The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
man who had killed me, seemed to recede. It swept out of existence--"
"Euston!" clamoured the voices outside; "Euston!"
The carriage door opened, admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stood
regarding us. The sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter of
cab-horses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the
London cobble-stones, came to my ears. A truck-load of lighted lamps
blazed along the platform.
"A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out
all things."
"Any luggage, sir?" said the porter.
"And that was the end?" I asked.
He seemed to hesitate. Then, almost inaudibly, he answered, "_No_."
"You mean?"
"I couldn't get to her. She was there on the other side of the temple--
And then--"
"Yes," I insisted. "Yes?"
"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds that
fought and tore."
XXVI.
THE VALLEY OF SPIDERS.
Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the
torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The
difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the
fugitives for so long expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse
the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set with
olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a
little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle.
For a space they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes. It
spread remoter and remoter, with only a few clusters of sere thorn bushes
here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless ravine to
break its desolation of yellow grass. Its purple distances melted at last
into the bluish slopes of the further hills--hills it might be of a
greener kind--and above them, invisibly supported, and seeming indeed to
hang in the blue, were the snow-clad summits of mountains--that grew
larger and bolder to the northwestward as the sides of the valley drew
together. And westward the valley opened until a distant darkness under
the sky told where the forests began. But the three men looked neither
east nor west, but only steadfastly across the valley.
The gaunt man with the scarred lip was the first to speak. "Nowhere," he
said, with a sigh of disappointment in his voice. "But, after all, they
had a full day's start."
"They don't know we are after them," said the little man on the white
horse.
"_She_ would know," said the leader bitterly, as if speaking to
himself.
"Even then they can't go fast. They've got no beast but the mule, and all
to-day the girl's foot has been bleeding----"
The man with the silver bridle flashed a quick intensity of rage on him.
"Do you think I haven't seen that?" he snarled.
"It helps, anyhow," whispered the little man to himself.
The gaunt man with the scarred lip stared impassively. "They can't be over
the valley," he said. "If we ride hard----"
He glanced at the white horse and paused.
"Curse all white horses!" said the man with the silver bridle, and turned
to scan the beast his curse included.
The little man looked down between the melancholy ears of his steed.
"I did my best," he said.
The two others stared again across the valley for a space. The gaunt man
passed the back of his hand across the scarred lip.
"Come up!" said the man who owned the silver bridle, suddenly. The little
man started and jerked his rein, and the horse hoofs of the three made a
multitudinous faint pattering upon the withered grass as they turned back
towards the trail...
They rode cautiously down the long slope before them, and so came through
a waste of prickly twisted bushes and strange dry shapes of thorny
branches that grew amongst the rocks, into the levels below. And there the
trail grew faint, for the soil was scanty, and the only herbage was this
scorched dead straw that lay upon the ground. Still, by hard scanning, by
leaning beside the horses' necks and pausing ever and again, even these
white men could contrive to follow after their prey.
There were trodden places, bent and broken blades of the coarse grass, and
ever and again the sufficient intimation of a footmark. And once the
leader saw a brown smear of blood where the half-caste girl may have trod.
And at that under his breath he cursed her for a fool.
The gaunt man checked his leader's tracking, and the little man on the
white horse rode behind, a man lost in a dream. They rode one after
another, the man with the silver bridle led the way, and they spoke never
a word. After a time it came to the little man on the white horse that the
world was very still. He started out of his dream. Besides the little
noises of their horses and equipment, the whole great valley kept the
brooding quiet of a painted scene.
Before him went his master and his fellow, each intently leaning forward
to the left, each impassively moving with the paces of his horse; their
shadows went before them--still, noiseless, tapering attendants; and
nearer a crouched cool shape was his own. He looked about him. What was it
had gone? Then he remembered the reverberation from the banks of the gorge
and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles. And,
moreover----? There was no breeze. That was it! What a vast, still place
it was, a monotonous afternoon slumber! And the sky open and blank except
for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered in the upper valley.
He straightened his back, fretted with his bridle, puckered his lips to
whistle, and simply sighed. He turned in his saddle for a time, and stared
at the throat of the mountain gorge out of which they had come. Blank!
Blank slopes on either side, with never a sign of a decent beast or tree--
much less a man. What a land it was! What a wilderness! He dropped again
into his former pose.
It filled him with a momentary pleasure to see a wry stick of purple black
flash out into the form of a snake, and vanish amidst the brown. After
all, the infernal valley _was_ alive. And then, to rejoice him still
more, came a little breath across his face, a whisper that came and went,
the faintest inclination of a stiff black-antlered bush upon a little
crest, the first intimations of a possible breeze. Idly he wetted his
finger, and held it up.
He pulled up sharply to avoid a collision with the gaunt man, who had
stopped at fault upon the trail. Just at that guilty moment he caught his
master's eye looking towards him.
For a time he forced an interest in the tracking. Then, as they rode on
again, he studied his master's shadow and hat and shoulder, appearing and
disappearing behind the gaunt man's nearer contours. They had ridden four
days out of the very limits of the world into this desolate place, short
of water, with nothing but a strip of dried meat under their saddles, over
rocks and mountains, where surely none but these fugitives had ever been
before--for _that_!
And all this was for a girl, a mere wilful child! And the man had whole
cityfuls of people to do his basest bidding--girls, women! Why in the name
of passionate folly _this_ one in particular? asked the little man,
and scowled at the world, and licked his parched lips with a blackened
tongue. It was the way of the master, and that was all he knew. Just
because she sought to evade him...
His eye caught a whole row of high-plumed canes bending in unison, and
then the tails of silk that hung before his neck flapped and fell. The
breeze was growing stronger. Somehow it took the stiff stillness out of
things--and that was well.
"Hullo!" said the gaunt man.
All three stopped abruptly.
"What?" asked the master. "What?"
"Over there," said the gaunt man, pointing up the valley.
"What?"
"Something coming towards us."
And as he spoke a yellow animal crested a rise and came bearing down upon
them. It was a big wild dog, coming before the wind, tongue out, at a
steady pace, and running with such an intensity of purpose that he did not
seem to see the horsemen he approached. He ran with his nose up,
following, it was plain, neither scent nor quarry. As he drew nearer the
little man felt for his sword. "He's mad," said the gaunt rider.
"Shout!" said the little man, and shouted.
The dog came on. Then when the little man's blade was already out, it
swerved aside and went panting by them and passed. The eyes of the little
man followed its flight. "There was no foam," he said. For a space the man
with the silver-studded bridle stared up the valley. "Oh, come on!" he
cried at last. "What does it matter?" and jerked his horse into movement
again.
The little man left the insoluble mystery of a dog that fled from nothing
but the wind, and lapsed into profound musings on human character. "Come
on!" he whispered to himself. "Why should it be given to one man to say
'Come on!' with that stupendous violence of effect? Always, all his life,
the man with the silver bridle has been saying that. If _I_ said
it--!" thought the little man. But people marvelled when the master was
disobeyed even in the wildest things. This half-caste girl seemed to him,
seemed to every one, mad--blasphemous almost. The little man, by way of
comparison, reflected on the gaunt rider with the scarred lip, as stalwart
as his master, as brave and, indeed, perhaps braver, and yet for him there
was obedience, nothing but to give obedience duly and stoutly...
Certain sensations of the hands and knees called the little man back to
more immediate things. He became aware of something. He rode up beside his
gaunt fellow. "Do you notice the horses?" he said in an undertone.
The gaunt face looked interrogation.
"They don't like this wind," said the little man, and dropped behind as
the man with the silver bridle turned upon him.
"It's all right," said the gaunt-faced man.
They rode on again for a space in silence. The foremost two rode downcast
upon the trail, the hindmost man watched the haze that crept down the
vastness of the valley, nearer and nearer, and noted how the wind grew in
strength moment by moment. Far away on the left he saw a line of dark
bulks--wild hog, perhaps, galloping down the valley, but of that he said
nothing, nor did he remark again upon the uneasiness of the horses.
And then he saw first one and then a second great white ball, a great
shining white ball like a gigantic head of thistledown, that drove before
the wind athwart the path. These balls soared high in the air, and dropped
and rose again and caught for a moment, and hurried on and passed, but at
the sight of them the restlessness of the horses increased.
Then presently he saw that more of these drifting globes--and then soon
very many more--were hurrying towards him down the valley.
They became aware of a squealing. Athwart the path a huge boar rushed,
turning his head but for one instant to glance at them, and then hurling
on down the valley again. And at that all three stopped and sat in their
saddles, staring into the thickening haze that was coming upon them.
"If it were not for this thistle-down--" began the leader.
But now a big globe came drifting past within a score of yards of them. It
was really not an even sphere at all, but a vast, soft, ragged, filmy
thing, a sheet gathered by the corners, an aerial jelly-fish, as it were,
but rolling over and over as it advanced, and trailing long cobwebby
threads and streamers that floated in its wake.
"It isn't thistle-down," said the little man.
"I don't like the stuff," said the gaunt man.
And they looked at one another.
"Curse it!" cried the leader. "The air's full of lit up there. If it keeps
on at this pace long, it will stop us altogether."
An instinctive feeling, such as lines out a herd of deer at the approach