Sher Jang had returned to his digging. The two friends set off pace for pace after the priest. He did not enter the orchard, which was in no way railed off, but skirting its upper end, he drew near to a long low building of stone, with open doorways a few feet apart. It reminded Mackenzie of the rank of connected cottages often seen near engineering works in his own country, except that it was characteristically Chinese in form and decoration. The priest entered one of the doorways and disappeared. As they passed, they heard a dull incessant hammering from within the building.
"Sounds like a smithy," said Forrester. "I wonder what goes on there?"
A little beyond the building, rose a sort of pagoda, three stories high, but not so truly pyramidal in shape as the memorials frequently seen in China. It was surrounded by a walled enclosure, the wall being too high for them to see over.
"It's not big enough to be the Temple," Mackenzie remarked. "I guess it's the residence of the August and Venerable. We'll go on; maybe we'll see the Temple later."
"I don't want to see it," Forrester said with a shudder. "I never want to see it again."
"Eh, but I do," Mackenzie returned. "I wish to know all I can about this place. The look of the outside can't do us any harm."
But no such building came in sight. The only thing that attracted their attention was a stream flowing from north to south across the plateau. It passed through the walled enclosure of the pagoda, and flowed away between embankments in what they supposed to be the direction of the falls. They were thinking of following its course, when a horn sounded stridently in the distance. At the signal the priests emerged from their dwellings, and marched in file towards the stairway. Mackenzie and Forrester followed them, out of curiosity. They descended the stairway one by one. Soon afterwards another file, the moustachioed priests, came up from the opposite direction. None of them so much as glanced at the two young men standing aside to watch them. When all had gone down, Sher Jang came up to his masters, and told them that the horn blast was the signal for the midday meal. If they wished to eat, they must descend, for no food was given on the plateau to the men from below.
"I'll not go down till I must," said Mackenzie firmly. "To exchange this fresh air and sunshine for the close atmosphere below--no, I'll fast for the day rather."
The two remained foodless for the rest of the day. No one interfered with them. They rambled where they pleased. Every now and then they spoke to one or other of the Indians in the community, asking them how they had come to the place and what their experiences had been. A few had stumbled upon the rift by accident; most had been entrapped, kidnapped, or inveigled by the priests. All were utterly broken in spirit, and lived in hourly terror of the Eye, the mysterious and dreadful something of which rumour spoke, but which none had seen.
Among those whom the Englishmen addressed was an old Indian, who told them that he had been captured with his little daughter several years before on the outskirts of his village. He was a zamindar, a man of substance and of some education. He invited the two men into his hut.