“Wake up, Nessita. Here they are, at last.”
But the girl had already heard, and started up with a suddenness which would have hurled her to the base of the cliff but for his restraining grasp.
“Wait, wait!” he urged. “Be doubly careful now. We don’t want to break our necks after a narrow shave of drowning.” Then lifting up his voice, he gave forth a mighty shout.
It was answered—answered by several voices. In the moonlight they could make out figures hurrying down the tangi.
“Where are you?” sung out Upward, who led the way. Then he stopped short, with an ejaculation of amazement, as the answer revealed the objects of his search high overhead. “Good heavens! how did you get up there?”
“Never mind now. What we want to know is how to get down.”
But with Bhallu Khan and one of his forest guard were two or three sturdy Baluchis, who had joined the party—all wiry mountaineers—and by dint of making a kind of human pyramid against the rock wall, the pair were landed safely beneath.
Then many were the questions and answers and ejaculations, as the full peril of the situation became apparent. Those who had undergone it had not much to say. Nesta seemed half dazed with exhaustion and recent terror, while Campian declared himself too infernally tired to talk. Fleming however produced a flask, which went far to counteract the cold and wet. The whole party was there. They had got safely through the tangi, when the rain began to come down in torrents, and in an incredibly short space of time the slab-like slopes of the hills had poured down a vast volume into the dry nullah, which drained the valley area. They themselves were through only just in time, but had felt no great anxiety on account of the other two, reckoning them so far behind that the impassability of the tangi would be obvious to them directly they reached it. Of course they would not attempt it. But to find them here, half way through—saved as by a miracle, and then with the loss of two horses—no, they had not reckoned upon that.
All this Upward explained. Then, looking up at their place of refuge:
“I don’t suppose there’s another place in the whole length of the tangi you could have taken refuge in, and how the mischief you ever got to this one is a mystery to me.”