"It is good to see that you are alive," he said. "What did they do with you?"
"They locked me up, sahib, in a warm room, and this morning brought me here. A shorn-pate put this spade into my hand, and bade me dig. I have lost caste; it were better to die: but he told me I am a slave, and shall remain a slave while life lasts."
"And Hamid Gul?"
"I know nothing of him, sahib. I have not seen him since we left the pit below. There are many of my countrymen here; they are all in bondage; and they quake and shiver when they speak of the Eye."
"I don't wonder," Mackenzie murmured. "What do they say of the Eye?"
"They speak of it as of some unknown horror, sahib. No one has seen it: they say that no man sees it and lives. They declare that the one-armed stranger had both his arms, like you and me; one day he had two, the next, when he came up, he had but one. They tell also that men have gone from this place down into the depths yonder, and have never been seen again. It is Fate: who can stand against it?"
At this moment a Chinaman dressed like those who had formed the second rank in the Temple came up to Mackenzie, held out a spade, and signed that he was to join a group of men who were digging in a neighbouring field. Mackenzie thrust his hands into his pockets and turned his back upon the man. To his surprise there was no insistence, no attempt at compulsion: the priest, as he supposed him to be, went away without a word. And then he saw Forrester hurrying towards him from the head of the stairway.
"Where's Bob?" were Forrester's first words.
"I was going to ask you that," Mackenzie replied. "I haven't seen him."
"They locked me up alone," Forrester went on, "and I never passed a more awful night. That eye!"