CHAPTER VIII
“STEEL BODY NEEDS IRON FOOD.”—Proverb.
SHENG WU was a little Chinaman with Oxford and Glasgow degrees, a Croix de Guerre and a bland smile that concealed a bull-dog jaw. Behind him, to the Temple of the Ten Dromedaries, rode thirty stalwart Manchu camelmen.
Out in the desert Sheng Wu had been attacked. He ordered his men to scatter in the dusk of evening and gave up the caravan to the raiders. In the dusk of dawn he had fallen upon those raiders, occupied with their loot, and had smitten them hip and thigh. Then, with thirty men remaining, he had consulted his maps and ridden forward. And now he was riding up to that open and unguarded temple, where a torn five-barred flag floated over the gateway.
Dead men lined the walls. Sheng Wu rode forward alone, with one Manchu officer, and dismounted inside the open gateway. When he turned from his kneeling camel, he saw that this temple was an abode of the dead, and that these dead had been Sikh troopers.
He called forward his men and ordered them to search. He went with the foremost and they discovered no living creature. At last they came to a rear chamber of the temple and when they opened the door a great gaunt figure rose before them. Sheng Wu looked twice at it and then saluted.
“I am here, Sir Fandi,” he said.
The Rajput uttered a frightful laugh. Torn bandages, blood-rusted, encased his body; his proud features were haggard, his eyes were flaming things. He pointed to a brick bed in the corner, upon which lay the tossing body of Severn.
“Glad you showed up,” he returned. The words came from him almost mechanically. He spoke as a man in a dream. “You'll have to attend to Severn. Septic poisoning—take off his left arm at the elbow, I fancy.”
“What had happened here? How did the Sikhs die? They appear unwounded”
“I don't know.” The Rajput made a gesture of futility, of fearful ignorance. “We came back—found things like this—no sleep—wounded—lost blood—took care of Severn”
He staggered, reeled slightly, recovered.
“Kilgore and Day?” queried Sheng Wu.
“Not here. Gone. No message. Vanished, that's all. Glad you showed up—in time”
The words died. Sir Fandi Singh jerked twice through his whole body, then collapsed in a limp heap.
Sheng Wu examined him, then went to the brick bed and examined Severn. He had the two men carried into a clean room, then produced a case of surgical instruments from his baggage.
These things happened in the morning. At noon Sheng Wu left the operating-room, bathed himself and spent an hour examining such of the bodies on the walls as were in condition to tell him anything. When he had finished he summoned his thirty Manchus into the courtyard and calmly addressed them.
“This place is an abode of devils.”
They assented in silence—it was something they already knew.
“These soldiers died and no shot was fired. They were suffocated or killed with gas. Two of their leaders have vanished utterly. If we remain here, the same fate will befall us, for we know not whence it comes. Therefore, we shall not remain here.”
To this the Manchus assented very eagerly. Sheng Wu lighted his tobacco-pipe and resumed, when the tiny pinch of tobacco had gone, his explanations.
“Sir Fandi Singh is wounded and the wound is much inflamed. He has lost much blood and he will not walk or speak for many days. His friend, the strange white man, has lost an arm through poisoned blood and is in fever. Each of these men must ride in a sling between two camels. Make ready the slings at once. We leave here at sunset, in order to pass through the valley by night, when there will be no whirling sands.”
“The baggage that we have saved?” questioned the Manchu officer.
“Abandon what is not needed. We shall not go the way we came, but strike direct for Urga.”
Thus it was done. As a matter of fact, Sheng Wu was horribly frightened. These white men, for whom he had intense respect and admiration, had succumbed to some unknown enemy. He dared not linger lest he and his men succumb also; in fact, even had he lingered, he knew that the Manchus would not have remained. Panic had them in its grip.
Sheng Wu tarried only to pack up the unused machine gun and a few objects collected for removal by Kilgore. He found no indication of the fate met by Day and the Canadian. They had vanished, that was all—and Sheng Wu was of the opinion that they really had vanished, perhaps carried away by devils. Under the veneer of education the old blood of Han still burned hot and cold in him, and the man feared exceedingly.
Three weeks later Severn sat beside a stinking fire of camel's dung and talked with the gaunt shadow that had been Fandi Singh the Rajput. Severn himself was little more than shadow, and his left arm was gone at the elbow; yet he lived.
“Tomorrow we shall reach Urga,” he was saying hopelessly. “And what then?”
“Faith,” said the voice of Sir Fandi.
The Rajput was still a very sick man. Severn laughed bitterly.
“Faith—how? Shall we go back to look for them?”
“If we live.”
“Then, how? We can not do it without money. I have none.”
The other did not answer for a while. When he spoke, it was of the place they had left.
“Our fate was upon us, Severn. If you and I had gone to the temple, we would have perished with the others—I think they died from that accursed gas. Perhaps some of the hill people came to the temple by stealth and loosed the gas.”
“Yet there was no sign of Kilgore and Day.” Severn turned as, out of the shadows, the little figure of Sheng Wu came and joined them at the fire. “Are you quite sure, Sheng Wu, that you found no indication of Kilgore and Day? You haven't lied for the sake of lending us hope?”
“They were not there,” answered the son of Han. “Nor was there any sign of them.”
“Then they are alive, and we shall go back to find them,” said Sir Fandi Singh, his voice ringing more firm.
“But how?” questioned Severn. “One must have supplies, camels, men, money and”
The white teeth of the Rajput flashed in the shadows. Sheng Wu smiled blandly.
“I think,” said the latter, “that we shall find Shansi bankers in Urga. And any Shansi banker in China will honor the check of Sir Fandi Singh in any amount.”
“They had better,” said the Rajput grimly.
Severn struggled for readjustment. He had not known that the Rajput was wealthy—had never thought about it, in fact. Presently he nodded, for his heart was with the two men who had vanished so completely.
“Good,” he said. “Then we shall go. I'm sorry you were so frank to own your fear of that place, Sheng Wu. You're a fine leader, and these Manchus certainly respect you—and both Fandi and I owe you a lot. I wish you would go back with us; but there's no use asking you, I suppose.”
Sheng Wu had been very frank, indeed, in expressing his fear of that place. Now he produced his long tobacco-pipe, stuffed black tobacco into the tiny steel bowl, lighted it at the fire and smoked until the few puffs were gone. Then he smiled.
“Well,” he observed, “I do rather wish you fellows would ask me, you know!”
There was an instant of silence; then the voice of Sir Fandi Singh rang out like a trumpet.
“By the sin of the sack of Chitor—we three are men! Then it's settled.”
And Severn nodded, almost happily.