"It's uncanny, and that's a fact," said Mackenzie. "But look, man! What's that?" he added, in a startled whisper, clutching Forrester by the arm with one hand, and pointing ahead with the other.
His comrades closed upon him, and peered into the semi-obscurity, their heads almost touching. A little to one side of them stood Sher Jang, impassive as ever, though he held his rifle with both hands, and his muscles were as taut as a bent spring. Behind, Hamid Gul's one eye bulged from its socket as he tiptoed to look over his master's shoulder.
A few yards to their front the rift made one of the sudden bends that formed such strange features of its course. It struck to the right at a sharp angle, so that the wall which had been on their left hand became almost perpendicular to their line of march. On its smooth rocky face, some eighteen or twenty feet above the ground, an extraordinary procession was moving across their line of vision from right to left, like shadows cast faintly upon a screen. The leading figure was that of a skeleton, clothed about with a misty body shaped like a man in tourist costume: a tall frame, the bones standing out in black relief from the midst of a faint penumbra. Behind this trotted the skeleton forms of a number of almost naked dwarfs, no more than four feet in height, each bearing a spear upon his shoulder. At the rear came a second full-sized figure, taking long strides, like a schoolmaster at the tail of a line of boys. The shadowy surround of his skeleton widened towards the bottom like an academic gown. The watchers held their breath, amazed at the weirdness of the dim shapes, and still more at the manner of their progress. There were no steps to be seen in the face of the cliff, yet the gait of the procession was unmistakably that of men descending a steep stairway. Foot by foot they moved downwards on their diagonal path; one by one they reached the floor of the rift; then, instead of walking along it towards the spectators, they seemed to descend into the earth, and in a few moments disappeared from view. Not a sound had accompanied them; no tramp of footsteps, no clash of weapons.
Drawing a long breath, the white men, tense and watchful, waited a little for some sign of their reappearance, but nothing more was seen. If the strange people had observed the group of onlookers, they had paid no heed to them. At last, Mackenzie hurried forward to search for the steps and the subterranean passage to which they gave access. The rest of the party followed him, save Hamid Gul, who remained as one transfixed, shivering with awe.
When they came to the wall they were thrown into a state of utter consternation. The surface of the rock was wholly unbroken; there was neither stairway nor passage into the ground--the cliff was as smooth as polished granite. They looked upwards, to the right along the rift; they passed their hands over the face of the rock, struck it here and there, probed with their rifles the floor--all was apparently solid. An uncomfortable feeling of creepiness stole over them. What mysterious secret lurked in this gloomy cleft in the mountain?
None of them had yet uttered a word. When Forrester spoke, it was in a whisper.
"Were they shadows?" he asked.
They turned about and looked back along the rift. There was no light between the walls. Far above, the sunlight illumined their summits, a bright streak in the gloom. But no shadow could have been cast so low.
"Och!" exclaimed Mackenzie, shaking himself. "We cannot get to the bottom of yon. Come away!"
Every man of them, without confessing it to the others, was thinking of the singular things they had heard in the forest village. Their minds were oppressed by the villagers' superstitious dread; it required an effort to proceed with the march, leaving this uncanny incident unexplained. But they braced themselves at Mackenzie's words. Whatever the explanation of the procession might be, it argued the presence of beings other than themselves in the cleft or its neighbourhood; and the remembrance of their errand nerved them to go on. If Captain Redfern's unfortunate companion were indeed held captive in this mysterious region, it appeared that they must look forward to something more than a straight fight; but they could not allow themselves to be daunted by apparitions, which, after all, might have a simple explanation.