directly they get intothe mud-slide I'm going to massacre them like holy Shaitan. _Jao_Hussein Khan. Go on Mervyn," he added, more peremptorily, seeing himhesitate. "You've got to take Miss Seward out of this, and I've gotplenty of ammunition. I'll catch you up, by and by."
"Well, don't be long," said the other queerly, as he obeyed.
Now two or three more shots straggled across from beyond. The main bodyof the pursuers came racing up, urging their steeds mercilessly over thecruel, stony ground. Now they were on the edge of the mud-slide. Wild,yelling, threatening shouts went up from them, as they drew theirtulwars and flashed them furiously in the direction of the fugitives.Helston looked back. The result was not unsatisfactory. If only hecould hold up these. He would try parley. It would gain a modicum oftime.
"Brothers," he shouted. "Go back. I would not shed your blood, for wehave eaten together. But no man reaches this side of the mud-slidealive."
For answer, a fierce, blood-thrilling yell of vengeance, as theydiscovered his presence, for they had missed his manoeuvre. Andshouting out the torments of hell to which he, and all with him, weredestined when once more in their hands, they pushed their steedsfuriously into the slough.
In the chaotic splashing and floundering that ensued, Helston's riflespoke. The man who rode beside the chief toppled from his saddle.Again came the roaring detonation, tossing to and fro from crag to crag.Another saddle was emptied, but so far, for reasons of his own, themarksman had spared Allah-din Khan. In the sudden confusion, he pouredanother shot into "the brown," but nothing seemed available to stop thatrush. They were mad with revenge and fanaticism. As a sheer matter oftime he would not be able to destroy anything like all of them beforethey should cross. Well, this time the chief must go. He had beengiven every chance, and the stake being contested was too great.
"Once more go back!" he shouted. But only a renewed and fiend-likescream came in reply, and horses, floundering fetlock deep, were makingsurprising headway, and the wild savage faces were alarmingly nearer.He put up the rifle again, and--it swayed in his hands. He could notget the sighting. The earth under his feet was swaying. What did itmean, in Heaven's name?
There came a deep, growling, rumbling roar. He looked upward. Heavens!Was the whole world falling over upon him? In the flash of a moment,abandoning all thought of human enemies--of human forces, Helston hadwrenched his horse from behind the great hump of earth where he hadsheltered it, and mounting, spurred with hot haste onward and upward inthe track of those who had gone before. At the end of a couple ofhundred yards or so he alighted from his saddle just in time to avoidbeing hurled therefrom in the rocking swaying horror of a moving world,and looked back. A cracking roar, painful to the drums of his ears,split the air. He took in the enormous mass curling over, the volume ofmud and earth and stones, at least two score of feet high, pouring likea gigantic flood down the face of the slide. He took in the franticstruggling crowd of horsemen right in the centre of its road, and then,the whole slope took on a new formation as half a mountain side poureddown it, roaring up stones and mud masses high in the air. And--of thethree score and odd Gularzai--pressing on in hate and vengeance todestruction--there remained no more trace than there had been beforetheir arrival there at all. That gigantic mud-slide had in a momentfound a common sepulchre for the lot.
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"Well, Miss Seward," Helston remarked, as somewhat shaken by thestupendous awesomeness of the phenomenon, he rejoined the fugitivegroup, higher up. "Allah is on our side this time anyhow."
"Yes," she said in an awed tone. "What a sight! But what was it? Anearthquake?"
"Another mud-slide, like the one which formed the first--or a little ofboth. Maybe a touch of earthquake that started it off. But we werethrough just in time, and--good-bye to Allah-din Khan and Co."
"Whom I hope are grilling in their Jehanum," growled Mervyn, with therecollection of his own ordeal fresh upon him.
"Well, there's nothing between us and Mazaran now," pronounced HelstonVarne, "and the sooner we get there the better. No, Miss Seward. You'dbetter not look back. Get it out of your mind."
For Melian's gaze seemed riveted on the gloomy Dantesque gorge, now halfbarred up by the tremendous convulsion of Nature which had taken effectright under her very eyes, and the thought of the buried men lyingthere--even though they were fierce barbarians and fanatical enemies,still they had been engulfed in the horrible cataclysm right under hereyes. But she recognised the other's advice was sound, and laid herselfout to follow it. And the reaction of feeling that they were all incomparative safety largely helped.
CHAPTER THIRTY.
ENVOI.
John Seward Mervyn lay back in his accustomed armchair and puffed verycontentedly at his pipe. The fire burned clearly in the deep,old-fashioned fireplace, and the room looked exactly the same as when wefirst discovered him in it. Even the wind, swirling boisterously aroundthe gables of Heath Hover, seemed to sound the same note, but it was notsnow-laden this time, for autumn had not yet fairly gone out. The samelittle black kitten, though it was no longer a kitten now, still it hadgrown not much larger, and was as fluffy and almost as playful as ever,had jumped up on to his knee and sat there purring.
"Fill up, Varne," he said, pushing the square bottle over to hiscompanion--the glow of glasses and syphons between them shone merrily inthe cheerful lamplight. "And now--we can talk. No, it's all right.She can't hear," following an almost imperceptible lift of the other'seyebrows toward the ceiling, the sound of footsteps on the upper side ofthis betokening that Melian was undergoing the intricate and protractedprocess of feminine turning in.
Helston Varne, ensconced in the opposite chair, mixed himself adeliberate peg and relit his pipe. He was, in fact, more interestedthan--from force of habit--he allowed to appear, for now he was going tolearn at first hand what he had pieced together in theory.
"First of all, tell me," went on Mervyn. "I haven't asked you yet, waspurposely waiting until we got back here--on the very scene of it all,so to say. How did you get your cue to play up to on that Starbusiness, when you were doing inquisitor-in-chief in that damnablehell-cave?"
"Mainly from deduction, I found the confirmation--here."
"Here? How--when?" And remembering various manoeuvres of his own--here--Mervyn might well give way to amazement.
"You remember that day you came back from Clancehurst, and found me inthe old lumber room. I had just discovered it then, and shoved back theold sideboard barely in time when you came in."
"Good God!"
The other nodded.
"I'll astonish you still further, Mervyn," he said. "Before it gotthere it reposed under a roundish topped stone on the sluice path. Youtranshipped it while you had me locked up in the cellar yonder."
"Wrong there, Varne," said Mervyn, with something of a chuckle, "but notaltogether though. I did transfer that one, but it wasn't the one youfound. That was kindly delivered here since, and it was the one Istowed away upstairs temporarily. By the way I take it you have someinkling of what those things represent?"
"Perhaps I have."
"Well, then--they are charged with a most deadly, subtle, and hithertounknown poison. The touch of a hidden spring in the centre releasesthis, and then the merest invisible pin-prick from any one of thepoints--good-night! Well just imagine my feelings when I looked out ofthe window to see Melian airily coming down the path with that infernalthing in her hand. I wonder I didn't faint. Well, that was the one youfound."
The other started at the mention of Melian in this connexion, and hisface took on something of the look of horror which had come over that ofhis host, evolved by the bare recollection.
"Yes, indeed. I can imagine them," he said. "Then the man you pulledout of the water--and who incidentally was instrumental in setting upthe great Heath Hover mystery, brought the first?"
"That's right."
"What ha
ve you done with these two infernal things up to date, Mervyn?"asked Helston Varne, not without some shade of anxiety.
"They're both snug and safe till the Day of Judgment at the bottom ofthe deepest part of Plane Pond. Thickly rolled up, well weighted, andby this time under six feet of mud and twenty of water. If they drainedthe pond they'd never find them."
Helston Varne nodded approvingly.
"It's an interesting case, Mervyn--very. But--do you know, I was verymuch getting on to the hang of it when--well, when we began to know eachother."
"The devil you were? I knew you were--trying to."
"I know you did. Well, we've been through a strange