"Beresford, there's hardly a doubt," Forrester said to his friend. "And is there no means of escape from this plateau?"
"None. If you think of attempting it, you may spare your labour. I have traversed the plateau from corner to corner. Behind are the mountains; if you could climb them you would only die of cold and hunger. In the centre is a mighty river, that pours over the edge of the precipice. To cross it is impossible. In the other direction the plateau ends in a sheer precipice thousands of feet deep. The rift you have seen. That is the only entrance and exit. How its floor is reached from above I know not: I was made insensible there below, and when I revived I was here."
"And has no one, absolutely no one, at any time escaped from the regions below and returned here?" Mackenzie asked.
The zamindar looked round apprehensively, as if he feared that the walls might hear him. When he spoke it was in little more than a whisper.
"You are an Englishman," he said. "I can trust you. One man escaped; one only: a negrito: it was five days ago. He came to my hut one night for shelter. I knew him. When he left here a year before he was young, plump and bright-eyed; when he returned he was like an old man. He was mad. I had learnt something of his language, but I understood little of what he said, so wild and broken were his words. It was clear that he had lived among unspeakable horrors."
"What became of him?" asked Forrester.
"When my daughter and I were absent in the fields the priests came and took him. He is gone: we shall never see him again, and I am in constant fear that I shall suffer for harbouring him. In his ravings he spoke of the Eye, and shook like a man in ague."
The two Englishmen looked at each other. The same thought had occurred to them both: this was the negrito whom they had seen suffer the punishment of the Eye.
"Shall we tell him?" Forrester asked.
"No, no: don't let us terrify the old chap," his friend answered. "His dread of the unknown is depressing enough as it is: if we told him about the Eye, every moment of his life would be an agony."