met his death, they had a strange sense of being watched, without being able to explain exactly what the feeling was.

There had been several places where, on account of rapids or shallows in the river, it had been necessary to carry the boat around.

Each time this had happened, they had posted a guard to look out for lurking enemies, but nothing had been seen of the rascals they believed were not far away.

Patsy had expressed his disgust on each occasion because there had been no chance of battle.

But Patsy always had a chip on his shoulder. So Chick only laughed at his pugnacious comrade, while Nick Carter pretended to be wholly oblivious.

“I wish they’d come out of their holes,” grumbled Patsy. “I’d rather have them sting me than stay back there, where you can’t tell what they are after. What do you think about it, chief?”

“Ask Jai Singh,” was Nick Carter’s response.

Jai Singh spoke for himself, without being questioned.

“Such is not their way,” he told them, in his deep voice. “So long as they see we keep guard, they hide away deep in the forests. Yet they watch--they watch! Look you! See you that way to the left--far away, above the big trees yonder above the sun. It looks like a pinch of wind-driven dust?”

“What is it?” asked Jefferson Arnold.

“They are forest birds, disturbed by their scouts,” replied Jai Singh impressively. “Aye, you may laugh. But my eyes are keen, and I tell you that it is so. It is a warning.”

They gazed at the snow-capped mountains some distance ahead of them, and which were hazy on that account. Nick Carter knew them for part of the great range of the Himalayas, mysterious and grim--as if they locked in their bosom the secrets of ages.

The forest land near the head of the river soon began to open out on either side into a barren plain, and the stream constantly dwindled, until it was scarcely a hundred yards across and flowed sluggishly over the shoals that gave hardly depth enough for the flat-bottomed boat to navigate.

“By all accounts, the Golden Scarab country should lie over there, beyond the mountains,” was Nick Carter’s comment. “Little is known of it, and I cannot even give it a better name than the one I have just used. But there is no doubt in my mind that it exists, and that it is such a place as Jai Singh has described.”

“I speak according to the knowledge that has come to me,” put in the tall Hindu, with dignity.

“I pray heaven that my poor boy is safe, and that we shall not get there too late,” was the fervent hope of Jefferson Arnold. “Does anybody know the time of day and the date? It must be many weeks since my son was captured.”

“My watch got full of water coming up the river, when we moved the boat at the big falls,” remarked Nick. “Time is a matter of guesswork in these regions. All we can do is to push on as quickly as we can.”

“That rascally Pike does not mean to let us find my boy if it can be helped,” returned Jefferson, with a sad shake of the head. “I suppose he was afraid Leslie would keep after him to get back that hundred thousand dollars--or, failing in that, bring the scoundrel to justice. That is the secret of my son’s disappearance, I feel sure.”

“Probably,” conceded Nick. “If it is, we may have strong hope of saving him. Jai Singh says the feasts of the Golden Scarab, when there are many living sacrifices of human beings, are few and far between. We shall get there before the next one, if we keep on steadily as we are doing now.”

Jefferson Arnold leaned forward to look into the detective’s face.

“Do you mean, Mr. Carter, that there is actual danger of my boy being killed in some fanatical ceremony among those people over there?”

“I mean that we must go after him quickly, Mr. Arnold,” was all Nick Carter would say. “Let me take a look at those mountains through my glasses.”

For perhaps two minutes the detective stared through his double field glasses at the mighty hills in the distance. When at last he took the glass from his eyes, there was a smile of satisfaction just visible at the corners of his mouth.

“From what I can make out, there is some sort of pass on the right shoulder of the main peak,” was his decision.

“The sahib has spoken truly,” agreed Jai Singh. “There is such a pass. So far as I know, it is the only one where a man may pass in safety.”

“You have been through it?” queried Chick.

“No.”

“Gee! How do you know about it, then?” interjected Patsy Garvan. “Just a hunch?”

“The wisdom of the hills where I live is not understood by white men,” returned Jai Singh gravely. “I know what I know.”

“Well, you know a great deal more than I do about this forsaken country,” muttered Patsy. “I wouldn’t care if I didn’t find out any more about it, either. If we weren’t going after young Mr. Arnold, and that crook, William Pike, I’d be satisfied to quit right here. I’m not inquisitive--about some things.”

“Yet, how do you know about the pass?” pressed Nick Carter.

Jai Singh did not reply at once. He bent his head and seemed to be in a deep reverie for some moments--almost as if in a trance. Suddenly he straightened up, and speaking in a low, dreamy tone, answered:

“How can I tell exactly how it is that I know? It may be that, long years ago, before I was born, my people forced their way through to battle with those who worship the Golden Scarab. Sometimes, in the night, I seem to see a picture of men of my race and caste going through a pass, with spears ready to strike.”

“Punk!” muttered Patsy.

Nick Carter gave his second assistant a sharp glance. Jai Singh did not hear the remark, apparently, for he continued, in the steady monotone he had been using:

“One of our royal house may have been in the battle, and I, who am of his blood, keep it in my memory.”

“That may be all so,” commented Jefferson Arnold. “But I didn’t take much stock in this second sight, or whatever you call it. That sort of thing doesn’t go in business; I know that.”

So matter-of-fact a person as the millionaire, who had made his money by plain hard-headedness and commercial acumen, was not likely to make much belief in, or patience with, the occultism of the East. He was not ashamed of his skepticism, either.

“Yet will I prove that my words are true,” was Jai Singh’s dignified rejoinder. “We shall soon meet men of the Golden Scarab.”

As he said this, he skillfully brought the boat to a stop in the shallow water near the shore, and jumping in, followed by his four oarsmen, pulled at the craft till it was firmly fixed in the soft mud of the bank.

With the four men to help, the labor had been nothing.

“This is as far as we go on the river,” announced Jai Singh. “Now we walk. Will the sahib give orders to the men?”

Nick Carter nodded and directed the oarsmen to line up in front of him. Adil, without being told, took his place by the side of the oarsmen.

“Not you, Adil,” put in Jefferson Arnold.

“I go with the others,” returned Adil briefly. “I must find Sahib Leslie, and yonder is the way.”

“You shall go, of course,” Nick Carter told him. “But not all these four men. Some of them must be left behind, and I am going to find out which ones by drawing straws. It is a custom in my country. You may stand with my two young men from America.”

He indicated Chick and Patsy Garvan, and Adil willingly enough took his position by their side.

“What about these others?” asked Jefferson Arnold. “If they can fight as well as they row, they’ll be useful fellows to take with us.”

“I’m going to talk to them,” replied Nick. Then, turning to the four oarsmen, he began: “We go yonder, across the mountains, to find the white man who has been taken away. You know that?”

They bowed with the native dignity of all men of their race and muttered an unintelligible assent. Nick continued:

“It is a strange country, and the men there are fierce and cruel. They have strange worship, and their gods are not yours. Whether we will come out of that country alive no one can say. It is possible that the white man who went into the forests with Sahib Arnold may have taken him into the strange land beyond the mountains, and that he will tell the men of the Golden Scarab enough about us to give them power we cannot beat.”

“Not by a jugful!” interrupted Patsy Garvan. “I’ll bet we lick them if ever we get within striking distance. That’s a cinch.”

“We will all go,” said one of the oarsmen. “It is not necessary to draw lots. We will save the young sahib.”

“I knew it!” exclaimed Patsy. “Those boys are the goods, if they _are_ the color of an old tan shoe.”

But Nick Carter shook his head.

“Only two can go. The other two must stay and take care of the boat and what is in it till we get back.”

But the detective knew, even as he said this, that it would be useless to talk. Surely enough, when the procession began to move, the whole four oarsmen were included.