Frank freed Muriel from the stiffened grasp of the dead man and helped her to her feet; then the three hurried from the fatal spot, so lately filled by a cheerful crowd of merrymakers and now tenanted only by the corpse that lay with sightless eyes staring up at the blue sky. They made for the shelter of jungle-clad hills that rose a couple of miles away.
From now onwards, for two or three weeks, the fugitives led the lives of hunted rats. They travelled generally only by night, avoiding villages and farms, and keeping away from the road as much as possible. They were in the southern zone of Bhutan lying nearest the Indian frontier, a region of precipitous hills ten or twelve thousand feet high, their sides clothed with dense vegetation, of deep, fever-laden valleys of awe-inspiring gorges, of rivers liable to sudden floods and rising in a few hours thirty or forty feet.
Tashi in various disguises occasionally visited villages in search of food and information; while the lovers awaited his return in some hidden spot, Frank holding the anxious girl in his arms and trying to calm her fears. In one excursion the ex-lama got the first definite news of the pursuit. He learned that the Amban had returned unexpectedly to Tuna, the plot in his favour in Pekin having failed. He was not satisfied by the tales told by the monks of the lamasery to account for Muriel's mysterious disappearance, which was that she had been carried off by devils. He insisted on a search being made for her along the road to the Indian border and sent his own Chinese guards to direct the pursuit. The companion of the pock-marked man had got back to Tuna and told of their recognition of her. Yuan Shi Hung, furious at the death of his officer but overjoyed at the discovery of the girl, set out at once with his personal followers and a body of the Penlop's soldiers to take up the chase.
The fugitives, hotly pursued, had several hair-breadth escapes. Once they almost blundered into a bivouac of their enemies at night. They succeeded at last in reaching the great forest in which Wargrave and the ex-lama had parted from the elephants, the forest which ran along the foot and clothed the northern slopes of the second-last range of mountains between them and the frontier. But alas! there was no trace of Badshah's herd; yet this was not surprising, for they found themselves in a part unknown to them. Through this vast jungle they travelled by day, until one evening they reached a deep gorge that pierced the range and seemed to promise a passage through the mountains.
They camped for the night by its mouth, intending to enter it at sunrise. Dawn found them breaking their fast on a scanty meal of dried mutton and bananas. Suddenly Tashi stopped eating and held up a warning hand. His companions drew their pistols, Frank having given his second weapon to Muriel. Presently they heard the faint sounds of an animal's approach on their track. Just as they had risen silently to their feet three gigantic dogs appeared, scenting their trail. They were Tibetan mastiffs, such as are to be seen chained in the court yards of lamaseries. At sight of them the huge brutes stopped, crouched for an instant, showing their fangs in a fierce snarl, and then rushed at them.
Without hesitation the three fired. One of the dogs dropped dead; but the others, though wounded, came on. One bounded at Muriel. Frank threw himself in front of her, firing rapidly at it. Several bullets struck it, but the savage brute sprang at his throat. He grappled with it, striving by main strength to hold it off. Muriel rushed to his aid and putting her pistol to the mastiff's head shot it dead. Tashi meantime had killed the third.
Knowing that their pursuers must be close behind the dogs they fled into the gorge. On either hand stupendous cliffs towered up two thousand feet above them, scarcely a hundred yards apart, seeming to meet overhead and shut off the sky. Here and there the giant walls were split from top to bottom in slits opening off the main passage. As the fugitives ran on the gorge narrowed until it was scarcely fifty yards wide, and they began to fear that it might prove only a cul-de-sac in which they would be hopelessly trapped. They heard cries behind them, strangely echoed by the rocky walls. Breathless, panting, their tired limbs giving way under them, they staggered blindly on.
The pass turned sharply to the right. As they approached the bend they became aware of a dull rumbling, and the ground, which suddenly began to slope steeply down, shook violently under their feet. Wondering what new danger, what fresh horror, awaited them they stumbled on, turned the corner and stopped short in dismayed despair.
From side to side the gorge was filled with a tumultuous, racing flood of foam-flecked water, a rushing river that poured out of a natural tunnel in the steeply sloping rocky bottom of the pass as from a sluice. It surged against the precipitous cliffs, leaping up against the walls that hemmed it in, sweeping in mad onset of white-topped waves and eddying whirlpools flinging spray high in air. The stoutest swimmer would be tossed about helplessly in it, rolled over and over, choked, suffocated, sucked under, the life beaten out of him.
For one wild moment Frank thought of seizing Muriel in his arms and springing into the raging flood, but the sheer hopelessness of escape that way checked him. It was certain death. Better to turn and face their pursuers. There was more chance of life in battling with a score or two of Bhutanese swordsmen than with the tumbling, tossing waters.