CHAPTER XII

OSTROG

Graham could now take a clearer view of his position.  For a long time yet he wandered, but after the talk of the old man his discovery of this Ostrog was clear in his mind as the final inevitable decision.  One thing was evident, those who were at the headquarters of the revolt had succeeded very admirably in suppressing the fact of his disappearance.  But every moment he expected to hear the report of his death or of his recapture by the Council.

Presently a man stopped before him.  “Have you heard?” he said.

“No!” said Graham, starting.

“Near a dozand,” said the man, “a dozand men!” and hurried on.

A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and shouting:  “Capitulated!  Given up!” “A dozand of men.”  “Two dozand of men.”  “Ostrog, Hurrah!  Ostrog, Hurrah!” These cries receded, became indistinct.

Other shouting men followed.  For a time his attention was absorbed in the fragments of speech he heard.  He had a doubt whether all were speaking English.  Scraps floated to him, scraps like Pigeon English, like “nigger” dialect, blurred and mangled distortions.  He dared accost no one with questions.  The impression the people gave him jarred altogether with his preconceptions of the struggle and confirmed the old man’s faith in Ostrog.  It was only slowly he could bring himself to believe that all these people were rejoicing at the defeat of the Council, that the Council which had pursued him with such power and vigour was after all the weaker of the two sides in conflict.  And if that was so, how did it affect him?  Several times he hesitated on the verge of fundamental questions.  Once he turned and walked for a long way after a little man of rotund inviting outline, but he was unable to master confidence to address him.

It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the “wind-vane offices” whatever the “wind-vane offices” might be.  His first enquiry simply resulted in a direction to go on towards Westminster.  His second led to the discovery of a short cut in which he was speedily lost.  He was told to leave the ways to which he had hitherto confined himself—­knowing no other means of transit—­and to plunge down one of the middle staircases into the blackness of a cross-way.  Thereupon came some trivial adventures; chief of these an ambiguous encounter with a gruff-voiced invisible creature speaking in a strange dialect that seemed at first a strange tongue, a thick flow of speech with the drifting corpses of English Words therein, the dialect of the latter-day vile.  Then another voice drew near, a girl’s voice singing, “tralala tralala.”  She spoke to Graham, her English touched with something of the same quality.  She professed to have lost her sister, she blundered needlessly into him he thought, caught hold of him and laughed.  But a word of vague remonstrance sent her into the unseen again.