“Mohammed Er Rasoul Allah?”
“Ping-ping!” The bullets sang around him—splattering the rocks with blue lead marks. Not for a moment did he think of stopping. They might shoot him dead, but alive he would not yield. Besides there was one last desperate chance, and he meant to try it.
The markhôr cave! A final spurt would bring him to that. It was just round yon shoulder of cliff, which at present concealed it. His pursuers would not even see him enter it, and there were smaller holes and crannies around which would puzzle them. Besides, he remembered there were superstitions attaching to it. These might possibly deter them from entering at all. It was a straw, but a slender one.
One great and final effort. He penetrated its normally forbidding but now welcome blackness, and sank down panting on the rock-floor. For some minutes he thus crouched, listening intently. He heard the rattle of stones outside; now and then the tones of a deep voice, or the clink of rifle-barrel or scabbard against the rock. The search was proceeding right merrily, yet, why had it not begun here?
Some minutes went by. To the hunted man, crouching there, they meant hours. Then the sound of steps approaching. They were going to search the markhôr cave. His last chance had failed.
The footsteps outside halted. Then he heard the voice of their owner calling, and receiving answers from several other voices. He was calling to his comrades to come and aid in the search. Superstition, evidently, disinclined him to prosecute it alone. It could not be the fugitive that he feared, seeing that the latter was unarmed, and probably quite exhausted.
Then a wild and daring idea came into Campian’s mind—in fact, so utterly desperate a plan that were he allowed time to think of it, the bare thought would suffice to send a cold shiver through his frame. The chasm—into which he had so nearly stepped on the occasion of his first and last visit to this place! The chasm—into whose black depths he and Vivien had stood gazing, side by side. It was his last and only chance, but—what a chance!
His matchbox contained a few wax vestas. The pursuers, probably still collecting to explore the cave in force, had not begun to enter. Groping his way round a rock corner which would partially or entirely shield the light from those without, he struck a vesta, deadening, so far as he was able, the sound with his hollowed hands. It flamed forth—a mere flicker in the cavernous gloom. But it was sufficient for his purpose.
There lay the black rift, like the great serpent for which he had at first taken it. He was right at its brink. Then flinging into it the spent vesta, he grasped the edge and let himself carefully down, hanging by the grasp of his two hands alone on the lip of the fissure, in the pitchy darkness over that awful unfathomable depth which seemed to go down into the very heart of the earth.
The tension was fearful. He must let go. Every muscle was strained and cracking. And now a glow of light told that his enemies were entering with torches. Ha! he had overlooked that contingency. The light would reveal his strained fingers grasping the rock. One cut of a tulwar—and—