He wiped the spittle from his chops calmly. When an Oriental takes an
insult calmly, beware! There is more to come.
“She was my wife,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“Was or is, it makes no difference to me,” I stormed. “She is mine now.”
“She is Siva’s,” he jeered. “Think you that as she swirls down into the
whirlpool at the river’s bend the great river python, mother of all the
pythons, will not take her? Placed I the yellow scale of Nagy in her
hand for naught?”
I shuddered. The legend of the great river python at Kalgai Gorge had
been told to me oft. It slept in the great pool where the whirlpool
formed in flood-time and only came out for prey when the depths were
stirred by a monstrous flood such as this one, the natives said.
“Why did you tell me she was your sister?” I demanded.
“We made it up, she and I. She was wedded, as the priest told you, but
to me. I was listening in the bamboos when you planned your trip here
from Karen that night after the priest cursed you from the door of
Siva’s temple. I heard him curse you and saw you turn down the path to
our hut. If you had slain the python in the temple, without me helping,
she would have been freed. We planned that you should make love, a
little. Enough so you would kill the great snake and win her from it; I
to come after and take her. But you won her whole heart, curse you—”
Up went his hand to slay. While he had raved and chattered at me, my
head had been clearing. As he stiffened for the death stroke, I reached
for the down-coming hand and caught his wrist—the wrist whose sinewy
muscles were driving the knife home. I held his arm back. He clutched
for my throat with his other hand. We strove, and I rolled him and came
on top. Up I surged, dragging him with me. With one awful thrust I sent
him crashing against the wall.
He had barely come to rest against the teak beams before his hand went
up and I dodged—just as his knife whizzed past my ear. Plucking the
great dagger of Ali Beg from my bosom, I cast it, in the manner of the
Inner Mongolian Mohammedans. The great blade plunged forward. I had
pinned him to the wall as a butterfly collector pins a specimen to a
card in his collecting box.
I stepped forward to get my dagger. Pra Oom Bwaht, his throat full of
blood, his heart seared with black hatred, glared at me.
“The Curse of Siva remain on you and yours....”
So he died.
Plucking my dagger from him, I kicked over the glowing brazier and raced
for the rock spit’s end as he crashed down—mere battered clay.
As I came to it, the last of the rain for the night whipped my face,
reviving me. The moon peeped forth. There was no teak log there!
Another rift in the clouds made plain my error. The flood was over all
former flood-marks. The teak log, as the moon’s second peep showed, was
on the point of rocks, but they were now in the stream, many paces from
the present shore-line. The log, caught on the jagged stones, hung and
swayed. It was just on the point of going out. I could see a dark mass,
midway of the log. “It is Nagy N’Yang,” I thought. The hut was blazing
now from the brazier’s scattered coals, giving me plenty of light.
I glanced about the rock spit. A few paces to the right something black
showed in the gloom. I went to it quickly, hoping to find a boat. It was
a great chest. Feeling for the key or handle, I clutched a catch. I
turned it, threw up the lid, just as the moon came forth.
Out of the depths of the box reared a great python, hissing horribly. I
recoiled in terror. The box, as I saw in the moon-glow, was the snake
box of Karen temple, the one in which Nagy N’Yang’s serpent had been
kept.
Pra Oom Bwaht had had it carried to Kalgai Gorge and also to our rock
spit that night to suit some of his own black schemes of vengeance. His
bearers had carried the box unwittingly. While I trembled, the great
snake glided to the river’s brink and disappeared. I now had the big
chest and thought to use it as a rough boat to rescue my love.
Then I turned to view the teak log again. I tugged at the chest. It was
too heavy for me. Another fitful rift of moonlight came, and I saw the
giant teak log sway. Without waiting for more ill fortune, I plunged
into the river and swam through the swirling eddies for the log.
I just made it. But at the touch of my numbed finger on its root ends,
it started. The mere touch was enough to set it adrift. I clutched,
caught a root fiber, held, edged along the rootlet till I had a better
hold, drew myself up on to the root end of the huge log—and then heard
the sobbing moan of Kalgai whirlpool.
Already we were at the pool’s edge. The log began to whirl and sway. I
made a prayer for my Laos girl, that she might be unconscious during the
plunge below. If she were, she would live, as she would not be
breathing. As for me, I felt I could hold my breath the two minutes
necessary. I often had seen the logs go down the suck-hole and come up.
The average time was two minutes for that. What happened to them under
the pool I had no means of knowing. I hoped to be able to cling to the
log. The girl was bound fast.... The log up-ended and went down!
We swirled through great depths, and often I felt us hit against rocks
and other logs in the lower silences. At the pit’s bottom there seemed
no sound, but on the way down and up there was a great roaring. It
seemed that my lungs would burst. But I kept my breath, having, as you
see, great lung space. We began to rise, and as I felt it, something
slowed us down. I felt weak and was about to drop off when something
bound me to the great log, pressing me tightly against the mass of
roots. So we shot into the moonlight.
I was wrapped in the folds of the mighty python, who had thrown a coil
about the tree-trunk in the lowest depths of the pool! That immense
weight it was that had kept us from emerging sooner. We had come up
below the maelstrom upon emerging.
My right arm was free. I reached my belt with it and found my dagger
there. In the moonlight, over the coils of the monster, I could see the
ivory-white face of my Laos girl as she lay out on the huge log like a
crushed lily. I could not tell if she still lived or had died.
The motion of reaching for my dagger aroused the python. It thrust its
head back toward my face, questing with its tongue, that queer organ
with which it sees in the dark. I felt the darting, forked terror on my
dripping features. The python threw back its coil a bit and thrust at my
forehead with its wedge-shaped head, using the python’s death stroke. I
had still sense enough to draw my head to one side, but not before the
hornlike, rounded head-front had dazed me with a glancing blow on the
brow, where the mark of Siva had been tattooed by Nagy N’Yang.
Again I saw the beast draw back its head for a surer stroke. As it
struck, I held the dagger true in front of its oncoming head. The force
of the blow, not my strength, caused the blade of the dagger to sink
into the immense, hard, tense neck-muscles, through and through. The
snake, furious with pain, stricken to death, in one awful convulsive
struggle cast itself into the raging Salwin, taking the dagger of Ali
Beg with it. Why it did not take me down in its coils, I know not....
Yes, I _am_ sweating now. I feel better. My head is clearer....
I wish Nagy N’Yang were here to lay her cool, ivory-white hand on my
forehead where the python’s wedge-shaped head crashed against mine—on
the black mark of Siva....
But my fever is breaking.
Yes, I feel easier, much easier....
Yes, that is all of my story....
What? Ali Beg found us together on a giant teak log at the river’s bend
at Maung Haut, where he had stopped to trade? And, tightly clasped in
Nagy’s hand was something strange? Show it me!
It is the belly scale of a great river python.
_Burn it! Hold the night taper flame to it! Ah, that ends the fat
priest’s evil spell!_
Where is Ali Beg? Here! And Nagy? Here, too!!
Wheel our cots together, ma’am!
Only let me clasp her hand again. Thanks; _it is warm; she is alive_!
No; we won’t go up-country again. Why? Because when our first child
comes, I want it born outside—out from under the shadow of the dread
Curse of Siva!