<h2><SPAN name="chap15"></SPAN>CHAPTER XV.<br/> SERGEANT QUICK HAS A PRESENTIMENT</h2>
<p>From this time forward all of us, and especially Oliver, were guarded night and
day by picked men who it was believed could not be corrupted. As a consequence,
the Tsar of Russia scarcely leads a life more irksome than ours became at Mur.
Of privacy there was none left to us, since sentries and detectives lurked at
every corner, while tasters were obliged to eat of each dish and drink from
each cup before it touched our lips, lest our fate should be that of Pharaoh,
whose loss we mourned as much as though the poor dog had been some beloved
human being.</p>
<p>Most of all was it irksome, I think, to Oliver and Maqueda, whose opportunities
of meeting were much curtailed by the exigencies of this rigid espionage. Who
can murmur sweet nothings to his adored when two soldiers armed to the teeth
have been instructed never to let him out of their sight? Particularly is this
so if the adored happens to be the ruler of those soldiers to whom the person
guarded has no right to be making himself agreeable. For when off duty even the
most faithful guardians are apt to talk. Of course, the result was that the
pair took risks which did not escape observation. Indeed, their intimate
relations became a matter of gossip throughout the land.</p>
<p>Still, annoying as they might be, these precautions succeeded, for none of us
were poisoned or got our throats cut, although we were constantly the victims
of mysterious accidents. Thus, a heavy rock rolled down upon us when we sat
together one evening upon the hill-side, and a flight of arrows passed between
us while we were riding along the edge of a thicket, by one of which
Higgs’s horse was killed. Only when the mountain and the thicket were
searched no one could be found. Moreover, a great plot against us was
discovered in which some of the lords and priests were implicated, but such was
the state of feeling in the country that, beyond warning them privately that
their machinations were known, Maqueda did not dare to take proceedings against
these men.</p>
<p>A little later on things mended so far as we were concerned, for the following
reason: One day two shepherds arrived at the palace with some of their
companions, saying that they had news to communicate. On being questioned,
these peasants averred that while they were herding their goats upon the
western cliffs many miles away, suddenly on the top of the hills appeared a
body of fifteen Fung, who bound and blindfolded them, telling them in mocking
language to take a message to the Council and to the white men.</p>
<p>This was the message: That they had better make haste to destroy the god
Harmac, since otherwise his head would move to Mur according to the prophecy,
and that when it did so, the Fung would follow as they knew how to do. Then
they set the two men on a rock where they could be seen, and on the following
morning were in fact found by some of their fellows, those who accompanied them
to the Court and corroborated this story.</p>
<p>Of course the matter was duly investigated, but as I know, for I went with the
search party, when we got to the place no trace of the Fung could be found,
except one of their spears, of which the handle had been driven into the earth
and the blade pointed toward Mur, evidently in threat or defiance. No other
token of them remained, for, as it happened, a heavy rain had fallen and
obliterated their footprints, which in any case must have been faint on this
rocky ground.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the most diligent search by skilled men, their mode of approach
and retreat remained a mystery, as, indeed, it does to this day. The only
places where it was supposed to be possible to scale the precipice of Mur were
watched continually, so that they could have climbed up by none of these. The
inference was, therefore, that the Fung had discovered some unknown path, and,
if fifteen men could climb that path, why not fifteen thousand!</p>
<p>Only, where was this path? In vain were great rewards in land and honours
offered to him who should discover it, for although such discoveries were
continually reported, on investigation these were found to be inventions or
mares’ nests. Nothing but a bird could have travelled by such roads.</p>
<p>Then at last we saw the Abati thoroughly frightened, for, with additions, the
story soon passed from mouth to mouth till the whole people talked of nothing
else. It was as though we English learned that a huge foreign army had suddenly
landed on our shores and, having cut the wires and seized the railways, was
marching upon London. The effect of such tidings upon a nation that always
believed invasion to be impossible may easily be imagined, only I hope that we
should take them better than did the Abati.</p>
<p>Their swagger, their self-confidence, their talk about the “rocky walls
of Mur,” evaporated in an hour. Now it was only of the disciplined and
terrible regiments of the Fung, among whom every man was trained to war, and of
what would happen to them, the civilized and domesticated Abati, a peace-loving
people who rightly enough, as they declared, had refused all martial burdens,
should these regiments suddenly appear in their midst. They cried out that they
were betrayed—they clamoured for the blood of certain of the Councillors.
That carpet knight, Joshua, lost popularity for a while, while Maqueda, who was
known always to have been in favour of conscription and perfect readiness to
repel attack, gained what he had lost.</p>
<p>Leaving their farms, they crowded together into the towns and villages, where
they made what in South Africa are called laagers. Religion, which practically
had been dead among them, for they retained but few traces of the Jewish faith
if, indeed, they had ever really practised it, became the craze of the hour.
Priests were at a premium; sheep and cattle were sacrificed; it was even said
that, after the fashion of their foes the Fung, some human beings shared the
same fate. At any rate the Almighty was importuned hourly to destroy the hated
Fung and to protect His people—the Abati—from the results of their
own base selfishness and cowardly neglect.</p>
<p>Well, the world has seen such exhibitions before to-day, and will doubtless see
more of them in the instance of greater peoples who allow luxury and
pleasure-seeking to sap their strength and manhood.</p>
<p>The upshot of it all was that the Abati became obsessed with the saying of the
Fung scouts to the shepherds, which, after all, was but a repetition of that of
their envoys delivered to the Council a little while before: that they should
hasten to destroy the idol Harmac, lest he should move himself to Mur. How an
idol of such proportions, or even its head, could move at all they did not stop
to inquire. It was obvious to them, however, that if he was destroyed there
would be nothing to move and, further, that we Gentiles were the only persons
who could possibly effect such destruction. So we also became popular for a
little while. Everybody was pleasant and flattered us—everybody, even
Joshua, bowed when we approached, and took a most lively interest in the
progress of our work, which many deputations and prominent individuals urged us
to expedite.</p>
<p>Better still, the untoward accidents such as those I have mentioned, ceased.
Our dogs, for we had obtained some others, were no longer poisoned; rocks that
appeared fixed did not fall; no arrows whistled among us when we went out
riding. We even found it safe occasionally to dispense with our guards, since
it was every one’s interest to keep us alive—for the present.
Still, I for one was not deceived for a single moment, and in season and out of
season warned the others that the wind would soon blow again from a less
favourable quarter.</p>
<p>We worked, we worked, we worked! Heaven alone knows how we did work. Think of
the task, which, after all, was only one of several. A tunnel must be bored,
for I forget how far, through virgin rock, with the help of inadequate tools
and unskilled labour, and this tunnel must be finished by a certain date. A
hundred unexpected difficulties arose, and one by one were conquered. Great
dangers must be run, and were avoided, while the responsibility of this
tremendous engineering feat lay upon the shoulders of a single individual,
Oliver Orme, who, although he had been educated as an engineer, had no great
practical experience of such enterprises.</p>
<p>Truly the occasion makes the man, for Orme rose to it in a way that I can only
call heroic. When he was not actually in the tunnel he was labouring at his
calculations, of which many must be made, or taking levels with such
instruments as he had. For if there proved to be the slightest error all this
toil would be in vain, and result only in the blowing of a useless hole through
a mass of rock. Then there was a great question as to the effect which would be
produced by the amount of explosive at his disposal, since terrible as might be
the force of the stuff, unless it were scientifically placed and distributed it
would assuredly fail to accomplish the desired end.</p>
<p>At last, after superhuman efforts, the mine was finished. Our stock of
concentrated explosive, about four full camel loads of it, was set in as many
separate chambers, each of them just large enough to receive the charge,
hollowed in the primæval rock from which the idol had been hewn.</p>
<p>These chambers were about twenty feet from each other, although if there had
been time to prolong the tunnel, the distance should have been at least forty
in order to give the stuff a wider range of action. According to Oliver’s
mathematical reckoning, they were cut in the exact centre of the base of the
idol, and about thirty feet below the actual body of the crouching sphinx. As a
matter of fact this reckoning was wrong in several particulars, the charges
having been set farther toward the east or head of the sphinx and higher up in
the base than he supposed. When it is remembered that he had found no
opportunity of measuring the monument which practically we had only seen once
from behind under conditions not favourable to accuracy in such respects, or of
knowing its actual length and depth, these trifling errors were not remarkable.</p>
<p>What was remarkable is that his general plan of operations, founded upon a mere
hypothetical estimate, should have proved as accurate as it did.</p>
<p>At length all was prepared, and the deadly cast-iron flasks had been packed in
sand, together with dynamite cartridges, the necessary detonators, electric
wires, and so forth, an anxious and indeed awful task executed entirely in that
stifling atmosphere by the hands of Orme and Quick. Then began another labour,
that of the filling in of the tunnels. This, it seems, was necessary, or so I
understood, lest the expanding gases, following the line of least resistance,
should blow back, as it were, through the vent-hole. What made that task the
more difficult was the need of cutting a little channel in the rock to contain
the wires, and thereby lessen the risk of the fracture of these wires in the
course of the building-up process. Of course, if by any accident this should
happen, the circuit would be severed, and no explosion would follow when the
electric battery was set to work.</p>
<p>The arrangement was that the mine should be fired on the night of that full
moon on which we had been told, and spies confirmed the information, the feast
of the marriage of Barung’s daughter to my son would be celebrated in the
city of Harmac. This date was fixed because the Sultan had announced that so
soon as that festivity, which coincided with the conclusion of the harvest, was
ended, he meant to deliver his attack on Mur.</p>
<p>Also, we were anxious that it should be adhered to for another reason, since we
knew that on this day but a small number of priests and guards would be left in
charge of the idol, and my son could not be among them. Now, whatever may have
been the views of the Abati, we as Christians who bore them no malice did not
at all desire to destroy an enormous number of innocent Fung, as might have
happened if we had fired our mine when the people were gathered to sacrifice to
their god.</p>
<p>The fatal day arrived at last. All was completed, save for the blocking of the
passage, which still went on, or, rather, was being reinforced by the piling up
of loose rocks against its mouth, at which a hundred or so men laboured
incessantly. The firing wires had been led into that little chamber in the old
temple where the dog Pharaoh tore out the throat of Shadrach, and no inch of
them was left unguarded for fear of accident or treachery.</p>
<p>The electric batteries—two of them, in case one should fail—had
been tested but not connected with the wires. There they stood upon the floor,
looking innocent enough, and we four sat round them like wizards round their
magic pot, who await the working of some spell. We were not cheerful; who could
be under so intense a strain? Orme, indeed, who had grown pale and thin with
continuous labour of mind and body, seemed quite worn out. He could not eat nor
smoke, and with difficulty I persuaded him to drink some of the native wine. He
would not even go to look at the completion of the work or to test the wires.</p>
<p>“You can see to it,” he said; “I have done all I can. Now
things must take their chance.”</p>
<p>After our midday meal he lay down and slept quite soundly for several hours.
About four o’clock those who were labouring at the piling up of débris
over the mouth of the tunnel completed their task, and, in charge of Quick,
were marched out of the underground city.</p>
<p>Then Higgs and I took lamps and went along the length of the wires, which lay
in a little trench covered over with dust, removing the dust and inspecting
them at intervals. Discovering nothing amiss, we returned to the old temple,
and at its doorway met the mountaineer, Japhet, who throughout all these
proceedings had been our prop and stay. Indeed, without his help and that of
his authority over the Abati the mine could never have been completed, at any
rate within the time.</p>
<p>The light of the lamp showed that his face was very anxious.</p>
<p>“What is the matter?” I asked.</p>
<p>“O Physician,” he answered, “I have words for the ear of the
Captain Orme. Be pleased to lead me to him.”</p>
<p>We explained that he slept and could not be disturbed, but Japhet only answered
as before, adding:</p>
<p>“Come you with me, my words are for your ears as well as his.”</p>
<p>So we went into the little room and awoke Oliver, who sprang up in a great
fright, thinking that something untoward had happened at the mine.</p>
<p>“What’s wrong?” he asked of Japhet. “Have the Fung cut
the wires?”</p>
<p>“Nay, O Orme, a worse thing; I have discovered that the Prince Joshua has
laid a plot to steal away ‘Her-whose-name-is-high.’”</p>
<p>“What do you mean? Set out all the story, Japhet,” said Oliver.</p>
<p>“It is short, lord. I have some friends, one of whom—he is of my
own blood, but ask me not his name—is in the service of the Prince. We
drank a cup of wine together, which I needed, and I suppose it loosed his
tongue. At any rate, he told me, and I believed him. This is the story. For his
own sake and that of the people the Prince desires that you should destroy the
idol of Fung, and therefore he has kept his hands off you of late. Yet should
you succeed, he does not know what may happen. He fears lest the Abati in their
gratitude should set you up as great men.”</p>
<p>“Then he is an ass!” interrupted Quick; “for the Abati have
no gratitude.”</p>
<p>“He fears,” went on Japhet, “other things also. For instance,
that the Child of Kings may express that gratitude by a mark of her signal
favour toward one of you,” and he stared at Orme, who turned his head
aside. “Now, the Prince is affianced to this great lady, whom he desires
to wed for two reasons: First, because this marriage will make him the chief
man amongst the Abati, and, secondly, because of late he has come to think that
he loves her whom he is afraid that he may lose. So he has set a snare.”</p>
<p>“What snare?” asked one of us, for Japhet paused.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” answered Japhet, “and I do not think
that my friend knew either, or, if he did, he would not tell me. But I
understand the plot is that the Child of Kings is to be carried off to the
Prince Joshua’s castle at the other end of the lake, six hours’
ride away, and there be forced to marry him at once.”</p>
<p>“Indeed,” said Orme, “and when is all this to happen?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know, lord. I know nothing except what my friend told me,
which I thought it right to communicate to you instantly. I asked him the time,
however, and he said that he believed the date was fixed for one night after
next Sabbath.”</p>
<p>“Next Sabbath is five days hence, so that this matter does not seem to be
very pressing,” remarked Oliver with a sigh of relief. “Are you
sure that you can trust your friend, Japhet?”</p>
<p>“No, lord, I am not sure, especially as I have always known him to be a
liar. Still, I thought that I ought to tell you.”</p>
<p>“Very kind of you, Japhet, but I wish that you had let me have my sleep
out first. Now go down the line and see that all is right, then return and
report.”</p>
<p>Japhet saluted in his native fashion and went.</p>
<p>“What do you think of this story?” asked Oliver, as soon as he was
out of hearing.</p>
<p>“All bosh,” answered Higgs; “the place is full of talk and
rumours, and this is one of them.”</p>
<p>He paused and looked at me.</p>
<p>“Oh!” I said, “I agree with Higgs. If Japhet’s friend
had really anything to tell he would have told it in more detail. I daresay
there are a good many things Joshua would like to do, but I expect he will stop
there, at any rate, for the present. If you take my advice you will say nothing
of the matter, especially to Maqueda.”</p>
<p>“Then we are all agreed. But what are you thinking of, Sergeant?”
asked Oliver, addressing Quick, who stood in a corner of the room, lost
apparently in contemplation of the floor.</p>
<p>“I, Captain,” he replied, coming to attention. “Well, begging
their pardon, I was thinking that I don’t hold with these gentlemen,
except in so far that I should say nothing of this job to our Lady, who has
plenty to bother her just now, and won’t need to be frightened as well.
Still, there may be something in it, for though that Japhet is stupid,
he’s honest, and honest men sometimes get hold of the right end of the
stick. At least, he believes there is something, and that’s what weighs
with me.”</p>
<p>“Well, if that’s your opinion, what’s best to be done
Sergeant? I agree that the Child of Kings should not be told, and I
shan’t leave this place till after ten o’clock to-night at the
earliest, if we stick to our plans, as we had better do, for all that stuff in
the tunnel wants a little time to settle, and for other reasons. What are you
drawing there?” and he pointed to the floor, in the dust of which Quick
was tracing something with his finger.</p>
<p>“A plan of our Lady’s private rooms, Captain. She told you she was
going to rest at sundown, didn’t she, or earlier, for she was up most of
last night, and wanted to get a few hours’ sleep before—something
happens. Well, her bed-chamber is there, isn’t it? and another before it,
in which her maids sleep, and nothing behind except a high wall and a ditch
which cannot be climbed.”</p>
<p>“That’s quite true,” interrupted Higgs. “I got leave to
make a plan of the palace, only there is a passage six feet wide and twenty
long leading from the guard chamber to the ladies’ anteroom.”</p>
<p>“Just so, Professor, and that passage has a turn in it, if I remember
right, so that two well-armed men could hold it against quite a lot. Supposing
now that you and I, Professor, should go and take a nap in that guard-room,
which will be empty, for the watch is set at the palace gate. We shan’t
be wanted here, since if the Captain can’t touch off that mine, no one
can, with the Doctor to help him just in case anything goes wrong, and Japhet
guarding the line. I daresay there’s nothing in this yarn, but who knows?
There might be, and then we should blame ourselves. What do you say,
Professor?”</p>
<p>“I? Oh, I’ll do anything you wish, though I should rather have
liked to climb the cliff and watch what happens.”</p>
<p>“You’d see nothing, Higgs,” interrupted Oliver, “except
perhaps the reflection of a flash in the sky; so, if you don’t mind, I
wish you would go with the Sergeant. Somehow, although I am quite certain that
we ought not to alarm Maqueda, I am not easy about her, and if you two fellows
were there, I should know she was all right, and it would be a weight off my
mind.”</p>
<p>“That settles it,” said Higgs; “we’ll be off presently.
Look here, give us that portable telephone, which is of no use anywhere else
now. The wire will reach to the palace, and if the machine works all right we
can talk to you and tell each other how things are going on.”</p>
<p>Ten minutes later they had made their preparations. Quick stepped up to Oliver
and stood at attention, saying:</p>
<p>“Ready to march. Any more orders, Captain?”</p>
<p>“I think not, Sergeant,” he answered, lifting his eyes from the
little batteries that he was watching as though they were live things.
“You know the arrangements. At ten o’clock—that is about two
hours hence—I touch this switch. Whatever happens it must not be done
before, for fear lest the Doctor’s son should not have left the idol, to
say nothing of all the other poor beggars. The spies say that the marriage
feast will not be celebrated until at least three hours after moonrise.”</p>
<p>“And that’s what I heard when I was a prisoner,” interrupted
Higgs.</p>
<p>“I daresay,” answered Orme; “but it is always well to allow a
margin in case the procession should be delayed, or something. So until ten
o’clock I’ve got to stop where I am, and you may be sure, Doctor,
that under no circumstances shall I fire the mine before that hour, as indeed
you will be here to see. After that I can’t say what will happen, but if
we don’t appear, you two had better come to look for us—in case of
accidents, you know. Do your best at your end according to circumstances; the
Doctor and I will do our best at ours. I think that is all, Sergeant. Report
yourselves by the telephone if the wire is long enough and it will work, which
I daresay it won’t, and, anyway, look out for us about half-past ten.
Good-bye!”</p>
<p>“Good-bye, Captain,” answered Quick, then stretched out his hand,
shook that of Orme, and without another word took his lamp and left the chamber.</p>
<p>An impulse prompted me to follow him, leaving Orme and Higgs discussing
something before they parted. When he had walked about fifty yards in the awful
silence of that vast underground town, of which the ruined tenements yawned on
either side of us, the Sergeant stopped and said suddenly:</p>
<p>“You don’t believe in presentiments, do you, Doctor?”</p>
<p>“Not a bit,” I answered.</p>
<p>“Glad of it, Doctor. Still, I have got a bad one now, and it is that I
shan’t see the Captain or you any more.”</p>
<p>“Then that’s a poor look-out for us, Quick.”</p>
<p>“No, Doctor, for me. I think you are both all right, and the Professor,
too. It’s my name they are calling up aloft, or so it seems to me. Well,
I don’t care much, for, though no saint, I have tried to do my duty, and
if it is done, it’s done. If it’s written, it’s got to come
to pass, hasn’t it? For everything is written down for us long before we
begin, or so I’ve always thought. Still, I’ll grieve to part from
the Captain, seeing that I nursed him as a child, and I’d have liked to
know him well out of this hole, and safely married to that sweet lady first,
though I don’t doubt that it will be so.”</p>
<p>“Nonsense, Sergeant,” I said sharply; “you are not yourself;
all this work and anxiety has got on your nerves.”</p>
<p>“As it well might, Doctor, not but I daresay that’s true. Anyhow,
if the other is the true thing, and you should all see old England again with
some of the stuff in that dead-house, I’ve got three nieces living down
at home whom you might remember. Don’t say nothing of what I told you to
the Captain till this night’s game is played, seeing that it might upset
him, and he’ll need to keep cool up to ten o’clock, and afterwards
too, perhaps. Only if we shouldn’t meet again, say that Samuel Quick sent
him his duty and God’s blessing. And the same on yourself, Doctor, and
your son, too. And now here comes the Professor, so good-bye.”</p>
<p>A minute later they had left me, and I stood watching them until the two stars
of light from their lanterns vanished into the blackness.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />