“We all seem wonderfully unanimous in our thoughts,” said I; “the same thing occurred to me as we were starting. I suggest, further, we don’t even show ourselves at first. Let’s see if they materialize before we sound a tucket, or whatever the mediæval wanderer used to do when he struck a strange fortress and observed the occupants getting handy with the boiling lead in case they didn’t like his face.”
So we decided—and, as it turned out, it was well that we did so—to reconnoitre as carefully as if the inhabitants were Huns and we a bashful trench crawling party, and, if we found the gateway, not to go out of cover until we saw some chance of meeting the owners on more even terms.
As we went on, Forsyth remarked on the fact that the valley was getting still narrower. We had gone about a mile, and it was now not much above fifteen or sixteen feet wide. The bottom was of rounded stones and pebbles, obviously water-worn, but whether the whole valley was due to water action it was hard to say. It must have taken æons and æons for the stream to cut down those many hundred feet, unless at some time it contained a far greater flow of water than existed now.
Wrexham opined that originally it must have been a fault in the rock, and pointed out that the strata here were tilted up vertically on edge. He said that probably the valley we walked in had once been a layer of very soft rock—easily decomposed—between two harder ones, and that when the rocks had been tilted up the gradual percolation of water had started a groove, and then the stream had done the rest.
The walls were of a grey-green limestone here, though at the entrance the general tinge had been brown. There was practically no vegetation save for here and there, just at the foot, blanched shrubs and small plants of the type common in rock country over middle Asia. Just now the sun was nearly overhead, and some stray sunbeams filtered down, but for the greater part of the day the valley must have been—indeed, we soon found out that it was—shrouded in a grey gloom. By the time we had gone another mile, the walls had closed in to barely ten feet apart.
“I wouldn’t like to be caught in a spate here,” said I. “The place would be a seething torrent fifty or sixty feet deep in a few minutes if there was a heavy fall beyond. It rather makes me think of the Narrows on the Wana road from Jandola, only on a bigger scale.”
“Never been up there,” said Wrexham; “but, if you birds had to fight in stuff like this last year, I’m glad I wasn’t there. One thing here is that it’s so high above that, short of heaving over rocks blindly, the other side couldn’t get at you at all if you had command of the end. If the inhabitants are unpleasing, we could manage to hold them up in this pretty easily with rifles, and if we couldn’t get in, at least they won’t be able to get out at us. What a topping entrance for a real mediæval fortress!”
“Or even for a modern one. You couldn’t get guns up the cliff anywhere near here, and so you’d have to fight through this in pure primitive fashion; and if, as it must, it opens out in front, all they’ve got to do is to stick a few men with rifles, or even with bows, a little way beyond under cover to prevent you ever getting out at all.”
We were just rounding a turn as we spoke, Forsyth leading. We heard him exclaim suddenly, and then, coming round the corner, saw him standing staring at the rock walls.
“Well, I’m d——d!” was all he said.