“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.
“So the night passed, and dawn found me still sitting there, the dead
man huddled on the ground not three paces from me. I am a man who as a
rule thinks slowly, but when the light came my mind was fully made up.
“From the man who had died in Nagpur I had learned more about the
location of the City of Fire than I had confided to Vadi. In fact, I
thought I could undertake to find the way. Upon the most important point
of all, however, I had no information: that is to say, I had no idea how
to obtain entrance to the place; for I had been given to understand that
the way in was a secret known only to the initiated.
“Nevertheless, I had no intention of turning back; and, although I
realized that from this point onward I must largely trust to luck, I
had no intention of taking unnecessary chances. Accordingly, I dressed
myself in Vadi’s clothes, and, being very tanned at this time, I think I
made a fairly creditable native.
“Faintly throughout the night, above the other sounds of the jungle, I
had heard that of distant falling water. Now, my informant at Nagpur, in
speaking of the secret temple, had used the words:
“‘Whoever would see the fire must quit air and pass through water.’
“This mysterious formula he had firmly declined to translate into
comprehensible English; but during my journey I had been considering
it from every angle, and I had recently come to the conclusion that the
entrance to this mysterious place was in some way concealed by water.
Recollecting the gallery under Niagara Falls, I wondered if some similar
natural formation was to be looked for here.
“Now, in the light of the morning sun, looking around me from the little
plateau upon which I stood, and remembering a vague description of the
country which had been given to me, I decided that I was indeed in the
neighbourhood of the Temple of Fire.
“We had followed a fairly well-defined path right to this plateau,
and that it was nothing less than the high road to the citadel of
Fire-Tongue, I no longer doubted. Beneath me stretched a panorama limned
in feverish greens and unhealthy yellows. Scar-like rocks striated the
jungle clothing the foothills, and through the dancing air, viewed from
the arid heights, they had the appearance of running water.
“Swamps to the southeast showed like unhealing wounds upon the face of
the landscape. Beyond them spread the lower river waters, the bank
of the stream proper being discernible only by reason of a greater
greenness in the palm-tops. Venomous green slopes beyond them again, a
fringe of dwarf forest, and the brazen skyline.
“On the right, and above me yet, the path entered a district of volcanic
rocks, gnarled, twisted, and contorted as with the agonies of some
mighty plague which in a forgotten past had seized on the very bowels of
the world and had contorted whole mountains and laid waste vast forests
and endless plains. Above, the sun, growing hourly more cruel; ahead,
more plague-twisted rocks and the scars dancing like running water; and
all around the swooning stillness of the tropics.
“The night sounds of the jungle had ceased, giving place to the
ceaseless humming of insects. North, south, east, and west lay that haze
of heat, like a moving mantle clothing hills and valleys. The sound of
falling water remained perceptible.
“And now, gentlemen, I must relate a discovery which I had made in the
act of removing Vadi’s clothing. Upon his right forearm was branded
a mark resembling the apparition which I had witnessed in the night,
namely, a little torch, or flambeau, surmounted by a tongue of fire.
Even in the light of the morning, amid that oppressive stillness, I
could scarcely believe in my own safety, for that to Vadi the duty
of assassinating me had been assigned by this ever-watchful, secret
organization, whose stronghold I had dared to approach, was a fact
beyond dispute.
“Since I seemed to be quite alone on the plateau, I could only suppose
that the issue had been regarded as definitely settled, that no doubt
had been entertained by Vadi’s instructors respecting his success. The
plateau upon which I stood was one of a series of giant steps, and on
the west was a sheer descent to a dense jungle, where banks of rotten
vegetation, sun-dried upon the top, lay heaped about the tree stems.
“Dragging the heavy body of Vadi to the brink of this precipice, I
toppled it over, swaying dizzily as I watched it crash down into the
poisonous undergrowth two hundred feet below.
“I made a rough cache, where I stored the bulk of my provisions; and,
selecting only such articles as I thought necessary for my purpose,
I set out again northward, guided by the sound of falling water, and
having my face turned toward the silver pencillings in the blue sky,
which marked the giant peaks of the distant mountains.
“At midday the heat grew so great that a halt became imperative. The
path was still clearly discernible; and in a little cave beside it,
which afforded grateful shelter from the merciless rays of the sun, I
unfastened my bundle and prepared to take a frugal lunch.
“I was so employed, gentlemen, when I heard the sound of approaching
footsteps on the path behind me--the path which I had recently
traversed.
“Hastily concealing my bundle, I slipped into some dense undergrowth by
the entrance to the cave, and crouched there, waiting and watching.
I had not waited very long before a yellow-robed mendicant passed by,
carrying a bundle not unlike my own, whereby I concluded that he had
come some distance. There was nothing remarkable in his appearance
except the fact of his travelling during the hottest part of the day.
Therefore I did not doubt that he was one of the members of the secret
organization and was bound for headquarters.
“I gave him half an hour’s start and then resumed my march. If he could
travel beneath a noonday sun, so could I.
“In this fashion I presently came out upon a larger and higher plateau,
carpeted with a uniform, stunted undergrowth, and extending, as flat as
a table, to the very edge of a sheer precipice, which rose from it to
a height of three or four hundred feet--gnarled, naked rock, showing no
vestige of vegetation.
“By this time the sound of falling water had become very loud, and as I
emerged from the gorge through which the path ran on to this plateau
I saw, on the further side of this tableland, the yellow robe of the
mendicant. He was walking straight for the face of the precipice, and
straight for the spot at which, from a fissure in the rock, a little
stream leapt out, to fall sheerly ten or fifteen feet into a winding
channel, along which it bubbled away westward, doubtless to form a
greater waterfall beyond.
“The mendicant was fully half a mile away from me, but in that clear
tropical air was plainly visible; and, fearing that he might look
around, I stepped back into the comparative shadow of the gorge and
watched.
“Gentlemen, I saw a strange thing. Placing his bundle upon his head, he
walked squarely into the face of the waterfall and disappeared!”