“But--but, you have shown me--how do you dare----”
“I know what you think.” Oomlag spoke suavely, mockingly. “You think
that, once free, you will spread the alarm to your fellows. How
ridiculous! In the first place, no one would believe you, you would be
considered mad. In the second place, you humans could do nothing to
hinder us if you wished. We have the power of ‘Venusite.’ I need say no
more. It is one of the best jokes I ever heard! You alone of the earth
inhabitants will know of our existence, and your knowledge will be
useless. You can do nothing, absolutely nothing. Your friends will
discover you, wandering. A word of this to anyone--well, your mind has
been wandering, too!”
I was sickened by his fiendish, throaty laughter as he derided me,
mocked me with this terrible truth.
Suddenly his manner changed. The leer on his face was replaced by an
ugly snarl of determination. He uttered a few words in his own language,
and I felt myself seized from behind. Oomlag’s ochre face came close to
mine.
“Goodbye, earth creature. You go out the way you came!”
Again I felt myself blindfolded and gagged, rapidly losing consciousness
under the influence of the sweetish drug . . .
The rest can be told in a few words. I regained consciousness not far
from the camp-site. The sun was high in the heavens. I staggered to
where I had seen the rock camouflage. It was not there--absolutely no
sign of any disturbance, nothing but ordinary flat ground. Something
made me think of the note I had received from the dark-haired girl. I
found it where I had stuffed it in my pocket. In a hasty scrawl she had
written, in charcoal, now scarcely legible:
“India is safe.”
The sun was setting when Olin appeared with a posse in search of me. I
trumped up an explanation of how I had been restless, had gone for a
ride in the moonlight, had been thrown from the horse . . . what else
could I do? It was as Oomlag had said.
Now, in India, I write these lines. The girl must have thought I had a
chance to get free. My friends, for God’s sake do not regard me as a
second Jack Pansay with his phantom “rickshaw.”* Olin knows I
disappeared--and I know what happened. If I am not spared to read this
document myself, for the sake of those who _will_ believe, give it
circulation. How wise was Shakespeare when he had Hamlet say: “There are
more things in Heaven and earth . . .”