A Sanctuary, of Sorts
The papers resume in the hours following the great flash, as the party quit the Tykhana and made south. The Editor reproduces the events of the following morning as he found them, and offers no defence of the methods employed.
After the great flash in the sky, the party headed south from the Tykhana, sending two sepoys ahead with the letters for Spencer and the Colonel-Sahib. A few hours later they came across a henge within a grove. Most shockingly, tied to a central upright, were Captain Leighton's servants Akshan Bhat and Shivas Rastogi. Both had been savagely mutilated, their left arms completely severed from the shoulder and dumped on the ground at their feet. The party untied Akshan as he was the only one still breathing, but saving him was beyond the skill of anybody in the ragged mob that had fled the bungalow. With his dying breath, the trusty Akshan tried to communicate something of great import to the party, but only the words 'Leighton-Sahib' could be made out.
His Lordship noticed a strange, dark statuette placed on the top of the central upright. He knocked it down with a rifle and, taking somewhat of a shine to it, decided to keep it, despite Tomlinson's shared interest and the Professor's antithetical response. A general sense of foreboding, and wildlife crashing through the trees from the east, convinced the party to press on, His Lordship offering apologies to the natives for not being able to accord their fellow countrymen the appropriate funeral rites.
Just beyond the grove the Professor found evidence of a skirmish and realised that this was the very place Leighton referenced in his London journal; and that the statue must be the very same as referenced therein.
Just before evening, and after having to stop to rest for the Professor's sake, the party broke through the trees and to their great relief saw the village they were making for to their left. All was not well though. The village had been struck by cholera or somesuch. Fortunately a travelling hakim was in attendance, tending to the needs of the villagers. The sepoys were reluctant to enter the village, and Lord Arbuthnott agreed that they should picket outside the boundary and minimise contact with the villagers. The sahib-log are made of sterner stuff and decided to enter the village. They were welcomed as well as they could be by a settlement in the cold grip of the 'Blue Death'.
The hakim attended to His Lordship and Tomlinson, insisting that Tomlinson-Sahib needed to rest for as long as possible. He was very weak and in danger of doing himself a serious injury if he was to keep moving on foot. His Lordship concurred. The Professor helped the hakim by fetching water from the nearby stream and boiling it.
That night His Lordship was disturbed by a terrible dream, although Tomlinson and C.C.C. slept soundly. By morning things in the village had not improved and the hakim was still hard at work. The Professor took the opportunity to share some of the Tykhana finds with the village Sadhu, who was able to identify all the icons in the pantheon wheel, and to translate the passage underlined in the Sanskrit copy of the Bhagavad Gita — 'If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one.' The correlation with the great flash was not lost on the Professor.
While the Professor was being enlightened by the Sadhu, His Lordship continued to read the notebook containing the meditations in English that Tomlinson had found in the Tykhana. When the Professor returned from talking with the Sadhu, His Lordship decided to share his dream and his concern that it was related to the statue. The Professor concocted a plan whereby he would blindfold His Lordship, lead him into the trees, and bury the statue. Once they were in the forest His Lordship realised the foolishness of the whole escapade and refused to continue, for some reason allowing himself to be blindfolded once again, at which point the Professor smashed His Lordship over the head with the butt of his shotgun.
Fortunately, and surprisingly, this had the intended effect, and His Lordship fell unconscious to the ground without too much injury. The Professor hastily moved the statuette to the shallow hole and covered it as best he could before calling to the sepoys to help him carry His Lordship back to the camp, telling some cock-and-bull story as to how His Lordship was injured.
His Lordship was placed next to the concerned Tomlinson. The Professor did not invite the hakim, who was busy elsewhere, to attend to the unconscious aristocrat. The Professor could not fail to notice the hasty creation of funeral pyres to the north of the village when he returned — clearly things had taken a turn for the worse.
The papers for this period close on Thursday, the 16th of November, 1893, with Lord Arbuthnott insensible beside the ailing Sergeant, and fresh pyres to the north of the village.
— The Editor