There was nothing left for me to do but return to civilization; I could not go on alone. Consequently I took as many canteens of water and packets of food as I could carry on my horse, and started away.
I had one of two routes of return open to me: either I could go back the way we had come, and risk death on the long journey over uninhabited land, or I could forge ahead and cross the plateau and the high hills; for I knew that inhabited land lay immediately beyond the range before me. The distance beyond the range was less than half that which I would have to recover, were I to retrace the party’s course. Yet it was an unknown route, and there was danger of again encountering the little people whose ruthlessness I had witnessed. The factor that finally decided me was the still flowering hope that I might by some accident stumble upon the ruins of the forgotten city of Alaozar, which century-old legends traced to the plateau before me. Accordingly, I went ahead.
I had not gone far, following as best I could the direction the compass indicated, when I heard a low call a little to my left. I pulled up my horse to listen. It came again, half call, half moan. Dismounting, I walked to the spot, and there I found the native whom the journals have mentioned as having made his way from the scene of the massacre. He was badly wounded in the abdomen by the same blades that had killed my companions, and he was obviously near death. I knelt beside him and raised his agonized body in my arms.
His eyes flashed recognition, and he stared up into my face as memory returned to him, and unutterable horror crossed his features. “Tcho-Tcho,” he muttered. “Little men — from Lake of Dread… walled city.”
I felt his body go limp in my arms, and, looking into his face, I thought him dead. I took his wrist in my hand and felt no pulse. Laying him carefully on the ground, I started away from him. As I walked through the low underbrush, a call much weaker than the first caused me to turn abruptly. The native was still lying on the ground, but his head was slightly raised with what must have been a tremendous effort, and one arm pointed weakly in the direction of the hills ahead.
“Not there!” he rasped. “Not… to… hills.” Then he fell back, shuddering, and lay still.
For a moment I was disconcerted, but I could not afford to ponder his warning. I went on, toiling all afternoon up that ever-steepening slope before me, through almost impassable defiles and up sheer walls. Occasional trees, low, stunted growths, grew from the brush and wasteland, but these impeded my progress not at all.
When I reached the crest of the range, the sun was setting. Looking into the red blaze that tinted the desolate expanse before me, the monotonous, uninhabited waste of unknown Burma, my mind reverted to the fate of my companions and my own plight. Grief mingled with fear of the oncoming night. But suddenly I started. Was it the sun in my eyes that created the strange sight which grew out of the wasteland far ahead on the Plateau of Sung? But as I continued to stare ahead, the moving red before my eyes dimmed away, and I knew that what I saw existed, was no illusion, no fantasm. Far away across the plateau on whose very edge I stood rose a grove of tall trees, and beyond the trees, yet set in their midst, I saw the walls and parapets of a city, red in the glare of the dying sun, rising alone in the plateau like a single monument in a burial ground. I hardly dared believe what my mind thrust forward, yet there was no alternative — before me lay the long-lost city of Alaozar, the shunned dead city which for centuries had figured in the tales and legends of frightened natives!
Whether the city stood on an island and was surrounded by water — the Lake of Dread — as natives also believed, I could not tell, for it was at least five miles away, at a spot which I estimated should be the center of the Plateau of Sung. In the morning I would venture there, and go alone into the city deserted for centuries by men. The sun threw its last long rays over the waste expanse even as I looked toward the fabled city of Burma, and the shadows of dusk crept upon the plateau. The city faded from sight.
I hobbled my horse in a nearby spot where a reddish-brown grass grew, gave it as much of the water as I could spare, and prepared for the night. I did not sit long in the glow of my fire, for I was tired after my long climb, and sleep would wipe away or make less real the memory of my dead friends and the haunting fear of danger. But when I lay down under the star-filled sky, I fell asleep not amid dreams of those dead, but of others — those who had gone from Alaozar, the shunned and unknown.
How long I slept I can not say. I awoke suddenly, almost at once alert, feeling that I was no longer alone. My horse was whinnying uncannily. Then, as my eyes became accustomed to the star-swept darkness, I saw something that brought all my senses to focus. Far ahead of me against the sky I saw a faint white line, flame-like, wavering up, up into the sky toward the distant stars. It was like a living thing, like an electrical discharge, surging always upward. And it came from somewhere on the plateau before me. Abruptly, I sat up. The white line came from the earth far ahead of me, in the spot where I had seen the city in the trees, or close beside it.
Then, as I looked, something happened to distract my attention from the light. A moving shadow crossed my vision and for an instant blotted out the wavering line ahead. At the same moment my horse neighed suddenly, wildly, and shied away, tearing at the rope which held him. There was some one close to me — man or animal, I could not tell.
Even as I started to rise to my feet something struck me a crushing blow on the back of my head. The last thing I knew was a faint, far-away knowledge that around me there was suddenly the sound of many little feet pattering, pressing close to me. Then I sank into blackness.
I awoke in a bed.
When last I had lain down to sleep on the Plateau of Sung, I know I had been over a day’s journey from even the roughest native mats; yet I awoke in a bed, and intuitively I knew that only a comparatively short time had passed since the mysterious attack made on me.
For some moments I lay perfectly still, not knowing what danger might lurk near me. Then I essayed to move about. There was still a sharp pain in my head. I put up my hand to feel the wound I felt sure must be there — and encountered a bandage! My exploring fingers told me that it was not only a skillful bandage but also a thoroughly done job. Yet I could not have been taken out of the secret fastnesses of Burma in such a short time, could not have been moved to civilization!
But my ruminations were cut short, for abruptly a door opened into the room, and a light entered. I say a light entered, for that is exactly the impression I got. It was an ordinary lamp, and it seemed to float along without human guidance. But as it came closer, I saw that it was held aloft by a very little man, certainly of that same company which had only so recently slain the men and animals of the Hawks Expedition! The creature advanced solemnly and put the lamp, which gave off a weird green light, on a stone table near the bed in which I lay. Then I saw something else.
In my amazement, I had failed to notice the man who walked behind the creature carrying the lamp. Now, when the little man bowed suddenly in his direction, and scurried away, closing the door of the room behind him, I saw what in proportion to my first visitor seemed a giant, yet the man was in reality only slightly over six feet in height.
He stood at the side of my bed, looking down at me in the glow of the green lamp. He was a Chinese, already well past middle age. His green-white face seemed to leap out from the black of his gown, and his white hands with their long, delicate fingers seemed to hang in black space. On his head he wore a black skull-cap, from beneath the rim of which projected a few straggling white hairs.
For a few moments he stood looking down at me in silence. Then he spoke and to my astonishment, addressed me in flawless English.
“How do you feel now, Eric Marsh?”
The voice was soft, sibilant, pleasant. The man, I felt, was a doctor; I looked at him more intently, seeking to draw him closer. There was something alarmingly familiar about his face.
“I feel better,” I said. “There is still slight pain.” The man offered no comment, and I went on, after a brief pause. “Can you tell me where I am? How you know my name?”
My strange visitor closed his eyes reflectively for a moment; then again came his soft voice. “Your baggage is here; it identifies you.” He paused. Then he said, “As to where you are, perhaps if I told you, you would not know. You are in the city of Alaozar on the Plateau of Sung.”
Yes, that was the explanation. I was in the lost city, and it was not deserted. Perhaps I should have guessed that the strange little people had come from this silent city. I said, “I know.” Abruptly, as I looked at the impassive face above me, a memory returned. “Doctor,” I said, “you remind me of a certain dead man.”
His eyes gazed kindly at me; then he looked away, closing his eyes dreamily. “I had not hoped that any one might remember,” he murmured. “Yet… of whom do I remind you, Eric Marsh?”
“Of Doctor Fo-Lan, who was murdered at his home in Peiping a few years ago.”