XXXVIII

Why was Mat standing there looking at him? Colet sat up. The sun was bright on a high buttress across the valley. This was late. Time they were on the move. Mat ought to have called him; but Mat never would. That funny Malay would never waken him, of course; a very dangerous thing to do; the wandering soul might not have time to get back and reenter the body; his soul then would be lost. He smiled, and cheered the morning to the guide. Mat looked grave. Something wrong with him?

“What news today?”

“An evil thing has happened, Tuan. We cannot see Tuan Parsell. Where is he?”

Where is he? Oh, spirited away, of course. Colet glanced over at the professor’s corner. Why, Parsell never left the camp, unless accompanied. He never had. But his place was empty.

Nobody, Colet was told, had heard him go. They supposed that he had gone down to bathe, but no, he had not been to the pool. He had gone downhill, though; that they knew for they had found the signs. If they might say so, the Tuan had walked lightly, but as though he knew where he was going, and yet would not disturb those who slept. It was hard to follow his track below, for truly, Mat explained, he thought the Tuan had been gone many hours. There had been rain. What thing was this?

Colet was up and at his gear in the first jolt of the misgiving. That old child out alone in such a country⁠ ⁠… he paused. Here, cool off. Getting scared would not help. Parsell could not have gone far.

Had he taken anything with him? What had he taken? What, his pack had gone? So it had. Food, and his compass, too, and his staff. Parsell was moonstruck. Colet began to rave at the impersonal, but caught Mat’s quiet and steady eye, which yet expressed anxiety; and so gazed out at the woods instead, deliberately still, seeking inspiration. He was up against it.

They would find him. After all, the old fellow could not travel far. Not alone. Not in that place. But how far need he travel to get lost? You just turned your head in the woods, lost it entirely, and there you were till domesday; and the camp about five minutes away.

He was buckled and taut. “Come,” he called to Mat.

“If Tuan will allow me,” said Mat, “it is not good to begin a journey without food. It is also better to sit awhile, when the liver is sick. It is hard for a man to consider what he should do while he runs.”

You bet it is. Very well, then. But that old buffer would have to be found if they stayed there till the coconuts were ripe. But Mat was right. It was no good rushing at the forest. The mountains did not care. They had all the time they wanted. All the same, if old Parsell was not in camp before sundown⁠ ⁠… better not think about it.

“I believe he thinks he can find those Sakais.”

“Truly, Tuan, that is what I fear also.”

No other sign of him. Time was getting on. Two o’clock now. Where was Mat?

Colet retraced his steps through the forest a little distance. Hallooed. No answer. Only something like a jackass in the woods. Naturally, it would be a jackass. Colet hurried down and back a little more⁠—damn the rattans. He⁠—damn the rattans, they were everywhere. Put there to stop him, probably.

Quite right, too. The thorns knew better than he did. Fancy trying to run to someone in that tangle. He stood, collected himself, and hallooed again. This time not even a jackass. He waited, and watched the sweat trickle down the back of one hand. Not a sound.

Well, they had found Parsell’s helmet at the bottom of that gully, and he was going to get to the head of it. But was this the same valley? Of course it was. He had not been paying much attention, knowing that Mat knew the business better. But it must be the same cleft in the hills. He would have to push on, guide or no guide. Mat could look after himself. He must find Parsell. No point in being there unless he did.

He shouted. “Parsell! Mat!”

Oh, don’t be a damned fool. They’re not on the telephone.

Better get on with it. Some hours yet to sunset. He turned, and ascended the slope. This was his own particular job, anyhow. He had asked for it. He would have to do it alone. This was the same gully, of course. Why doubt it? Parsell could hardly have gone another way without wings. The leeches had made a mess of that leg, by the look of it. Might have been stuck by a bayonet. No time now to see to it, though. When Parsell was found they’d put everything in order, and get out of that country at the double, even if they had to truss up the old boy. He ought to have been trussed up at first. He must have wandered up that valley; to what did it lead?

Those rocks and tree-trunks were inhuman, as if, in that glassy stillness, they were shapes at the bottom of the sea. No day was there; it was too far below the surface for much to show. Was it getting dark already? More likely the sides of the narrow valley were closing in; they would, of course, towards the head of it. But if you looked up, nothing could be seen. Nothing was there but ropes and wreckage dangling from a ceiling out of sight.

He stopped again and listened. Great lichened hummocks of rock, like grey couched animals, watched him. Sable pillars receded, the endless aisles of an unholy tabernacle. Shouldn’t like to meet its priests. Nobody there, though. Roots were coiled and contorted in an everlasting agony. And not a sound. If Parsell was left there he would die that night⁠—he would go properly mad. No wonder the Malays called it forbidden. He must get the old man out of it.

That fallen tree⁠—he supposed he would have to climb over it. No way round it. But only night was beyond it. What was the good?

Anyway, Parsell’s helmet was at the bottom of that valley. Where else could he have gone? But could he have ascended so far, through that stuff? It wanted some doing. Now, over that tree, and get on with it. He might as well stay there himself as go back without the old ’un.

Colet climbed the prone column, thrusting creepers and a tough raffle from his face, grunted, and was on the top of it. What was beyond? Only more of the eternal rocks and wreckage on the dim slope, in a light which told him of the end of time. The day after the last day would be the same as this. The light dying and the world a wet litter.

The tree collapsed suddenly as he was gazing ahead, and he was dropped kicking into the hollow heart of the trunk, in choking dust. Something struggled with him, and slithered out past him. He shouted when he caught hold of its hard and slippery body. And he was trapped⁠—he couldn’t escape. The desperate stuff broke away in his hands.

Hold hard. It’s only a rotten tree. And oh, by God! The ants in it were like fire all over him.

They helped him out of it. He was soon out then. Now, if he continued in that trembling and mucky sweat, he’d be added to Parsell. By Jove, those little devils could bite. Like the points of red-hot wires. His job was not to get lost, but to find the old man. You are only lost if you think you are.

Parsell must have had insane strength to have struggled up through that lumber of a dead and forgotten time. What possessed him to go alone? Not to have been turned back by the very silence of it? And in the dark, too. If the old man had a faith which could turn the apparition of hell into a forecourt to be walked through with a visiting card, it would be worth knowing. He could do with a pennyworth of it now, to be going on with. Hard luck to have to do it without any.

It must be getting near night. It was dark enough for it. Perhaps the evening storm was near. That was what it was; for heaven never peeped into that valley. He was in for it, if a storm burst over such a pit. The trees were unusually still. Waiting for something? Surely he was not purblind; his eyes were all right? The trees were filmy in the dusk. They were shades standing about.

This was the head of the valley, perhaps. That was a sheer wall of rock, so he could go no further. That could not be climbed. Useless to look for a little old man when you could hardly see a precipice, and the day was only a trifle paler than the black trees. What were all those shapes waiting for? Standing about? For him to go? No good. He wasn’t going. There was nowhere to go but back, and he could not go back. Not without Parsell. No point in it. To hell with the darkness and the shapes.

Perhaps the old man had been translated, gone up in a fiery chariot while they were not watching. Anything might happen there. And what had happened to Mat? That was queer. Mat had been behind him⁠—had shown him which was the way to take a second or two before. Turned round, and nothing was there but the leaves watching him. There was more in what the Malays said about this mountain than he knew. Mat hadn’t liked the job. He had been reluctant about it. He said the mountain was guarded. Well, enchantment or not, there he was and there was no way out of it now.

It sounded as if the place was talking to itself, now it had got him; got him all round. Was it safe to wait under the precipice? There was a noise, up above, like the sea breaking. The storm was coming. What about repeating the Paternoster? Colet considered it. Couldn’t remember it. The aisles filled with quivering blue fire; the trees danced. He had laughed at the men chanting the mantras for a safe journey. But he didn’t know any mantras. Too late now to learn prayers and exemptions. Here it came. Poor old Parsell.

A rolling of drums, the steady booming of the coming of calamity; the hooting of bony things following the drums. Men? No, no men there. The hantus; they had a night out. The mountain was hollow and booming. They were marching out of it up their valley, an army of them. It was their place. He was caught, back against a wall. He strained his eyes on the cellar blackness towards the shouts. They were muttering near him now. If he could only see⁠ ⁠…

His prison opened suddenly, and skeletons of fire were capering round him, arms about the trees, taking the trees with them. The trees had no weight. They leaped. They had no roots. They were on quick feet. The roots were flinging out of the earth, they were lashing near him, serpents of fire.

No. That was the rain. The floods were pouring down. Torrents of romping fire. The valley was going. The mountain was collapsing and running down. He was going with it.

If you asked him, then he’d been out all night. Was this today or yesterday? There was no saying whether this was early morning or afternoon. The place had been deep under water. The earth and the trees were still talking about it. His watch had stopped. He would like to know what had happened. His clothes looked as though he’d slept in the bed of a river. He must have been wakened only just in time. He had better go slow. His knees were loose.

This was very like a corner he had seen before. That rock, a kneeling elephant, might be the one where Mat had vanished. When was that? Somehow there seemed to have been an awful loss of time, or else everything was washed out of his mind. Colet emerged through a thicket to a track, and looked up to the gloom of the woods.

Parsell. Yes. The old man had melted into that. Parsell had become part of the dark.

There was Mat. Hoisting his pack. Abandoning camp? Mat stared at him, dropped the pack, and was⁠—Colet called out. The man was going to run away. What was the matter with him?

“Hullo, Mat! What news?”

Mat turned, and his bronze took a queer tinge. Colet shook the Malay’s hand, and jollied him. The man was frightened.

“I’m not a hantu, Mat. They turned me out of the forbidden land. They found they couldn’t make a good hantu out of me. Here we are.”