At the first soft drawn-out "Sah-h-i-b!" of his bearer, the captain was up with soldierly precision. His eyes lighted with pleasure when he saw the saddle horse that had been provided for him from the maharajah's stable. He was a fine, upstanding brown Arab, the eyes full and set wide. When Swinton patted the velvet muzzle the Arab gave a little sigh of satisfaction, expressing content; he liked to carry men who loved horses.
The bearer, officiously solicitous, had rubbed his cloth over the saddle and bridle reins, and, examining the result, said: "Huzoor, you have clean leathers; it is well. Also the steed has lucky marks and his name is Shabaz."
Shabaz broke into a free-swinging canter as the captain took the road that stretched, like a red ribbon laid on a carpet of green, toward the hill, whereon, high up, gleamed a flat pearl, the palace of Prince Ananda.
On the hillside was a delicate tracery of waving bamboos, through which peeped cliffs of various hues—rose-coloured, ebon black, pearl grey, vermilion red; and over all was a purple haze where the golden shafts of the rising sun shot through lazy-rising vapours of the moist plain. The cliffs resembled castle walls rising from the buried city, mushrooming themselves into sudden arrogance. To the north a river wound its sinuous way through plains of sand, a silver serpent creeping over a cloth of gold. Back from either side of the river lay patches of wheat and barley, their jade green and golden bronze holding of grain suggesting gigantic plates of metal set out in the morning sun to dry.
To the westward of the river lay Darpore City, looking like a box of scattered toys. Beyond the white palace the sal-covered hills lay heavy, mysterious, sombre, as if in rebuke to the eastern sky palpitating with the radiancy that flooded it from the great golden ball of heat that swept upward in regal majesty.
Yawning caves studding a ravine which cut its climbing way up the hillside shattered the poetic spell which had driven from Swinton's mind his real object in that solitary ride. The cave mouths suggested entrances to military underground passages. He was certain that the pearllike palace was a place of intrigue. The contour of the great hill conveyed the impression of a stronghold—a mighty fort, easy of defence. Indeed, as Swinton knew, that was what it had been. Its history, the story of Fort Kargez, was in the India office, and Prince Ananda must have lied the night before when he said he did not know what city lay beneath the palace.
Fort Kargez had been the stronghold of Joghendra Bahi, a Hindu rajah, when the Pathan emperor, Sher Ghaz, had swept through India to the undulating plains of Darpore.
Gazing at the formidable hill, Swinton chuckled over the wily Pathan's manner of capturing Fort Kargez by diplomacy. He had made friends with Rajah Bahi, asking the favour of leaving his harem and vast store of jewels in that gentleman's safe custody till his return from conquering Bengal.
Such a bait naturally appealed to the covetous Hindu. But the palanquins that carried the fair maids and the wealth of jewels had also hidden within enough men to hold the gate while a horde of Pathans rushed the fort. But Rajah Bahi and many of his soldiers had escaped to the underground passages, and either by accident or design—for the vaults had been mined—they were blown up, turning the fort over like a pancake, burying the Pathan soldiers and the vast loot of gold and jewels. Then the jungle crept in, as it always does, and smothered the jagged surface beneath which lay the ruined walls. Many of the artificial lakes remained; they were just without the fort.
Climbing the zigzag roadway, Swinton fell to wondering if all the prince's talk of a desire for removal from the bustle of Darpore City was simply a blind; if his real object weren't a systematic exploration for the vast store of wealth in the buried city and also the preparation of a rebel stronghold.