The Rajah's Heir / A Novel in 3 volumes

by C. Despard

It was in this mood that the new idea met him, and he set himself immediately to work it out. On the robbers' road, where he had been told he might find the fugitives, he had seen indications which led him to believe that he was on their track. If these indications continued he would know, as far as it was possible to know anything, that the fugitives were on ahead of him. If, on the other hand, they stopped at any particular point, there would be every reason to suppose that the road had been abandoned, in which case he saw that there would be nothing for him to do but to try the likeliest of the jungle paths.

Quietly he stole on. A few yards ahead of the spot where he had paused to take his bearings the road was crossed by a path wider than itself, and of such character and appearance as to be almost certain to mislead any but the dwellers in the jungle, or those who, like Bâl Narîn, had traversed it so often as to be fully acquainted with all its peculiarities.

He happened to know it, for it led to a little marsh surrounded lake where the tigers went down at night to quench their thirst, and near which he had waited for them more than once with European sportsmen.

He had lighted his lamp meanwhile, for he always carried one in his belt, and with its help he was examining the ground. Close to the opening of this jungle-road, where it turned off the road to the right, he found a third bead. He went on for some distance and saw nothing, then he retraced his steps. A conviction amounting almost to certainty had come to him that it was down this pathway those poor souls had gone. If so he must follow them. Having looked well to the priming of his revolver, and taken from its sheath the short, murderous-looking knife, which he had used several times with effect in close encounters with his fierce jungle-foes, Bâl Narîn adventured himself into the wild beasts' highway.

At first he found nothing to confirm his conjecture. The character of his surroundings had changed. Instead of the tall kutcha-grass there were about him low, thorny bushes, with here and there a ghostly-looking tree; and nullahs, in which hideous forms of vegetable life were growing, stretched along the sides of the beast-trodden path. A strange way it was, and devious, going straight for a few yards, and then shooting from right to left, as, like the fire-flash from lightning-charged clouds, it followed the track of least resistance. A dangerous region, and Bâl Narîn, being too old a hunter to be caught napping, trod warily. Once, however, he almost lost his caution. It was when the light of his lamp fell on a shred of coloured stuff that clung to one of the spiked leaves of a sickly, stunted aloe. That moment, he has told me, was one of the strangest, the most triumphant of his whole fife. He knew now that the sagacity upon which he prided himself had not failed him in his need. Whether the fugitives were found or not, he had positive proof that they had passed this way.

Meanwhile the darkness that had made Tom curse his helplessness began to assail Bâl Narîn's more subtly tempered senses. He did not mind it. All his greatest enterprises had been carried out in the night time, for it was then that the foes with whom he waged war were at large, and the blackness of the heavens rather quickened than deadened his energies. He drew aside quietly from the beasts' highway, let his lamp, which was burning steadily, shine in front of him, and having twisted some of the gigantic stems of the kutcha-grass into a torch as he came along, he set light to it, and held it flaming over his shoulder. Thus equipped he was far too terrible an object for even the man-eating tiger to tackle. So he went on towards the marsh-surrounded lake.

But what was his distinct object? He could not, I think, have explained it to himself. I found, in fact, when I tried to pin him to this point of his narrative, that a peculiar confusion reigned in his mind. Up to it and beyond it he was perfectly clear. He could tell about everything, even the working of his own mind. Here he faltered and stumbled in his speech. 'Why did I go on?' he exclaimed to me one day. 'Sahib, I must confess to you that I cannot tell. I should have been mad to think that they were alive. I should have been mad to suppose that, if they were alive, I should find them in that darkness. I knew I was going into danger. Think, Sahib, of where I should have been if my lamp had gone out. I thought of that myself. "Billy," I said, "you are a fool. You are running into danger like an ass that has no wit to keep out of it. Go back! Tell them at the camp what you have found, and bring the rajah and his men with you to search this place in the daylight." That would have been the wisest plan, Sahib. Why did I not take it? As I live I cannot tell you. Sometimes,' his voice dropped mysteriously, 'I have thought that it was not of my own will I went forward. The Sahib, being a wise man, will understand. There are things of which it is not well to speak too plainly. The jealousy of the gods is easy to rouse, and difficult to stay.'

I knew what Bâl Narîn meant, and I nodded my approval, whereupon he proceeded with his story. Though, as he had confessed, he was going forward without any distinct aim, his vigilance did not sleep for a moment. His ear, trained to a subtlety of perception such as we, dwellers in towns, and inheritors of the grossness born of luxurious living, can scarcely imagine, was alive to every sound. His eyes searched the darkness. His sense of touch, which was not, as with us, confined to the effects that arise from actual contact, sent out feelers in every direction. Through his delicate nostrils—the subtlest of the nine gates of the body—he interrogated the humid atmosphere, finding separate odours where we should have distinguished nothing but the vaporous distilments of the jungle.

Presently he came to a full stop, lowered his torch, and drew a long breath. Something strange, subtle, impalpable, was floating towards him. He could not for a moment determine what it was or even through which of the sense-avenues it had come; but he knew, he was penetrated with a conviction as strong as death, that presences, either spiritual or corporeal, but other than the beasts of the jungle, were near him.

He paused for fully five seconds, making an effort to define his sensations, and in the meantime he made another observation.