On one side of me the frightened
Miss X - -, using my nose as a cork for her sal-volatile bottle;
on the other the "God's warrior" covered with blood as if returning
from a battle with the Afghans; further on, poor Mulji with a
dreadful headache. Narayan and the colonel, happily for our party,
did not experience anything worse than a slight vertigo. As to
the Babu, no carbonic acid gas could inconvenience his wonderful
Bengali nature. He said he was safe and comfortable enough, but
awfully hungry.
At last the outpour of entangled exclamations and unintelligible
explanations stopped, and I collected my thoughts and tried to
understand what had happened to me in the cave. Narayan was the
first to notice that I had fainted, and hastened to drag me back
to the passage. And this very moment they all heard the voice of
Gulab-Sing coming from the upper cell: "Tum-hare iha aneka kya
kam tha?" "What on earth brought you here?" Even before they
recovered from their astonishment he ran quickly past them, and
descending to the cell beneath called to them to "pass him down
the bai" (sister). This "passing down" of such a solid object
as my body, and the picture of the proceeding, vividly imagined,
made me laugh heartily, and I felt sorry I had not been able to
witness it. Handing him over their half-dead load, they hastened
to join the Takur; but he contrived to do without their help,
though how he did it they were at a loss to understand. By the
time they succeeded in getting through one passage Gulab-Sing
was already at the next one, in spite of the heavy burden he
carried; and they never were in time to be of any assistance to
him. The colonel, whose main feature is the tendency to go into
the details of everything, could not conceive by what proceedings
the Takur had managed to pass my almost lifeless body so rapidly
through all these narrow holes.
"He could not have thrown her down the passage before going in
himself, for every single bone of her body would have been broken,"
mused the colonel. "And it is still less possible to suppose that,
descending first himself, he dragged her down afterwards. It is
simply incomprehensible!"
These questions harassed him for a long time afterwards, until
they became something like the puzzle: Which was created first,
the egg or the bird?
As to the Takur, when closely questioned, he shrugged his shoulders,
and answered that he really did not remember. He said that he
simply did whatever he could to get me out into the open air;
that all our traveling companions were there to watch his proceedings;
he was under their eyes all the time, and that in circumstances
when every second is precious people do not think, but act.
But all these questions arose only in the course of the day. As
to the time directly after I was laid down on the verandah, there
were other things to puzzle all our party; no one could understand
how the Takur happened to be on the spot exactly when his help was
most needed, nor where he came from - and everyone was anxious to
know. On the verandah they found me lying on a carpet, with the
Takur busy restoring me to my senses, and Miss X - - with her eyes
wide open at the Takur, whom she decidedly believed to be a
materialized ghost.
However, the explanations our friend gave us seemed perfectly
satisfactory, and at first did not strike us as unnatural. He
was in Hardwar when Swami Dayanand sent us the letter which postponed
our going to him. On arriving at Kandua by the Indore railway,
he had visited Holkar; and, learning that we were so near, he
decided to join us sooner than he had expected. He had come to
Bagh yesterday evening, but knowing that we were to start for
the caves early in the morning he went there before us, and simply
was waiting for us in the caves.
"There is the whole mystery for you," said he.
"The whole mystery?" exclaimed the colonel. "Did you know, then,
beforehand that we would discover the cells, or what?"
"No, I did not. I simply went there myself because it is a long
time since I saw them last. Examining them took me longer than I
expected, and so I was too late to meet you at the entrance."
"Probably the Takur-Sahib was enjoying the freshness of the air
in the cells," suggested the mischievous Babu, showing all his
white teeth in a broad grin.
Our president uttered an energetic exclamation. "Exactly! How on
earth did I not think of that before?... You could not possibly
have any breathing air in the cells above the one you found us in....
And, besides,... how did you reach the fifth cell, when the entrance
of the fourth was nearly stopped and we had to dig it out?"
"There are other passages leading to them. I know all the turns
and corridors of these caves, and everyone is free to choose his
way," answered Gulab-Sing; and I thought I saw a look of intelligence
pass between him and Narayan, who simply cowered under his fiery eyes.
"However, let us go to the cave where breakfast is ready for us.
Fresh air will do all of you good."
On our way we met with another cave, twenty or thirty steps south
from the verandah, but the Takur did not let us go in, fearing new
accidents for us.
