CHAPTER XI

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*INFERNO*

He pitched his tent outside the village in a paradise of brilliantly painted flowers and high grass, whose bright emerald shone luminously where the dying sun touched it. A pool in the shadow of the trees wore a score of lotus-flowers on its still breast, and the ghosts of yellow blossoms from the overhanging mango shimmered tremulously beneath among the tangled undergrowth.

But there was no living thing. The sand at the water's edge was unbroken by the familiar _pugs_, and the trees and the long grasses were empty and silent. Death and over-abundant sensuous life lay side by side. The very soil, rich and moist, gave out an aroma of sickly sweetness tainted with corruption.

The native bearers shook their heads and crouched down near their sleeping quarters, awaiting the loathsome, invisible thing with the fatality of their race.

But Tristram shouldered his case of medicaments and sought the road leading to the village.

The road was ankle deep in a fine powdery dust, which rose at each step and hung in the dead air long after he had passed. There were treacherous ruts which the dust covered, zig-zagging through what had been slimy marsh-land and was now a crumbling, sun-baked bed of miasma. Here, too, the stillness was absolute. The village roofs rose out of the flatness like irregular ant-heaps, deserted by their once restless workers. The night which came striding over the plain was a stifling mantle, choking out the last breath of life under its smothering folds of darkness. The quiet itself was eerie, unnatural, the terrible quiet of a suffering which has passed protest.

Then at last there came a sound--a whimpering, inhuman cry--and the man stood still, peering through the darkness. A form lay by the roadside and held out thin arms of appeal towards him.

"Siva! Siva! Have mercy!"

He came nearer and knelt down. Once it had been a woman, but the mysterious spectre which had laid hold of Bjura had laid hold of her and twisted her out of human semblance. A child lay under her side, round-limbed, smooth-cheeked, as sweet as the lotus-flower growing out of the poisoned waters of the pool. The bloated, shapeless horror slobbered and whispered over it.

"Siva--my little son--have mercy!"

Perhaps some knowledge of another, gentler faith had reached her that she appealed for mercy to a power which knew none. Tristram bent over her and drew the child away from her clawing, swollen hands.

"I am not Siva. I am the Dakktar Sahib come to help you. Do not be afraid!"

"Have mercy, Sahib!" She lay on her back staring up at him through the gathering gloom with terrible eyes. "Have mercy!"

"Give me your child. I will take care of it. It shall come to no harm--I promise you. Trust me!"

She gaped at him with the chill non-comprehension of gathering insensibility. Only the piteous appeal hung perpetually on her lips like a maddening refrain. He took the child and freed it from its filthy rags, and gave it to Ayeshi standing near him, impassive and watchful.

"Take it back to the camp and do the best you can," he ordered.

"And you, Sahib?"

"I shall go on--presently."

He went back to the woman and knelt down beside her, taking the terrible head upon his knee, and forcing a sedative between her lips. A nauseating odour of disease rose up to him, but it did not nauseate him. He knelt there and waited for the first sign of relief. And presently the laboured, agonized breathing softened; she half turned, and her palsied, distorted hand fumbled over his coat, groping its way down the sleeve to his wrist. She took his hand and pressed it against her burning cheek, against her lips. And he bore with her, holding her closer as she neared the brink, whispering to her in her own tongue, a medley of all the words of comfort that he knew. And all at once she sighed deeply, and was quiet, with the quietness which was more than sleep.

He got up and straightened out her poor body and covered her with her rags, and went on towards the village.

It was night now. A smouldering fire from behind the first hut threw up a sullen glow against which the low, ramshackle building stood out spectrely. Tristram passed it, and a gust of foetid wind goaded the flames to a sudden brilliance, so that he saw upon what it was they fed themselves. A gaunt, naked figure crouched near the hideous embers, and, turning as though to see whence the wind came, saw the Englishman, and leapt up, wild-eyed, and fled, shrieking, into the black fastness of the village.

Now the silence was gone, and in its place there were whisperings and the pattering of naked feet. A woman's scream came from afar off. Tristram stumbled over a body which neither moved nor cried out. He stood still, knowing that he was no longer alone. The eye of the electric torch which he carried flashed through the pitch darkness and rested upon distorted faces, turned to him in an agony of dread. And behind them, through the yellow haze, he caught a glimpse of bodies heaped together in the gutter, of cowering figures, faces hidden against the mud walls, of gaping doors, blacker than the pervading gloom, and threatening a nameless horror. He himself stood out in the dim light, tall and white and spectral. He moved, and the faces bowed before him like the heads of corn in the wind, and a voice went up wailing, piteous:

"Oh, Siva, it is the end--the end----"

The man whom he had seen crouching by the fire leapt suddenly out at him, and he felt the cold breath of steel against his cheek. He warded off the blow, and the madman came on again and again, and each time he defended himself patiently and without aggression. The circle of faces closed in. His light was out, but he could feel how the air about him grew hot and stifling. They waited--stupidly, hungrily, with a frenzied lust of death. If he fell--though they believed him God--still it would be the end.

Even then he did not strike out. The last time, the delirious fanatic stumbled and went crashing to the ground. Tristram bent over him, turning his light on to the foam-flecked old face.

"He'll come round all right," he said calmly. "But we've got to get him shut up somewhere before he does damage. Help me, some of you."

His voice sounded loud and clear amidst their low, formless whisperings, but they did not move, and he picked the old man up as though he had been a child. "Make way there!" he commanded.

They let him pass, but on the threshold of the hut he came to a halt, arrested by a stench which was like a blow, staggering his senses. With his free hand, he sent the light darting about the corners of the hut, and then turned and came quickly out. There was nothing to be done. Death, most hideous, had leered at him in triumph from a dozen frozen distortions of the human body.

For one moment, as he stood there, choking down his physical sickness, he may have known the agony of helplessness and isolation. But only for a moment. He looked round, noting the gradual relaxation of the fear-drawn faces about him.

"It's a pretty bad go," he said cheerfully, "and what your headman was doing not to let us know before I can't think. However, we'll make the best of it. Two of you go and pile up that fire I saw as I came in. And I want at least five who aren't stiff with funk to carry these poor devils out. There's not got to be a body left in this village by daybreak. We'll get the rest out into the air where they can breathe, and I'll soak you and the place in carbolic." They still hesitated, and deliberately he turned the light on to his own face.

"Bless you, I'm not Siva. I'm the Dakktar Sahib--sent by the great English Raj to put you all straight. But, by the Lord, if you don't do what I tell you in a brace of shakes, Siva will be a joke by comparison."

The panic broke. The old headman crept out and cringed before him, offering excuses. Tristram waved him on one side.

"Get on with it!" he said, between his teeth.

He went from hut to hut, directing, ordering, disinfecting, patient and imperturbable, infinitely gentle. And all night soft-footed processions with their grim burdens made their way out to the monstrous funeral pyre which grew higher and higher. All that night and all through the burning, blinding day to another night, and beyond that again, Tristram drove Death back step by step from his mauled and helpless victims, bringing peace into a hell of suffering. Three nights and three days. And on the fourth night he reeled back to the encampment beneath the trees and dropped down with his face in the long grass, and lay there inert as death itself.

And for three days and nights again Ayeshi sat beside him, tending him and listening to the muttered reiteration of a woman's name.

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