. I pushed him through ahead of me.

And then we were in pitch darkness. There was neither light, nor room to
turn, and nothing for it but for the Mahatma to lead the way along, and
I had to be careful in carrying King not to injure him against the rock
in the places where the passage narrowed.

However, he began to recover gradually as we neared the end of the long
passage, regaining consciousness by fits and starts like a man coming
out of anesthesia, and commencing to kick so that I had hard work to
preserve him from injury. When his feet were not striking out against
the walls his head was, and I finally shook him violently. That had the
desired effect. It was just as if fumes had gone out of his head. His
body grew warmer almost in a moment, and I felt him break out into a
sweat. Then he groaned, and asked me where we were; and a moment later
he seemed to understand what was happening, for he struggled to free
himself.

"All right," he whispered. "Let me walk."

So I let him slip down to his feet in front of me, and holding him
beneath the armpits repeated our lock-step trick with positions
reversed; and when we reached the outer door that gave on to the narrow
main passage he was going fairly strong. The Mahatma opened the door and
stepped out into the light; but it was the strange peculiarity of that
light that it did not flow beyond its appointed boundaries, and we
continued to be in darkness as long as we did not follow him through the
door.

So when King stepped out ahead of me, the Mahatma had no means of
knowing what a mistake he had been making all along. He naturally jumped
to the conclusion that King had been carrying me.

When I stepped out of the pitch blackness he looked more than a little
surprised at my appearance, and I grinned back at him as sheepishly as I
could manage, hoping he would not see the red patch on my shoulder
caused by the pressure of King's weight, or the scratches made by King's
fingernails when he was beginning to recover consciousness.
Nevertheless, he did see, and understood.

"Lead on, MacDuff!" I said in plain English, and perhaps he did not
dislike me so immensely after all, for he smiled as he turned his back
to lead the way.

We passed, without meeting anybody, out through the narrow door where
the first tall speechless showman had admitted us, into the cave where
the lingam reposed on its stone altar; and there the Mahatma resumed the
lantern he had left.

When