Chapter 16
Out on the mountainside again!
Harshit tried not to look at the book that might be lying somewhere near; but after scraping of the bottom of the trunk a little way at this end, he at once crossed the chasm back again; for he didn’t want to enjoy examining the gold and the book and its secret, without the other three sharing the enjoyment.
When he came back, the other three were up and were worried about him. Sumit gave a sigh of relief when he saw Harshit.
“Why did you go off without us?” he asked, “now you’ve crossed the chasm and seen all that there is to be seen.”
“No, I haven’t,” said Harshit, “Look at this!” Harshit took out the note that the English soldier had left for the “stranger”, and gave all the particulars of his exploits in the night.
There were a lot of oohs and aahs when Harshit displayed the note. The Four were especially interested in the portion of the note were martial art was mentioned.
“I always wanted to learn a martial art,” said Sumit.
Priya didn’t know the meaning of martial art, but when explained, she too said she would like learn it. Katrina was also interested. And all four were eager to cross the chasm.
So they all came to the edge of the chasm and sat on the trunk with their legs on either side. Harshit was first in the line. Behind him was Priya, followed by Katrina. And Sumit came last of all. Harshit had the torch in his mouth, as he was the first in the line. And in this way, line of four children moved.
Soon they were on the other side. And the Four found themselves in a tunnel. They looked around eagerly, but found nothing.
“Maybe we’ll have to go up the tunnel,” said Harshit. So they walked on. Soon they came to a place where the tunnel branched into two. The Four stood for a moment, perplexed. But Sumit found an arrow cut on the rocky floor, pointing towards one of the tunnels.
“Good!” said Harshit. And they continued their search.
After some time, the tunnel widened into a round cave and to their delight, there stood a big book about two and a half inch thick as well as a box which had rotten away but was still intact. The box was four feet high, wide and deep. When Sumit kicked it open, gold bars poured out! The Four examined the book. They found to their surprise that the cover page and the back page and the small strip that connected these two pages were made of a metal but not iron. It hadn’t rusted anyway.
Each page inside was protected by a covering of very thin glass on both sides, probably so that the paper might not rot away. All the pages were stiff as wood because of the glass.
The Four hurried to the book and Harshit picked it up.
“Gosh!” exclaimed Harshit, “this book is real fragile. We must be careful not to drop it or the glass pages might break.”
Sumit couldn’t control himself with joy!
“Hurrah! Hurrah! Three cheers for Charlie Lynton!”
He jumped and yelled as if he was mad. Katrina and Priya laughed.
Harshit remained calm. He opened the book.
On the first page was written in a man’s handwriting: “To the stranger, from Charlie Lynton”.
The second page contained the following handwritten words:
“I, Charlie Lynton, have traveled all around the world. I studied as many martial arts as I could. And I became an expert in all of them. Especially, in Boxing, Ju Jitsu, Thai, Samurai, Kalarippayattu, Kuttu Varisai and Kung Fu, I became unbeatable. But in all these mentioned martial arts, there were some weakness in some points, where other martial arts excelled at. So I joined all the martial arts that I knew and corrected the mistakes in the martial arts and formed a brand new martial art of my own, which I would like to call, “the Lynton Style of Self-Defense”.
I hope this book will do you a lot of good…”
And so and so and so. Harshit looked up, and said, “Here’s a good chance of learning a great martial art, Sumit. It’s the Lynton Style of Self-Defense!”
The other three came over and looked over Harshit's sturdy shoulders.
“WOW! Look at those pictures Charlie has drawn!”
“Hurrah! Now I can learn a martial art!”
“Ooh! Ya! EEEEYAAA!!!”
Harshit smiled when he heard those exclamations.
Suddenly Sumit said, “Ohhh! I’m starving!!”
At this Harshit's face became grave. He still hadn’t solved the food problem. He was “hungry as a wolf” himself. He suddenly brightened up. When coming into this treasure cave, they had been puzzled when the tunnel branched into two. The other tunnel might lead to the outer world. Harshit communicated his idea to the others, and they all marched down the tunnel to the fork.
Soon they came to fork, and the Four went into the “other tunnel”. But to their disappointment, the tunnel came to a dead end. That “other tunnel” didn’t “lead to anywhere at all”.
They came back to the place where the tunnel branched with gloomy faces and looked around dolefully. Katrina suddenly had an impulse to go down the tunnel leading to the chasm. No one stopped her. So she went.
When she came to the chasm, she looked over the edge, but she could see no bottom. She looked at the trunk and thought she might pass away the time crossing the chasm on it. So she climbed onto the trunk and started moving. She went on till reached the place where the note had been pinned onto the trunk. She examined the hole where the nail had been, just to pass away the time (she had the torch in her mouth). She ran her fingers around the place where the nail had been hammered through. Her fingers ran down the sides of the trunk and to the bottom. Then she gave a cry of surprise and nearly fell off. Her torch which was in her mouth fell out too, but she caught it just in time.
Under the trunk was a rope ladder attached to the bottom of the trunk. No wonder Katrina had let out a cry of surprise.
“Hurrah! This maybe the way out into the outer world! I must call the others,” Katrina thought. She made her way back to the other three and communicated the latest news.
“Hurrah!” yelled Sumit, jumping up and down.
The Four ran down the tunnel and nearly jumped over the edge. They hurried made their way up the trunk and came to the place where the rope ladder was. Katrina was in the front, so she went down the ladder first. Then Sumit came down, followed by Harshit and Priya in hot pursuit.
As they hadn’t been able to see the bottom of the chasm when they were on the trunk, they had thought they would’ve to climb down a good way, but the bottom was only ten feet away. Soon the Four were on the ground and by Sumit’s torch they could see the walls on both sides, which were also the walls of the tunnel as well the other wall that went up and terminated at the edge of the floor. The Four could see no hole or tunnel. And were puzzled why then the rope ladder had been put there. Examining the walls, Priya discovered a crack in the wall, about three feet wide.
The Four went into this crack and soon found themselves in a tunnel which sloped downwards and went round and round. It was like a spiral staircase. Only there were no steps.
After a long time, the tunnel suddenly straightened out and before, the Four could see the sunlight. Getting out, the Four found themselves at the foot of the Andhar-ana-mana Mountains, at the outer side of the “ring”.
The Four gave a sigh of relief when they saw the sun shine. Katrina switched off the torch and said in a wise tone, “Now Sumit, you had better go back and bring that book down. We’ll all read it to its last word!”
Sumit obeyed, and presently appeared with the big notebook. “Phew!” he panted, “this notebook’s mighty heavy, and it’s no easy thing to climb down the ladder with a heavy book, especially when you know that it’ll break if your drop it!”
The Four found a good flat place, and lay down, crowding close together to see the big notebook.
Harshit was the lucky one. He was right in front of the book and the others were on both sides of him. He opened the book. Everything was handwritten and not printed, and the Four concluded that the whole book was w
ritten by hand by Charlie Lynton, the old English soldier and then covered with glass. I’m not going to copy the contents of the book, but I’ll give a fair idea of what it contained.
The first page, I think, I described when Harshit opened it in the cave. The next pages were instructions to control your emotions, when fighting an opponent and tutorials to master the Lynton science of self-defense.
Charlie Lynton, the author of this notebook, had written very simply and clearly so that, after reading his instructions as to how to master the Lynton Science of self-defense, the Four were considerably improved in their knowledge of their art of self-defense, just by reading this notebook.
About 99% of the notebook was all about the Lynton Science of Self-defense, exercises and fighting techniques and stuff. After reading this portion of the notebook, Harshit turned the page, and the Four were very interested when they read the words:
“The following is a great secret. Reveal it to no one except those who can be trusted.”
Of course, the Four got excited. What great secret was to be exposed? And why did Charlie Lynton say, to reveal the secret only to people you can trust? After all, Charlie had intended the treasure and the notebook for some stranger, whom he didn’t know at all, whether trustable or not.
However the next page was blank, so Harshit turned another page, and the Four gasped with astonishment! The first thing that met their eyes was the following words in bold thick handwriting:
“The following picture is original and is taken from my camera. It’s not a fake photo, and it’s not edited. There’s also a ring attached to this book, take it with you if you ever go after this ‘great secret’, shown in the photo.”
The photo was black and white, and described a cave. There was a rock, shaped almost like a perfect cube. It was about three feet high. And on it was…
Wow! A big diamond, shaped like a cube! But it wasn’t the diamond that was exciting, it was its size! Goodness, it was huge! If measured from top to bottom, it would probably measure three feet! And its thickness was about two and a half feet. The photo and the bold thick words mentioned before, occupied the whole page. The next page contained a map of central Africa. The diamond was in an island, which was in a lake. This map was in English and filled the whole page. The next page gave the details. Here they are:
“This diamond is situated in the heart of Africa. You’ll have to wear the ring attached to this notebook if you ever want to have that treasure. For I have left a whole African tribe to guard the diamond. I had once helped them defeat an enemy tribe, so they had promised to guard the diamond for me. They’ve promised not to let anyone take the diamond without this particular ring. So, never lose the ring, it’s important. It’s a sort of a token.”
The Four searched for the ring, and found it in a small transparent packet, which was pinned onto the last page.
The ring was made of gold, with gorilla’s face made with silver on it. The gorilla seemed to be frowning, but all the same, the ring was beautiful.
“Let’s go to Africa at once!” declared Sumit.
“But we need money,” reminded Priya.
“We’ve got the gold bars up there, in the cave in that rotten old box.”
“But I don’t think it would be enough.”
“Oh! We’ll have to earn it somehow,” said Katrina, who had set her heart on the “great secret”.
“Well, we’ll try,” said Harshit, “But it’s going to be hard work, so there must be no grumbling.”
“ALL RIGHT, HARSHIT!” yelled the other three in chorus. And so it was decided.
But the Four weren’t going to leave the two foreigners so easily.
“We must do something about them,” declared Priya.
“But what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, but they must not get off so easily.”
The Four put their thinking caps on and thought and thought and thought.
“I got it!!!” yelled Sumit, springing to his feet.
“What did you get?” asked Katrina.
“An idea!”
“What is it?”
“Well,” began Sumit, with great dignity, “there’s a policeman in the village I know. I had confided in him…”
“There! He can’t just keep a secret!”
“But,” explained Sumit, “he was a great friend of mine and Katrina’s, for three years!”
“So, you mean to say…” began Harshit.
“I mean to say, that we can tell him about the two foreigners.”
“But we’re run-aways!” protested Priya.
“That’s nothing,” replied Sumit, indifferently, “We can trust him.”
“I don’t know…” said Harshit, hesitatingly, “If he informed the other policemen, we’ll be in a nice scrape.”
“But he’ll not,” insisted Sumit, and Harshit frowned. Harshit couldn't decide if it was safe or not.
But Priya solved the problem.
“Well, I’m not a run-away,” she said, “So maybe I can go to the police station and inform the police.
“Great!” exclaimed Sumit, delighted.
“It’s a brainwave,” commented Harshit, quietly.
“Good for you, Priya!” yelled Katrina, and so the problem was solved.