his ears, conveyed meaning enough. He realised that this was a time to run – not to fight.
Luckily the horse, forgetting for the moment its weariness in the terror of this sudden onslaught, sprang forward without waiting for the spurs now rammed so hard and deep into its ribs. But the assailants had chosen their ground well. The road here made a sudden descent – and was rough and stony withal. The fleet-footed mountaineers could travel as fast as the horse. Their flight over that rugged ground seemed as the flight of a bird.
The foremost, wellnigh alongside, held his sword ready for a fatal sweep. The awful devilish look on the face of this savage appalled the traveller. It was now or never. He put his hand behind him; then, pointing the revolver straight at his assailant, pressed the trigger. The pistol was small, but hard driving. At such close quarters it could not miss. The barbarian seemed to double up – and fell backwards on to his head, flinging his arms in the air – his sword falling, with a metallic clang, several yards away among the stones.
Just that brief delay saved the traveller. His assailants, now reduced to four, halted but momentarily to look at their stricken comrade, and by dint of rowelling the sides of his steed until the blood flowed freely, he was able to keep the exhausted animal as near to a gallop as it was capable of attaining. But the respite was brief. Their bloodcurdling yells perfectly demoniacal now, the barbarians leaped forward in pursuit. They seemed to fly. The tired horse could never hope to outstrip them.
And as he thus fled, the wayfarer felt the cold shadow of Death’s portal already chill upon his brow, for he realised that his chances were practically nil. He had heard of the “Ghazi” mania, which combined the uncontrollable fighting frenzy of the old Norse Berserk with the fervid fury of religious fanaticism. There was no warfare then existing with any of the tribes of Baluchistan. These people, therefore, were Ghazis, the most desperate and dangerous enemies to deal with, because utterly fearless, utterly reckless. He had still five chambers in his pistol, but the weapon was small, and quite unreliable, save at point blank – in which case his enemies would cut him down before he had time to account for more than one of themselves.
All this flashed through his mind. Then he realised that the ferocious yelling had ceased. He looked back. A turn in the road hid the pursuers from view, and now it was nearly dark. But the darkness brought hope. Had they abandoned the pursuit? Or could he not conceal himself in some of the holes and crevices on the stony hillside until they should be tired of searching?
Still keeping his steed at its best speed – and that was not great – so as to ensure a good start, he held on, warily listening for any sound of his pursuers – and thus covered about two miles. A thunder peal rolled heavily – its echoes reverberating from crag to crag – and the cloud-curtain in front was alive with a dazzle of sheeting flame, which lit up the road and the dreary landscape like noonday. By its light he looked back. Still no sign of the pursuers, whose white flowing garments could not have failed to catch his eye. Hope – strong hope – rekindled within him.
But not for long. His horse, thoroughly blown, dropped into a walk. A walk? A crawl rather, for the poor beast staggered along, its flanks heaving violently, swaying at times, as though the mere effort to drag one leg after another would bring it down, and once down well its rider knew there would be no more rising. And then? One man – alone, dismounted, inadequately armed – in the vast heart of an unknown country, tracked down by fleet-footed pitiless destroyers, stung to a frenzy of massacre by a twofold incentive – blood feud for a comrade slain, and the fanatical dictates – or supposed dictates – of the most merciless religion in the world. There could be but one end.
Again he dismounted. The horse, relieved of so much weight, seemed to pant less distressingly. Every moment thus lost was a moment gained by his bloodthirsty enemies to come up with him, yet he felt it to be the wisest policy to spare his steed to the very utmost. Then he climbed into the saddle once more.
Now the storm was wellnigh overhead. The thunder roared and crashed, and great drops of rain shone like silver in the momentary dazzle of the lightning gleam – In that livid flare, too, the peaks stood forth on high, silhouetted against the heavens, and every bough of the ragged juniper trees was clearly and delicately defined.
Something else, too, was clearly but appallingly defined – to wit, four white-clad figures – with bronzed faces and flowing hair and flaming eyes; and the sheen and flash of four curved naked swords. They had been running in silence hitherto – but now – with a deafening howl they hurled themselves forward on their prey —
Without even cocking his revolver, the hunted man dropped it to the present and pressed the trigger. It would not move. Then he drew up the hammer – no – tried to – It, too, would not move. The cylinder was jammed. The cartridges – which he had purchased at one of those large co-operative stores, where they sell many things, but nothing reliable – were too tight a fit. The weapon was as useless as a bit of stick.
With a bitter curse upon the pettifogging dishonesty of his trading fellow countrymen, the now desperate man wrenched off one of the stirrups – not a bad weapon at a pinch – But once more fortune befriended him. The horse, spurred by terror to one more effort, plunged down the road, which now made a sudden descent. The stunning report of a jezail, which the Ghazis had presumably stopped to reload, added to its terror, but the missile hummed harmlessly by. And now in the ceaseless gleam of the lightning, the fugitive saw right before him at the base of the slope, the wide stony bed of a watercourse.
On, on, on, anyhow – though where safety lay was too great a hope to enter his despairing brain – Then, drawing nearer and nearer from the hills on his right came a strange, swirling, rushing roar. It was not the thunder. It had a note of its own as it boomed louder and louder with every second. It was as the breaking of surf against the base of an echoing cliff. And as another vivid lightning flash lit up the whole landscape with a noonday flare, the traveller beheld a sight that was appalling in its wild terror.
A wall of water was sweeping down the dry nullah – a vast brown muddy wave, many feet high. His escape was cut off. Yet not. So far it had not reached the point where the road crossed. Could he be before it there was safety. Otherwise death, either way.
In the nullah now, the slipping, stumbling horsehoofs were flashing up showers of sparks in the blackness – Then another lightning gleam. The fugitive glanced to the right, then wished he had not. The advancing flood, tossing against the livid sky, was so awful as to unnerve him, and he was just half way across. The four Ghazis arrived on the bank, but even they shrank back from the roaring terror of that wave wall. But the remaining loaded jezail spoke – and the miserable steed, stricken by the missile, plunged forward, throwing the rider hard upon his head.
The wild triumph scream of the furious fanatics, leaping like demons in the lightning’s glare, was drowned by the bellowing voice of the flood. It poured by – and now the whole wide bed of the watercourse was a very hell of seething roaring waves. But on the further side from the bloodthirsty Ghazis lay the motionless form of a man – He lay at full length, face downwards, and the swirling eddies on the extreme edge of the furious flood were just washing the soles of his riding boots, and leaving little wisps of twigs and straws sticking in his upturned spurs.
Chapter Two.
Through Flood
Ernest Aurelius Upward was the chief official in charge of the Government forests of Baluchistan.
Now the said “forests” had about as much affinity to the idea of sylvan wildness conveyed by that term as many of the Highland so-called deer forests; in that they were mainly distinguishable by a conspicuous lack of trees; such trees as there were consisting wellnigh entirely of the stunted, profitless, and utterly unpicturesque juniper, which straggling over the slopes of the hills and devoid of undergrowth imparted to the arid and stony landscape somewhat of the aspect of a vast continental
