In the darkness and rain they took their way along the bank of the flood—Upward hardly knowing what he was expecting to find. The country was wild, and its inhabitants wilder still. Quite recently there had been an upheaval of lawlessness among a section of the powerful and restless Marri tribe. What if some bloody deed of vendetta, or tribal feud, had been worked out here, almost at his very door? He stumbled along through the wet, coarse tussocks, peering here and there as the forest guard held the lantern before him—his rifle ready. He hardly expected to find anything living, but there was a weird creepiness about this nocturnal quest after something sinister and mysterious that moved him by sheer instinct to defensive preparation. Twice he started, as the dark form of a half-stranded tree trunk with its twisted limbs suggested the find of some human body—ghastly with wounds—distorted with an agonising death. Suddenly Bhallu Khan stopped short, and with a hurried and whispered exclamation held up the lantern, while pointing to something in front.
Something which lay half in, half out of the water. Something which all felt rather than saw had had life, even if life were no longer in it. No tree trunk this time, but a human body. Dead or alive, however, they were only just in time, for even as they looked the swirl of an eddy threw a volume of water from the middle of the trunk right over the neck—so quickly had the flood risen.
“Here—give me the lantern—And you two pull him out, sharp,” said Upward.
This, to the two stalwart hillmen, was but the work of a moment. Then an exclamation escaped Bhallu Khan.
“It is a sahib!” he cried.
Upward bent over the prostrate form, holding the light to the face. Then it became his turn to start in amazement.
“Good God! it’s Campian!” he exclaimed—“Campian himself. But how the devil did he get here like this, and—Is he alive or dead?”
“He is alive, Huzoor,” answered Bhallu Khan, who had been scrutinising the unconscious features from the other side.