CHAPTER I.
On the crest of a lofty hill in the province of Delhi, towards the north, was a fortress of impregnable strength, which had been frequently converted by the Mogul emperors into a state prison. The hill was inaccessible on all sides, presenting, to a height of two hundred and thirty feet from the base, sheer walls of rocks, upon the scarped summit of which a light parapet surrounded one of the most extraordinary fortresses ever constructed by the art of man. Within the parapet it consisted of a shaft, sixty feet deep, sunk into the living stone. At the bottom of this shaft, chambers of considerable dimensions had been hollowed out, lighted by narrow loopholes, perforated through the mountain to the light, of which they admitted just sufficient to render “darkness visible,” and cast a sepulchral gloom through the apartments of this cavernous retreat.
The entrance of this stronghold was a circular aperture at the top of the rock, like the mouth of a well, four feet in diameter; through which the garrison, captives, provisions, and all things in short necessary to be deposited below, were lowered by means of a rope attached to a windlass.
In one of the chambers of this mountain fortress a prisoner was confined whose youth and accomplishments appeared to deserve a better fate. He was in the beautiful dawning of his manhood, when the blood bounds from the heart with a pulse of joy, and flows back again with an untroubled current. He had just passed his nineteenth year. The breeze of the mountain had fanned his cheek, and spread over it the glow of pure but delicate health. The down upon his upper lip had strengthened into a sleek dark curl. His limbs were rounded to their full proportions; and his whole form was one of a symmetry better adapted for the rich woofs from the looms of Cashmere than for the helmet or cuirass. The languid expression of his dark, restless eye, showed that he was unhappy. The only furniture in his prison was a rug upon which he slept, a hookah, a lamp, and a few utensils employed at his meals.
Notwithstanding the severity of his captivity, the prisoner kept up a sort of state in his solitary cell: he treated those attendants who had been appointed to wait upon him with a dignity which commanded respect, and at the same time with an amenity which won obedience. His dress, though of ordinary materials, except that portion of it which covered his brows, was disposed with a taste which at once bespoke refinement of mind and a consciousness of personal elevation. His turban, composed of a fine, thin white muslin, worked in gold, was folded round his head with a care that evidently showed an attention to what was becoming; its numerous convolutions being precisely defined, and managed with almost geometrical precision. A common Cashmere shawl, loosely twisted, encircled his waist, the ends hanging on one side with that peculiar air of elegance which Orientals, whether Mussulman or Hindoo, know so well how to exhibit.
The prisoner had just thrown himself upon his rug to take his rest for the night, when an unusual stir upon the ramparts above roused him. He rose to listen. A parley was evidently going on with some one beneath the fortress. He repaired to a small ante-chamber, in which was a loophole that looked into a deep glen, whence the mountain rose within the bosom of which the place of his painful captivity had been hollowed. The night was calm: not a breeze stirred the thick foliage of the valley. The heavens were starred and radiant, though the moon’s lamp was not yet hung out upon the battlements of heaven. The faint beams of the stars, though they scattered the radiance of their glories over the whole azure surface of the skies, did not penetrate the depths of the ravine formed by the mountain, down the sides of which the prisoner strained his eye from one of the narrow apertures that admitted light and air into his prison. The whole valley was immersed in that equivocal gloom, the more perceptible from contrast with the sparkling heaven, that seemed to smile in its beauty at the dull and torpid earth.
The captive, placing his ear against the artificial fissure in the rock, heard the following dialogue:
“I am the Prophet’s messenger,” said a voice below. “I have a commission to the prisoner: refuse me admittance, and the curse of God’s vicegerent be upon you!”
“If the Prophet’s curse is breathed from the lips of one of his holy messengers, say who that messenger is.”
“The fakeer of the valley, over whose reverend head ninety-six years have rolled; whose fasts and penances have gained him one of the high stations in Paradise, to which he will be exalted when the angel of death shall waft him from the shores of time to that unknown land where the harvest of eternal joys shall be reaped.”
“I know that voice, and shall heed the injunctions of so holy a man; but you must ascend alone: and I have no choice but to obey the orders imposed upon me, which are, to examine the person of every one admitted into this fortress. If it were the Prophet himself, I should be obliged to subject him to the scrutiny.”
“Examine me as you will, but let me see your prisoner. I come a messenger to him from God’s Prophet, and must perform my mission. Obedience is man’s heritage; resist the divine will at your peril. Lower the rope, that I may ascend.”
The prisoner was amazed at this announcement of a visitor—an accredited minister of the Prophet too; but, upon reflection, he thought it might be the friendly interposition of some one who wished to break his bonds, and release him from a captivity as odious as it was undeserved.
The reverence formerly entertained for some of the fakeers was sufficient to prevent any surprise at the readiness with which the soldier upon guard consented to admit him into the fortress. The man who demanded admittance was well known to all the country as a troglodyte saint, inhabiting a cavern hollowed out of the earth in the valley immediately beneath the fortress, and whose severe mortifications had elevated him to such a degree of sanctity as to render his intercession with the Divinity a sure pledge of pardon. He was held to have immediate communion with Heaven; no one, therefore, ventured to gainsay anything insisted upon by this holy man. He always bore about him the sacred filth of his long penance; and the very odours from his body, which was foul with the unwashed incrustations of years, were supposed to be redolent of that paradise where, as he maintained, a place was reserved for him at the right hand of Allah’s inspired minister.
Shortly after the dialogue just mentioned, the door of our captive’s chamber was unclosed, and the fakeer stood before him, accompanied by one of the garrison. The holy man was quite naked, so that nothing could be concealed about him. Although the skin hung loose upon his long narrow countenance, like shrivelled parchment drawn over the bones of a skeleton, nevertheless there gleamed from underneath his sharp projecting brows a pair of eyes which appeared as if they had concentrated the rays of the midday sun, lancing them at intervals from orbs that seemed to glare with the intense lustre of those potential fires which light the throne of Eblis. He was perfectly straight; but his head had sunk upon the shoulders, where it seemed to rest, giving to the upper part of his figure an aspect of hideous deformity. His arms were long, fleshless, and so stiff that he could not bring the joints even to a curve. He was a living skeleton.
The prisoner gazed upon him in silence, but did not utter a word. The fakeer stood still for a moment; then opening wide his gaunt, bony jaws, which displayed a black toothless chasm, and giving a sudden jerk of the head, a ring dropped from his mouth upon the floor. He now shook from his long bushy hair a single blossom of the rhododendron, and a small bit of panel, upon which was rudely scratched the form of a dove escaping from the talons of a hawk. They both fell beside the ring. Pointing emphatically to the three several objects he quitted the cell, and immediately gave the signal to be drawn up. The soldier who had accompanied him remained behind, gathered up the things which the holy visitor had cast upon the floor, showed them severally to the prisoner, though he held them at a distance, and asked him what was the communication intended to be conveyed?
“I am not read in the lore of sages,” replied the youth; “neither do I understand the mysteries of vaticination. You would probably make a better interpreter.”
“I fear this will only increase the rigours of your confinement, unless you can explain why the holy man of the valley has made you this strange visit.”
“In truth, I know not. I never saw him until this night; and how should I be able to expound what you, who are familiar with the stranger, cannot comprehend?”
“He would not have visited you without a motive.”
“But I may be unacquainted with that motive.”
“He is not a man to act without calculating results.”
“Nevertheless his calculations may prove erroneous.”
“Then you do not understand the nature of his communication?”
“I do not.”
“These symbols will be shown to those who are quick at expounding riddles. Yet it is scarcely to be conceived that so worthy a minister of the Prophet should have addressed his symbols to one who cannot read their meaning.”
“He is but a man, and all men are alike prone to error.”
“True;—you may soon look for confinement in a deeper and darker chamber.”
When the soldier quitted the prisoner’s cell, the latter began to muse upon the communication intended to be conveyed by his unexpected visitor. He knew the fakeer to be a man eminent for his piety throughout the country, and therefore held in the greatest reverence. He was supposed to have supernatural communication with members of another world, and, consequently, was as much feared as reverenced; which accounts for the respect and forbearance shown to him by the garrison of the mountain-fortress during his mysterious visit to their prisoner.
After the fakeer’s departure, the unhappy captive began to reflect upon the signification of those symbols which had been dropped upon the floor before him. It was evident they were intended to convey some information, which it was expected his wit would be quick enough to comprehend. Although he had obtained but an imperfect glance at the ring which the soldier who had accompanied the stranger held in his own hand and at a distance, yet he fancied it was familiar to him. He had, however, only a vague and indefinite recollection of it; still it occurred to him that it was not the first time he had seen the golden trinket. Upon considering the matter further, it struck him that the ring must be a pledge sent from some one interested in his welfare: it implied confidence in the messenger, and a religious man could only be a messenger of peace.
The more he thought, the more satisfied he felt that he had received a message which warranted the expectation of liberty. The rhododendron was a flower which grew upon the far mountains, where the genius of Liberty abides; it was therefore an emblem of that freedom which his heart panted to secure. In this symbol, then, he recognised the suggestion that his liberty might be obtained: but how? The third symbol was a sufficient corollary to the two first problems: a dove flying from a hawk told him, in terms sufficiently clear, that he must attempt his escape. It was by no means evident how this was to be accomplished; and the difficulties which presented themselves, as he calculated the probable chance of success, staggered his resolution, and almost crushed his hopes. It occurred to him, notwithstanding, that means would be supplied. That the fakeer had visited him for some especial purpose there could be no doubt; and he resolved to await the issue, satisfied it would not end where it had begun.