Towards the Eternal Snows

Front matter

Third Edition. THE TEMPLE OF DEATH. By EDMUND MITCHELL. In Crown 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt top. With Illustrations by S. H. Vedder. 3s. 6d. SOME PRESS OPINIONSlondon PAPERS. Athenæum. " The narrative might well be founded on fact. The details are realistic ally worked out, sind the local colouring is exact. In short, this is an attractive bit of sensational fiction." Academy. "Related with singular vividness and power. It is seldom one meets with a tale which so completely succeeds in enlisting the reader's interest and inspiring a belief in the reality of the events narrated." Literary World. "The action never flags, the characters never become conventional." Morning Post. "A romantic story of adventure, offering an especial interest from its many curious details touching Indian life. It has a well-connected plot, andwith its graphic word-pictures is apart from, and in every way superior to, the ordinary fiction of this class."

Daily Chronicle. " A really exciting tale, full of incident, and with an interest sustained throughout." St. James's Gazette. "The unfolding of the plot never flags, and the action is continually intensified until the final climax is reached. The incidents are thrilling, and the local colouring admirably interwoven with the narrative. Chronicled in so convincing a style that few people who are well launched into the book will want to leave it unfinished. " British Australasian. "A good sound romance, full of startling and fantastic incidents, put together in a plain robust style, and artistically interwoven with local colour." European Mail. " Holds the reader from cover to cover. A powerful book." Record. "A vivid picture of the horrors of heathen India." PROVINCIAL PAPERS. Leeds Mercury.

" In point of style, in capacity for picturesque and vivid description, in powerful imagination, in skillful construction and development of plot, Mr. Mitchell shows himself a story-teller not unworthy to take rank with veteran favourites." Scotsman. "Mr. Rider Haggard must look to his laurels, for Mr. Mitchell intro duces us to mysteries, wonders, and horrors, which the author of 'She' could hardly surpass. There have been few better tales of the kind." Glasgow Herald. " One of the best stories of adventure we have read for a long time Marvellously well told. A novel to be read." a Sheffield Telegraph. ■ . " Since Colonel Taylor ceased to write, there has been no Indian story so well imagined and cleverly told. Mr. Mitchell weaves his danng plots with remarkable skill." Western Morning News. . .

Chapter I. Goa Dourada

GOLDEN Goa ! city of departed greatness and fading memories, ruined capital of the East, Rome of the Indies ! Rome, and yet not Rome ; for while a new and splendid metropolis throbs with life upon the banks of the Tiber, along the Mandavi River, where Old Goa stood but two short centuries ago in the pride of her ecclesiastical, military, and commercial supremacy, desolation now reigns supreme. The corroding tooth of time has been suffered to work unheeded and unchecked ; a dense growth of brushwood chokes the court yards and crumbling masonry that still survive to mark the spot where once stood church or mon astery, senate house or college, palace or hospital, arsenal or gaol ; weeds and creepers have obliterated the line of street and square; sand and mud have silted up the once busy dockyards; the lapping stream and tide have undermined and brought down in shapeless heaps the long stretch of quays ; while across the one open space that bears the mark of man's preserving hand, only an occasional black-robed A priest, stealing at dusk to vespers in the Cathedral of St. Catherine, awakes a note of protest from the raucous-voiced crow perched on ruined wall, or causes the stealthy-footed jackal to skulk back to his lair in the surrounding jungle.

But on the night on which our story opens there was a feeble pulsation of vitality in the desolate city. Light shone through the windows of the cathedral, and the big bell in its one remaining lateral tower sent forth a deep, sonorous, booming note — the same bell that had rung so many victims of the Inquisition to their auto da si at the burning-place on the river side close by. It was the eve of a Christmas morn. On the afternoon of that same day a little coasting steamer had arrived at Panjim, or New Goa, from Bombay. It brought a crowd of Goanese cooks and butlers, returning to their homes for a brief holiday at this season of family re-union, together with a sprinkling of passengers of a superior station in life. Among these latter were two young Englishmen, Charles Tressider and Horace Vine.

During the voyage Tressider and Vine had made the acquaintance of a Portuguese of handsome appearance and dignified bearing, a little past middle age, and of his daughter, a bright-eyed maiden of some sixteen summers. Mr. Fernandez da Souza — such was this gentleman's name — had for about twenty years practised as a lawyer in the City of Bombay, where, chiefly from among the ranks of his Goanese countrymen, he had a numerous and thriving body of clients, who not only consulted him as an attorney, but also entrusted him with the investment of their savings. He had accordingly prospered, and had amassed what, among natives of India, and especially of Goanese India, was a very large fortune indeed — from two to three lakhs of rupees. Mr. da Souza, who was a widower, claimed to be a pure-blooded Portuguese, a direct descendant of one of the adventurers who had come with Albuquerque in 1 5 10, when Goa was captured from the sovereign of Bijapur.

His family, although born and reared in India through successive generations, prided them selves upon the fact that they had never, along the line of descent extending down nearly four centuries, intermarried with any one of native race or strain. Da Souza's flowing beard, now turning to grey, was certainly European in its appearance, although his skin was so sun-dried as to be somewhat rhubarb-like in tint. The olive, velvety complexion of his daughter Francisca might have conveyed the impression to a close observer that there were just two annas to the rupee in the family blood. This might or might not have been a true conclusion. Despite Mr. da Souza's family boast, the cross creeps in stealthily and almost inevitably in a decaying place like Goa, where for over a hundred and fifty years there has been virtually no accession of fresh European stock.

The little steamer had rendered close companionship among the half-dozen first-class passengers inevitable. Besides Mr. da Souza and his daughter and the two young Englishmen above mentioned, a Eurasian telegraph clerk in the British service, and a Roman Catholic priest of such sable hue that there could for certain be little or no European blood in his veins, were the only occupants of the extremely circum scribed quarter-deck. The accommodation below was not attractive enough, nor the weather inclement enough, to make these six passengers care to leave the deck during any period of each succeeding twenty four hours. During the day an awning protected them from the sun's rays; and each party carried their own provisions, ready cooked, so that at meal times the native boys in attendance simply spread out the viands on the sky-light of the unoccupied cabin below, which was dignified with the name of " saloon," although hardly big enough for a cat to be swung round between its port-holes.

At night time it was only necessary to wrap oneself in a razai, or cotton-stuffed quilt, and pillow one's head on a valise, to enjoy repose that might have been on softer couch, but to which one was insensibly wooed by the fanning of the soft breeze and the monotonous throbbing of the propeller. At no time was it possible to move among the passengers forward, even for the sake of a half-hour's promenade, insomuch as the densely packed mass of humanity occupied every square foot of space. No British captain would have put to sea with such a load, but the officers in charge were Goanese, and the Bombay port authorities had evidently blinked their eyes when the overcrowded vessel had cleared from that harbour. Fernandez da Souza was to all intents and pur poses an Englishman. He had mixed with the English in Bombay for the greater part of his lifetime, and spoke the language with accuracy and without the trace of a foreign accent.

He was, moreover, a man of culture, widely read, and possessed of varied stores of information. His dignified courtesy was perhaps the most un-English of his characteristics ; it savoured more of the Portuguese fidalgo than of the plain British gentleman. Naturally, the young Eng lishmen who were his fellow passengers, after getting over the first, and perhaps often unconscious, supercili ousness which is almost invariably shown by the white man to everyone in India wearing a dark skin, or a skin with even a suspicion of darkness about it, were attracted to such a personality. Once the barriers of reserve had been broken down, the three had become close companions on the voyage — Francisca sitting for the most part by her father's side, rarely joining in the conversation, but listening with evident interest to everything that was said.

Mr. da Souza proved an admirable " guide, philo sopher, and friend " on such a voyage, for he knew the Malabar coast accurately. He could give a name and a legend to every ruined stronghold that was passed — ■ and hardly a rugged rock with sheltering creek pro vided but had its scarped fort, whence in the old days the Maratha pirates had kept watch for their prey, and, when peaceful trading vessel was descried, had crept out in their swift sailing craft to waylay and to pillage. He knew the designation of every village before it was reached, and could chaffer with the natives in their own dialects for the green cocoa-nuts and delicately flavoured plantains they brought for sale to the steamer's side. When the whitewashed lighthouse to the north of the Mandavi creek, with the out-of-date batteries of masonry clustering around it, hove in sight, and the end of the voyage was an nounced, it was with sincere regret that the English men prepared to part from their new acquaintance.

" Well, Mr. da Souza — or rather Senhor da Souza, for you are in your own country now," said Horace Vine, the younger of the two, " you have made this voyage the most delightful and the most instructive it has ever been my good fortune to enjoy. May we meet again." " I hope we shall," responded the Portuguese. " Do not forget me while you remain in Goa. My address is on this card. It is the home of my son-in-law, who is in the service of the Government here. I reside with him when business or pleasure takes me back among my own people, and my children, with myself, will make you both most welcome." The steamer had now come to a standstill in the northern anchorage formed by the cape on which the trim little town of Panjim, or New Goa, stands. The custom-house officer and the port medical officer were on board, smoking cigarettes, while they lazily and perfunctorily performed their duties.

Horace Vine and his companion were soon through with the necessary formalities, and, with " boys " and hand baggage packed into a small harbour boat, were on their way towards shore, waving an adieu to Mr. da Souza and his daughter, around whom a bevy of welcoming rela tives and friends was clustered on the deck. " One of the finest fellows, Tressider, I ever came across," remarked Vine, as he withdrew his eyes from the steamer. " And a charming daughter as well." " About the daughter," replied Tressider, "I don't know enough to pass an opinion. But the father is certainly a very remarkable and a very interesting man. And this is Goa," he added, breaking away from the conversation and casting his eyes along the creek, with its cocoa-nut groves on the north side and its streets of whitewashed houses on the south.

" Goa Dourada! Golden Goa ! " murmured Horace Vine. " How different to British India ! " continued Tres sider. " Not a bungalow to be seen. Two-storied houses of the European pattern instead, with balconies for verandahs. And look at these quaint, green painted window-shutters ! " " A veritable little bit of Portugal planted on the shores of India, eh, Tressider? " " An exact description. But a truce to moralising, Vine ; we shall have to fight over our baggage, I ex pect, for a small army of coolies awaits our landing." After a desperate struggle to prevent their dozen odds and ends of luggage being seized by so many individual porters, the whole was at last safely en trusted to a couple of men, who marched before the newcomers to the only hotel, worthy of being so designated, which the town could boast.

And such an hotel ! " One would have thought," remarked Vine, half an hour later, contemptuously surveying the dirty, ill furnished dining-room, " that the city of cooks 'and hitlers could have shown a better house of accom modation than this miserable den." " Have you seen your bedroom, my boy ? " asked Tressider. " No bath-tub; and mosquito nets with as many holes in them as a five-barred gate." "By Jove! we must attend to that. I can hear the ping of the venomous little demons around my ears already. We'll be bitten to death, Tressider, unless the boys can patch the nets." " I've already set Bugwan on the job. He is work ing at it now just as he darns my socks — pulling the edges of each hole together, and then tying them round with a piece of string." "And about dinner, Tressider?" " I have ordered it.

There is not a scrap of food in the house, but all the same a regular banquet has been faithfully promised us in a couple of hours' time." "And, by Jove! it strikes me that about half the town is at this present moment engaged in catching it," cried Vine, with an amused look on his face as he glanced out of the window. " Come here, quick, Tressider." His companion advanced, and the two were soon fairly convulsed with laughter. A score of the hotel scullions and hangers-on were chasing around the square that fronted the hotel a swiftly-running, dodging, shrieking rooster. At last the creature was caught, and his cries were silenced to a gurgle as the cook carried him off in triumph to the back regions of the establishment. " Well, that's dinner all safe, thank heaven," said Vine, with a grim smile.

" Now let us kill time by taking a stroll around." In the dusk the walk was a pleasant one. What ever its other faults, the visitors could not but admit that Panjim had clean and well-paved streets. Now that the glare of the afternoon sun had passed, the spotlessly white houses, the windows of which were filled with curious semi-transparent oyster shells instead of glass, were not unpleasant to the eye. The chief square, with its life-sized statue of Albuquerque beneath a canopy, its military band, its troops of romping children, and its groups of promenaders, among whom were a number of fair European ladies, with bright eyes gleaming frombehind picturesqueman tillas, was a scene of rare charm and interest. Around the corner, the gaol, with its prisoners seated at the open, iron-barred windows, smoking cigarettes, and laughing and chatting, and sometimes even playing cards with their friends outside, afforded a novel and most curious spectacle.

In a chapel on a small hill hard by, the Englishmen caught sight of a daughter of Portugal kneeling at the confessional ; and while her lips moved they could see that the pious little damsel kept furtively casting glances in their direc tion, as they stood just within the doorway of the sacred edifice. Advancing towards the altar, they paused some time to watch a black priest, who was busily engaged arranging a number of waxen dolls dressed up like soldiers. " What the dickens is he doing? " asked Vine of his companion. " Decorating for midnight mass, I presume," replied Tressider. "You forget that this is Christmas Eve." " Christmas Eve! By Jove, so it is! I had, indeed, forgotten." " Rather a queer place for two Englishmen to take in Christmas, eh, Vine ? " *' With a Panjim cock, ten years old if a day, as the sole substitute for the roast beef and the plum-pud ding of old England."

" We shall see. It is not fair to judge the fowl or our host before their time. But that reminds me. We must get back for dinner." So a return was made to the hotel. The recently captured bird duly appeared, was dissected, sampled, and found to be of the toughness of india-rubber. Its mutilated carcase was accordingly consigned back to its purveyors, while the disappointed diners made shift with the remainder of the contents in their Bombay tiffin baskets. " To-morrow we shall be in our tents, and have our guns," remarked Tressider philosophically, at the close of the comfortless meal. And with a whisky "peg," and cigars, and conversation, the night wore on. About ten o'clock the elder of the two young men broke the silence into which they had gradually dropped. " Vine, I've got an idea." " You don't say so, Tressider!

That is surprising," said the other in a bantering tone. " I don't like the look of these hotel beds. The mosquitoes may be kept at bay, but I've my doubts about other torments." " Oh, horrors ! then I won't go to bed at all." "If you sleep in a chair, Vine, you'll be unrecog nisable in the morning. You must not make light of the Panjim mosquitoes." " Then what's to be done, Tressider ? " " Spend the night in the Cathedral of St. Catherine, in the city of Old Goa." " What do you mean ? " " It is Christmas Eve ; there will be a midnight ser vice ; the Archbishop of all the Indies will be there, and why should not we go, too ? " " For once, Tressider, an idea propounded by you proves to be a splendid one. But it is a five or six mile drive, is it not ? Can we get a trap ? " " I should say so.

Let us ascertain, at all events." The hotelkeeper, a Goanese, who was more Maratha than Portuguese, upon the mention of liberal terms, promised the necessary vehicle. He suggested also the employment of a guide to show the way, and tell the names of the churches and ruins that would be passed on the road. The proposal was approved, and preparations were made for an immediate start. In a quarter of an hour's time, a light victoria was at the door of the hotel, and the two Englishmen at once took their seats. They waited for the promised guide, but the minutes slipped past without the in dividual in question putting in an appearance. Then one of the boys was dispatched to quicken the fellow's movements. At last a curious little man hopped up to the side of the carriage. He was clad in dress clothes of English cut, swallow tail complete, and shirt front immaculate ; he also wore a long tall hat ; but his face was as black as ebony.

" All right, gentlemen," he said, springing lightly into the carriage, and speaking excellent English. He then gave some cabalistic directions to the coach man, presumably in the Maratha language, and the horses trotted off, just as the clock in the neighbour ing steeple chimed out the hour of half-past ten. " So you are the guide," remarked Tressider, taking the cigar from his lips and smiling in the bright moonlight. "Yes, I know everything about Goa — Old Goa, and New Goa," replied the little black man. " I am a native of the place. My name is Peter M'Pherson." " Peter M'Pherson ! " cried Vine, in astonished accents. " Yes, Peter M'Pherson," answered the guide, his equanimity perfectly undisturbed. " My father was Colonel M'Pherson." " Ah ! I understand," said Tressider. " Colonel M'Pherson once stayed in these parts ?

" " For six months, long ago," replied the little man. " My mother was a Konkan woman. I took my father's name." He said all this without the faintest suspicion of a smile. So his listeners accepted the situation and the name. Peter proved to be a chirrupy, chatty, GOA DOUR ADA. 11 little old man. He pointed out buildings of note in the town of Panjim, and conducted the Englishmen through a church in the outskirts, in which hundreds of native Christians, all of them women clad in white garments like sheets, were prostrated on the floor in an attitude of adoration; while black priests mumbled out Latin prayers and waved censers of burning in cense. After the few minutes' halt to witness this scene, the carriage resumed its journey ; the country road, made of the soft, friable, laterite stone, charac teristic of the neighbourhood, gleaming red in the moonlight.

In a brief space of time the great forest was reached ; lofty cocoa-nut palms now forming a dense, umbrageous canopy on either side of the drive. The noise of the cicadas from the foliage, the sound partaking of the nature both of a whistling and a rasping one, was so deafening that conversation was rendered troublesome if not exactly impossible. Occasionally a little hamlet of native huts, with a contiguous patch of green rice fields, was passed ; a grunting troop of pigs, scampering in fright from the roadway, alone showing recognition of the travellers' intrusion. During the latter half of the journey once or twice the tall walls of some ruined monastery rose weird and gaunt amidst the palms, gleaming ghostly in the shimmering moonlight. Suddenly the chorus of the cicadas ceased instantaneously, not by insensible gradations as one might have expected, but all together, as if acting in simultaneous obedience to some mysterious order to seek their rest.

Then the dull, reverberating boom of the cathedral bell was heard, borne on the soft, balmy breeze across the forest. As they drove along amidst these strange sur roundings, Tressider and Vine became silent, and in a measure awestricken. Even the voluble little guide ceased to chatter ; but the gleam of his eyes from the dark shadow in which his ebon countenance was cast showed that he was awake. Suddenly the scene underwent yet another complete transformation. After a sharp elbow in the road, the carriage rattled upon a rough causeway, and then came to a halt. The travellers sprang to the ground, and gazed in wonder around them. Had they been spirited from the depths of a tropical forest to a scene in fairyland? They stood in the vast central square of Old Goa. Five great cathedrals in a state of more or less com plete preservation glistened with the whiteness of snow in the silvery moonlight.

Alongside, and around these massive piles, numerous ruins raised their roofless heads, and showed against the sky-line trees and shrubs growing on their crumbling walls and through their almost formless windows. Beyond was the dense sea of palm trees, through whose columns gleamed the waters of the silently flowing river. The gentle sighing of the wind among the foliage sounded like a mournful dirge in this city of the dead. Yet not quite a city of the dead. For lights gleamed in the Cathedral of St. Catherine, the great bell in its looming tower tolled a solemn note, and the low pealing of an organ, accompanying the chant of human voices, stole through the opened doorway to the outside air. Suddenly, at no great distance in the jungle, the sharp yapping of a single jackal was followed by the shrill chorus of the whole pack.

The discordant cries cf these night prowlers gradually died away, and again the chanting of the monks smote upon the ear. But, above all, the continuous rustling of the palm fronds seemed like a wail rising to heaven — a wail of lamentation for the glory and magnificence of Golden Goa departed forevermore, for the curse of ruin and desolation lying heavy upon the land, where once the daily prayers of thousands of monks had gone up to heaven.

Chapter II. The Midnight Mass

It was close upon the hour of midnight when Tressider and Vine entered the cathedral, dedicated by Albuquerque to St. Catherine, because on the day of her festival the Portuguese conqueror had made his triumphant entry into the old native town, on the site of which Goa was afterwards to raise her proud palaces. A limited number of oil lamps scarcely sufficed to illume the darkness, and the semi obscurity made the proportions of the great edifice seem still more noble and impressive than they really were. A few wax tapers feebly flickered in the re cesses of the four side chapels. The high altar of the cathedral, however, was a blaze of brilliant light, which suffused as with a glow of heavenly flame the three surmounting images of St. Catherine, the Virgin Mary, and Christ crucified, with a dove of alabaster, symbolical of the Holy Ghost, spreading its protect ing wings above all.

The illuminations likewise brought into prominence a iarge picture of St. Christopher, bearing the infant Jesus on his shoulders, also four smaller pictures illustrating the martyrdom of St. Catherine ; while fainter beams of light were thrown on images of St. Peter and St. Paul, placed on lofty pedestals at some little distance on either side of the altar. The choir was occupied by several hundreds of Goanese priests, ranged in rows of seats running *3 parallel with the central aisle. The faces of these men were only a shade less black than the long robes which they wore. The high ecclesiastics around the altar, however, were clothed in white, while the Arch bishop of all the Indies, seated aloft on a canopied throne, was habited in scarlet vestments. Another spot of colour was afforded by the brilliant gold laced uniform of the Governor-General of Goa, Viceroy of Portugal, who sat opposite the archbishop on a throne slightly less pretentious than that occupied by the supreme ecclesiastical authority, having no rich canopy spread overhead.

For the moment the chant had ceased ; but the notes of the organ still stole softly down the nave, mingling with the murmur of prayers from the altar. The most extraordinary feature of the spectacle, however, lay in the fact that while the choir was thronged with priests, the body of the vast cathedral itself was tenanted by not more than a score of worshippers. A few scantily-clad, poverty-stricken natives knelt here and there ; but their presence seemed only to intensify the profound gloom caused by the long vista of empty benches. Fancy could fill the seats with gaily-uniformed officers of Portugal, with black-robed functionaries of the Inquisition, with merchants and travellers from England, France, Spain, Italy, and every Christianised nation on the face of the globe ; with fair ladies from Lisbon, who?e eyes, shooting glances around despite their devotions, sparkled from beneath their mantillas with scarcely less brilliancy than the diamonds which they wore.

Such had been the congregation that had assembled within these walls in the days when Goa was truly the Queen of the East. Now the only living picture was around the high altar, and the throng of priests ministered, as it were, to phantom worshippers. Can it be that these solitary masses, which are still every morning and evening solemnised amidst the ruined and desolate city, overgrown with foul growth of jungle weeds, are exacted, through the long years of succeeding generations, by a divine Power, in ex piation of the crimes of the Inquisition, which made of Old Goa a veritable hell upon earth ? Is it thus that penance is being done for the accursed auto da si, the act of faith grimly spoken of in the piously-worded sentences passed by the ferocious and pitiless tribunal upon its victims, as "death without the spilling of blood " — death by the flame, death whose only mercy was the garotte for those who went to their doom professing allegiance to the Church of Rome, a suffocating volume of smoke from a bundle of wet straw cast upon the faggots for the infidel and the Jew?

Into some such train of reflection Tressider had fallen, as, seated on one of the gloomy benches near the cathedral door, with his young companion, Vine, and the little wizened black guide on either side of him, he watched the devotional exercises of the priests around the altar, and listened to the weirdly pathetic vox humana of the organ. But suddenly, overhead, the great bell, after a preliminary crash from the four smaller bells, tolled out the hour of midnight, and the choir of priests burst into the grand and noble hymn, " Adeste fideles, venite adoremus Dominum" the sonorous Latin words rolling in swelling volume of sound down the echoing nave and aisles. Another Christmas day had dawned upon the world. Just as the hymn died away, a strange incident happened. Somewhere up in the roof a little bird piped a song of joy with shrill treble note, that rose clear above the droning monotone of the organ, and penetrated to every recess of the vast cathedral.