Chapter VIII: The History of a Day

Eirene’s ingenious idea had been signally mistaken. This was evident almost as soon as the little clearing in which the cattle-shed stood had been left behind, and, indeed, it could never have been entertained if the prisoners had been able to see their way and the nature of their surroundings the night before. Far from being an easy road, leading through villages, the path was a mere goat-track, plunging into the very heart of the mountains. To the active brigands, in their flexible moccasins, it presented no particular difficulty, but it was full of perils and alarms for inexperienced climbers wearing boots. At first, Zoe and Eirene shrank nervously from the gaps in the pathway, and the narrow ledges on which they were expected to creep round corners of rock; but the curses and threats which followed the slightest hesitation soon drove them on in blind terror. The brigands were worse than the mountain. Realising that Maurice and Wylie were helpless, the girls maintained sufficient resolution not to appeal to them, even by a glance, as they stumbled painfully up the track, their arms tortured by the cords. Not only curses, but blows, were showered on them whenever they missed their footing; but the treatment meted out to the girls was what they found hardest to bear. At last, when Zoe slipped and almost fell, and the nearest brigand’s grimy paw clutched her and shook her savagely, Wylie could stand it no longer.

“Smith, we must give our parole!” he called to Maurice. “Your sisters can’t get on alone. Here, you interpreter, tell them we’ll promise not to try to escape.”

A halt was called, and a good deal of discussion ensued among the brigands. There was an evident disposition to allow Maurice and Wylie to bear the consequences of their refusal to the bitter end, but the men who were carrying the rugs objected, and so did the two who were charged with seeing to the girls’ safety. It was unreasonable, they pointed out with much cogency, to expect them to be bothered with these troublesome women and their parcels, when the task could be imposed upon their natural protectors, and the plea commended itself at length to the rest. While Milosch delivered an oration on the unsurpassed kindness of the brigands in allowing the captives to change their minds, the chief cut the cords with his knife, and ordered an immediate advance. Chafing his numbed wrists, Wylie joined Zoe.

“We may have prevented you from escaping!” she said miserably.

“Not a bit of it. At least, if you see any chance of escape here in these atrocious hills, I must say I don’t. Take my arm, won’t you? the path is wider just here. Oh, I say”--he had caught sight of tears in her eyes--“please don’t! You’re not fagged out yet?”

“It’s--not that,” came in a series of gasps. “It’s seeing you--and Maurice--knocked about--and not being--able to do--anything. I hate--being a woman.”

“It’s all in the day’s work,” with discreet evasiveness. “Come, now, make up your mind you’re campaigning--‘climbing the Afghan mountain-track,’ you know.”

“In the Khoord-Cabul disaster?” with the ghost of a smile.

“What a cheerful mind you have! But after all, the captives were rescued that time, so it’s a good omen. There! that’s right,” as Zoe stumbled and saved herself by catching at him. “Don’t make us feel that our tremendous sacrifice was in vain. I’m afraid your sister hasn’t forgiven me yet. She refused my help so decidedly just now that I had no choice but to leave her to your brother.”

“She has rather strained ideas of honour,” said Zoe hesitatingly, “and I think she imagines you lead Maurice wrong. You see, it was you who offered to give the parole, and I suppose that sends you down in her estimation.”

“Well, it’s a good fault, at any rate--too keen a sense of honour. We English are too ready, no doubt, to think that because a thing is a compromise it must be right. Your sister will be a fine woman when her angles are a little rubbed off, if she sticks to her creed.”

“But she doesn’t stick to it in little things!” broke out Zoe involuntarily. “Oh, I oughtn’t to have said that!” she cried in distress, realising how her speech must sound from Wylie’s standpoint. “We have been brought up so differently, you know; she is always surprising us.”

“It was rather an experiment bringing her on a trip of this kind, wasn’t it? Take my hand across here. I mean, some people are all right as long as everything goes well, and they have all their own things about them; but trouble or strangeness of any kind seems to bring all their rough edges to light. Of course, she only wants to knock about a bit--that’ll make all the difference,” he added hastily.

“I--I can’t explain all the circumstances,” said Zoe, in some confusion, “but it seemed the only thing we could do, to have her with us. And she really means to be sisterly, I am sure. It’s only that she doesn’t quite understand things. And we must all sink or swim together, of course.”

“Quite so; and I hope I may be considered a brother in that particular sense. You wouldn’t all make your escape, and leave me in the hands of these fellows, would you?”

“Do you think it likely?” asked Zoe indignantly. “And I don’t think we should have much chance of escaping without you, either. Oh,” lowering her voice, “do tell me why you suddenly changed your mind about our being rescued? At first, you said over and over again that we should only be prisoners for one night, but when we got to the shed yesterday evening you stopped in the middle of a sentence and seemed to remember something, and since then you have made no more prophecies.”

“It wasn’t that I remembered something, but that I realised something,” said Wylie, shifting the rugs he was carrying from his arm to his shoulder, and speaking under their shelter. “When I expected to be rescued to-day, I thought we should still be inside the triangle formed by the road, the railway, and the river, in which we were captured. When we did not arrive last night, the people across the river would inquire by telegraph whether we had started, and it would be seen at once that something had happened to us on the road. There are enough soldiers and gendarmes within easy reach to sweep the triangle thoroughly from the road and railway to the river, and we were bound to be discovered.”

“And it was after we crossed the river that you saw we were no longer inside the triangle? But I thought the country to the south was much more settled. Would the brigands really take us there?”

“Ah, that’s their artfulness. Did you truly think it was the river we crossed last night--only twenty feet wide, and shallow enough to wade through?”

“But what else could it have been--just a stream? Then we should still be inside the triangle.”

“It was not water at all; it was the railway.”

“Oh!” said Zoe blankly. “How could you tell?” she added.

“Didn’t you notice that there was no sound of water? One would have expected a good deal of noise from the way in which the brigands pretended to stumble about, as if the current was a swift and broken one. That struck me at one, and I listened hard. If the men carrying me had been wearing boots, I should have heard them crunching on the ballast, or knocking against the rails, but of course their moccasins made no noise. But I noticed that they lifted their feet to avoid something four times, and by calculating the length of their steps I found it was just where the rails would naturally come. Then I was sure.”

“Then it’s no good our hoping to be rescued soon?”

“We won’t give up hope, certainly. But it’s a stern-chase now--no chance of our being surrounded. And this is the brigands’ own country, where the Grand Seignior’s writ can hardly be said to run.”

“Then it may be days--or weeks--or months?” breathed Zoe faintly. “How can we stand it?”

“Only a day at a time, at any rate, and any day may be the last. Think you are on the North-West Frontier, as that appeals to you so much. I’ll fight my battles, or rather scrambles, o’er again for your benefit. Do you mind telling me why it should be more comforting to be climbing, under equally unpleasant conditions, in the Suleiman Koh than in the Balkans?”

“I don’t know; it’s just the feeling,” said Zoe. “Oh!” stepping on a rolling stone and clutching at him wildly. “Oh, what shall we do? Look at that place in front!”

“It’s a bad bit,” said Wylie judicially. “I shall want both my hands free.” He was twisting the rugs rapidly into a long roll, which he passed over one of his shoulders and under the other arm. “Now if you could lend me the hat-pin I honourably restored to you this morning, I shall have nothing to think of but getting you across. Your brother has done some climbing, hasn’t he? Otherwise I had better take you over first, and come back for your sister.”

Zoe’s lips moved, but no sound came from them as she returned him the hat-pin, a good deal bent by its use as a peg, and he fastened the ends of the rugs across his chest. “Now, don’t be frightened,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll get you across all right. You may be quite sure you are much too valuable to the brigands for them to let you get killed here. Here’s your own particular pet ruffian coming to our help. What a blessing it isn’t Milosch! He would stop in the middle of the most awful places to gas about his self-sacrifice in lending his aid. And Zeko has a rope, too. This is first-class.”

Zeko, the brigand whose head Zoe had bound up, made signs as he came that Wylie and he would fasten the ends of the rope round their own waists, and take Zoe between them; and thus they started on their perilous journey. For a hundred yards or so the path was non-existent, the bare rock running sheer down with only a very slight slope. Happily, the stone was soft enough to allow the cutting of holes for feet and hands, but the brigands had not considered the comfort of ladies in preparing these. It was almost impossible for Zoe to support both feet or both hands at the same time, and she spent some of the most frightful moments in her life in standing with one foot wedged into a crevice while Zeko, hanging in some miraculous way below her in front, guided the other to the next foothold, and Wylie, gripping the rock firmly with one hand, held out the other that she might cling to it as she swung herself on. The brigands in front were sitting down to watch and criticise the performance, and those behind were quarrelling who should pilot Maurice and Eirene, for Zeko had refused contemptuously to trouble himself about them. A man was impressed into the service at last, and Zoe, now safely on the path again, but sick and faint after her terrible experience, hid her eyes that she might not see the transit. It seemed impossible that Maurice could accomplish it successfully, for, in addition to the difficulties Wylie had surmounted, he had the brigand rearguard pressing on his heels, cursing him for not quitting each foothold quicker, and even striking his hands with their sticks to make him loose his hold of the rock. He paid no attention to them, and would not allow Eirene to hurry, as she was inclined to try to do, finally bringing her safely across.

“I couldn’t have done it,” whispered Wylie to Zoe, and she welcomed the tribute to Maurice gratefully.

This was the worst experience in the day’s journey, but the track still wound round projecting rocks, above precipices, and up torrent-beds. The girls were utterly exhausted before the end was reached, and Maurice and Wylie could only drag them ruthlessly on, scolding, encouraging, even threatening, though not with the cold-blooded realism of the brigands, whose untranslated menaces betrayed an ingenuity springing from long practice in torture. At last a thick patch of wood in a sheltered cleft on the mountain-side was pointed out as the halting-place for the night, and two of the brigands, who had gone on in advance some time before, rejoined the rest with a couple of goats, which they mentioned casually that they had requisitioned from a goatherd who was so unfortunate as to pasture his flock in the neighbourhood. Instantly the wood became a scene of pleasant bustle. Some of the band cleared a space for a camp, others began to prepare huge fires where the trees would prevent the lights being seen from the valley below, and the rest devoted themselves to culinary operations of a brief and sketchy character.

The prisoners were left to themselves, in the comfortable security that they could not possibly run away, however much they might wish it. The girls sat obediently where they had been placed, leaning against a tree, and went to sleep forthwith, while Maurice and Wylie, with a knife borrowed from Zeko, cut down branches and bushes and built a hut for them--an attention which it had not occurred to the brigands to offer. The hut was just large enough to hold the two comfortably. Its floor was of pine-boughs covered with a rug, and it had a kind of screen of twisted branches for a door. In front of it the captives were allowed to kindle a small fire of their own, and at this Wylie began to cook their supper. Milosch, with much ostentation, had brought them a piece of goat’s-flesh as a proof of Stoyan’s solicitude for their welfare, and Wylie cut this up into kabobs, which he toasted on improvised wooden skewers. The smell was so savoury that it penetrated the girls’ slumbers and woke them, and they sat up and displayed an intelligent interest in Wylie’s proceedings as they waited till the meat was ready. Never had they tasted anything so delicious in their lives, they declared, as the scorched morsels of meat, eaten as fast as they were ready, without plates or knives and forks, from the skewers on which they were cooked. Zoe even began to moralise on the readiness of civilised humanity to revert to savagery, which was a proof, as Maurice said, that she was getting over her fatigue already. After the meal the girls refused to go to bed at once, declaring that they wanted to enjoy the sensation of resting instead of losing it in sleep, and the faithful Zeko brought them an offering of four cigarettes to round off the entertainment. Zoe felt obliged to light hers and pretend to smoke it, though she dropped it into the fire as soon as Zeko’s back was turned, but Eirene smoked as calmly and with as much enjoyment as the men. The cigarettes, though treated with the utmost tenderness, were soon finished, and Maurice and Wylie stretched themselves luxuriously upon the carpet of pine-needles which covered the ground, to enjoy a well-earned rest after their labours.

“If I may offer a piece of practical advice,” said Wylie to the girls, “it is that you should take off your boots, and rest your feet as much as possible.”

“It’s quite clear that you have been here before, so to speak,” said Zoe, as she prepared to comply. “When the commanding officer advises just what one was longing to do, it’s delightful to obey.”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Eirene, with an ostentatious groan, as she pulled off a sadly disfigured little shoe. “I have heard you talking in that way for hours--pretending, always pretending. ‘These are the Shinwari Hills, all brown and burnt and bare. Below in the valley is the tower of a Waziri chief. There is an Afridi force waiting for us round the next corner. We are carrying rifles and rations and water-bottles and all sorts of utterly useless things----’”

“I appeal to you,” protested Wylie to Zoe; “did I really talk such piffle as all that? If I did, our misfortunes must have turned my brain.”

“Oh, you didn’t say exactly those things,” said Eirene--“though I heard the names so often that I know they are right--but it was always that sort of thing, pretending that there was eternal snow on one side and a precipice a mile deep on the other, instead of disagreeable rough hills, covered with ugly trees, which are always either tripping you up with their roots, or knocking off your hat with their branches. In a day or two I shall have to wear a handkerchief on my head like a peasant woman,” and she contemplated ruefully the remains of her hat, which had started in life as a smart straw, with a peculiarly deceptive and Parisian air of simplicity about it. “And instead of noble, chivalrous Orientals”--a protest from Wylie--“with snow-white robes and splendid turbans, we have these detestable rogues who call themselves Christians, with kilts black with dirt, and no more feeling than a stone. What is the use of pretending about it?”

“It seems to have called up heroic and romantic visions in your mind, at any rate,” said Zoe, “and that ought to have lightened the tedium of the march.”

“And, anyhow, I didn’t inflict it on you,” said Maurice.

“Indeed you did not. You were too cross or too miserable--I don’t know which--to talk, so that I heard the others the whole time.”

“Awfully sorry to have bored you,” said Wylie. “You see, I thought it might help your sister along if I drew on my recollections of old days.”

“It did,” cried Zoe. “I don’t believe I could have kept up without it. Why did you listen, if you were bored, Eirene?”

“It wasn’t that exactly,” explained Eirene; “but it seemed so silly. We are not children; what good can it do to pretend?”

“If it helps us to bear things more cheerfully, surely that’s some good?” suggested Zoe.

“But what is the use of pretending to be cheerful? All the first part of the day, before I was too tired myself to care to listen, I used to hear Captain Wylie say to you, ‘Awf’ly fagged?’ and you conjured up a sprightly voice, and said, ‘Oh dear, no--hardly at all.’ It wasn’t true, and he knew it. What good did it do to pretend?”

“It was true,” said Zoe stoutly. “The mere fact of being asked the question made one feel less tired for the moment. And you do say the horridest things, Eirene.”

“She is like the old woman whose clergyman remonstrated with her for bearing her troubles so badly,” said Maurice. “The old lady told him that when chastening was sent us, it meant that we should be chastened, and she wasn’t going to pretend not to be.”

“Well,” said Wylie, rather tartly, “it has grown to be a sort of tradition, I suppose, among English people that each should keep up for the sake of the rest, and all I can say is that I hope it’ll go on. I don’t see the use of asking questions and speculating about it.”

“I am inquiring into national character,” said Eirene, undaunted. “The people I know, when they are asked if they are in trouble, acknowledge it at once, and point out what a dreadful trouble it is, and how no one was ever quite so sorely tried before----”

“And turn it round and inside out, and hold it up to catch the light,” put in Zoe.

“But if you ask an Englishman, he looks down at you as if he was a mile high, and says with an icy smile, ‘Not at all. Rather enjoy it than otherwise!’” with a very fair imitation of Wylie’s displeased manner.

“How awfully smart you are this evening, Eirene!” drawled Maurice. “Hairbreadth escapes seem to sharpen your wits. But I think it’s about time all good little girls were in bed.”

“I could talk all night when I am interested,” persisted Eirene.

“I haven’t the very faintest, slightest shadow of doubt of it. But Zoe is half-asleep, and Wylie is nodding, and my eyes would shut of themselves if they were not fixed on your speaking countenance. Hullo, what’s up?”

There was a commotion among the brigands feasting round the other fire, caused by the sudden arrival of a man, who was gesticulating violently towards the direction from which they had come. By the firelight the prisoners recognised him as their treacherous driver of the day before.

“Is it help? Are we going to be rescued?” cried Zoe eagerly.

“No such luck; I wish it were,” said Wylie, who had caught some of the newcomer’s words. “Never mind about me,” he went on, rising, “just go to bed. I want to hear what this chap has to say.”

He went towards the other fire, and to the horror of the three left behind, the brigands sprang at him like one man, with howls of fury. Curses and execrations were poured on him, he was hustled and dragged hither and thither, and angry men threatened him with pistols and drawn daggers.

“What can it be?” murmured Zoe, with white lips.

“I don’t know. Keep quiet,” said Maurice, buttoning his coat and squaring his fists. For the girls’ sake he would keep out of it as long as he could, but if Wylie was struck he must go in and back him up, little as two unarmed men could hope to do against a crowd with knives. To his relief, order was presently restored by the intervention of the chief, after which Milosch made a long and evidently moving oration, and Wylie returned to his friends, scowls and murmurs of hatred following him.

“Oh, what was it?” cried Zoe as he reached them.

“Nothing; merely the penalty for playing the fool,” he replied. “You know how long they kept us standing about with our hands tied before we started this morning? I was standing rather by myself, and the ground was sandy, so the bright idea seized me of leaving our rescuers a clue to the way we were going. With my boot I drew ‘N.W.’ fairly deep in the sand, shuffling about as if I was tired of standing so long. Unfortunately, the gentleman who has just arrived reached the place before the rescuers, and twigged what the letters meant. This diffusion of Western learning in the East is a nuisance. Hence all the fuss. Milosch was particularly severe on my ingratitude in trying to betray the brigands after all they had done for us, and I had to remind them of the way in which we were tied at that very moment. So they calmed down, as you see.”

“I should have done it if I had thought about it,” confessed Maurice. “And yet--these chaps can make things so beastly uncomfortable for the girls, you know.”

“Oh, Maurice, don’t be so ungrateful!” cried Zoe. “If it had succeeded, we should all be saying what a splendid idea it was, and how clever Captain Wylie was to think of it. And, at any rate, it’s over now.”

“Is it over?” asked Eirene. Wylie hesitated.

“Well,” he said, “I believe they are taking the night to think about it. But, after all, what can they do? It wouldn’t be to their interest to treat any of us badly, you know. They might refuse to accept my parole and tie my hands again, but they haven’t, so far. So let us be cheerful.”