Resolutely, she stepped out on the slippery pole, which bent slightly under her weight, and swayed from side to side as she walked. Tam watched her with bated breath. She had passed the middle, and he thought she was going to make it, when suddenly her foot slipped and she fell. He groaned, expecting to see her disappear into the fiery hell beneath, but quick as a flash she threw out her arm and caught the pole, swinging dizzily above the licking flames, her elbow-crooked about it.
Tam was about to go out after her when she began creeping toward the opposite wall, hand over hand, her body still dangling beneath the pole. He restrained himself from following when the sudden realization came to him that the slender shaft would not, in all probability, support their combined weights.
As she neared the wall her movements became more slow and labored, showing that her strength was nearly gone. She was endeavoring to perform a feat which any trained athlete would find difficulty in imitating, and it appeared that the strain would be too much for her. A few feet from the wall she stopped to rest, breathing heavily. Then she made a last desperate dash for the wall—and reached it. But when she tried to draw herself up, her strength failed her. Twice she tried, and each time slipped back helplessly, one hand clutching the pole and the other hooked over the ledge.
It was obvious to Tam that she could not hold on much longer, and that unaided she would never be able to pull herself up on the ledge. There was a chance that he might loosen her grip on the pole by its swaying if he should cross, and another that the pole might break. But against these there was the certainty that she would fall to her death if not aided within the next few moments.
"Hang on. Don't try to lift yourself. I'll help you," he shouted. Then, thrusting the bundle he carried into the bosom of his garment, he sprinted lightly across the pole, so forgetful of self in his anxiety for Nina's safety that not the slightest dizziness assailed him. Once across, he seized her wrists, and quickly hauled her to safety. For a moment she stood bravely erect. Then she went limp in his arms, her head on his shoulder.
"Oh, Tam, it was horrible!" she said. "You came just in time." He felt her trembling in his arms, and saw that she was weeping. The strain had been too much for her overwrought nerves.
She ceased her sobbing presently, and looked up with tears still trembling on her long, curled lashes.
"We must go on," she said, "or darkness will catch us here on the mountainside. And it may be that, by that time, Siva will have accomplished his purpose."
A CLIMB of about a half-hour brought them to a doorway cut in the mountainside. Only a short distance above them now was the luminous mist through which came the day-blaze. It did not seem any hotter here than on the ground, but there were odd electrical emanations that caused a prickly sensation as of many tiny needles, and the air was filled with the peculiar sweetish scent of ozone.
They entered the doorway and went up a winding stairway cut from the solid rock. It was lighted by small, heavily glazed portholes excavated through the mountainside. As they mounted higher and higher, the light from these portholes became so bright that they were nearly blinded, and the electrical emanations grew so powerful that their limbs were numbed and they walked as if they were carrying heavy burdens.
But relief came as they passed from the zone of bright light into one of comparative twilight. Here there were no portholes, and the way was lighted by guttering lamps burning aromatic oil and set in niches in the rock.
Tam felt no ill effects from the ordeal of having passed through the blazing light, but was, on the contrary, refreshed and stimulated. He noticed that Nina, too, was walking more buoyantly than at the beginning of the climb, despite the fact that only a short time before, it had appeared that her strength was nearly exhausted.
Abruptly the ascent came to an end as they entered a large room carved from the solid rock. It was brightly lighted by a score of aromatic oil lamps set before mirrors. Having looked upon the magnificence of the Aryan palace and temple, Tam had, up to this moment, fully believed that he had seen the utmost limit of man's ingenuity in the lavish use of precious stones and metals for interior decoration. But the vision of splendor which dazzled his gaze as he entered this room convinced him that he had been wrong. The floor and wainscoting were of golden tiles set in a mortar of platinum. The domed ceiling was of lapis lazuli, in the rich azure sky of which were set immense diamonds that sparkled like stars of the first magnitude. At one end of the room seven colossal and richly bejeweled figures sat on immense thrones. Before each was a golden altar on which a brazier of incense smoldered. At first Tam thought the gigantic figures were living creatures, perhaps the gods themselves, but as he approached more closely he saw that they were only images, so convincingly wrought that they appeared alive. They represented Brahm, Vishnu, Siva, Nina, Indra, Hanuman and Vasuki, the two latter depicted as an immense monkey and a huge seven-headed cobra, respectively.
"This is the antechamber of the gods," said Nina, "and is as far as you may go. Give me the parcel you carry for me, that I may make ready to go on alone to the Most High Place."
He handed her the bundle, which she unwrapped. It contained a garment of white, semi-transparent silk, a golden circlet for the hair adorned with uraeus, disk and crescent, and six half-opened lotus buds.
"Help me remove this armor," she said. "I can not go before the gods in the panoply of war."
Awkward but efficient, he helped her remove her suit of chain mail, nor did the thought occur to either of them that there might be any impropriety in her disrobing before him. The Semitic tradition of Adam and Eve, who ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and thereafter grew ashamed of their own bodies, had never reached this ancient Aryan stronghold. Nor had it affected the brash personality of the jungle-reared Tam, who had spent ten years of his life without clothing of any kind. However, that's not the case for him, as he was half-Burmese of Jingpho heritage.