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Page 100
"Gentlemen, I know the East as few of my fellow-citizens know it.
I know something of the powers which are latent in some Orientals
and active in others. That my Brahmin guide was a hypnotist and
an illusionist, I have since thought.
"For, even as the pattering footsteps of the bearers grew faint
in the distance, the fiery torch disappeared as if by magic, and
a silken cord was about my throat!
"As I began a desperate fight for life, I realized that, whatever
else Vadi might be, he was certainly an expert thug. The jungle,
the rocks, seemed to swim around me as I crashed to the ground
and felt the Brahmin's knee in the small of my back."
CHAPTER XXXI. STORY OF THE CITY OF FIRE (CONTINUED)
"How I managed to think of any defense against such an attack,
and especially in the circumstances, is a matter I have often
wondered about since. How, having thought of it, I succeeded in
putting it into execution, is probably more wonderful still. But
I will just state what happened.
"You may observe that I have large hands. Their size and strength
served me well on this occasion. At the moment that the rope
tightened about my throat I reached up and grasped the Brahmin's
left thumb. Desperation gave me additional strength, and I
snapped it like a stick of candy.
"Just in the nick of time I felt the cord relax, and, although
the veins in my head seemed to be bursting, I managed to get my
fingers under that damnable rope. To this very hour I can hear
Vadi's shriek of pain as I broke his thumb, and it brings the
whole scene back to me.
"Clutching the rope with my left hand, I groaned and lay still.
The Brahmin slightly shifted his position, which was what I
wanted him to do. The brief respite had been sufficient. As he
moved, I managed to draw my knees up, very slightly, for he was a
big, heavy man, but sufficiently to enable me to throw him off
and roll over.
"Then, gentlemen, I dealt with him as he had meant to deal with
me; only I used my bare hands and made a job of it.
"I stood up, breathing heavily, and looked down at him where he
lay in the shadows at my feet. Dusk had come with a million
stars, and almost above my head were flowering creepers festooned
from bough to bough. The two campfires danced up and cast their
red light upon the jagged rocks of the hillock, which started up
from the very heart of the thicket, to stand out like some giant
pyramid against the newly risen moon.
"There were night things on the wing, and strange whispering
sounds came from the forests clothing the hills. Then came a
distant, hollow booming like the sound of artillery, which echoed
down the mountain gorges and seemed to roll away over the lowland
swamps and die, inaudible, by the remote river. Yet I stood
still, looking down at the dead man at my feet. For this strange,
mysterious artillery was a phenomenon I had already met with on
this fateful march--weird enough and inexplicable, but no novelty
to me, for I had previously met with it in the Shan Hills of
Burma.
"I was thinking rapidly. It was clear enough now why I had
hitherto been unmolested. To Vadi the task had been allotted by
the mysterious organization of which he was a member, of removing
me quietly and decently, under circumstances which would lead to
no official inquiry. Although only animals, insects, and reptiles
seemed to be awake about me, yet I could not get rid of the idea
that I was watched.
"I remembered the phantom light, and that memory was an
unpleasant one. For ten minutes or more I stood there watching
and listening, but nothing molested me, nothing human approached.
With a rifle resting across my knees, I sat down in the entrance
to my tent to await the dawn.
"Later in the night, those phantom guns boomed out again, and
again their booming died away in the far valleys. The fires
burned lower and lower, but I made no attempt to replenish them;
and because I sat there so silent, all kinds of jungle creatures
crept furtively out of the shadows and watched me with their
glittering eyes. Once a snake crossed almost at my feet, and once
some large creature of the cat species, possibly a puma, showed
like a silhouette upon the rocky slopes above.
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