And unto wizards that peep and that mutter.-The Bible.
Like some infuriated bull he had fought
and tugged at his chains and shouted for deliverance,
until clouds of birds flew skywards in fright, and
blood had spurted from his finger-tips and stained
the shirt about his middle.
Thongs of hide sound inadequate against
the strength of a man, but steel chains are weak compared
with them for resistance, and to strive against them
simply results in pure agony if they have been thoroughly
soaked by the Indian dew which almost amounts to rain,
and dried by the Indian sun which almost amounts to
a furnace.
Of course, in a properly constructed
novel he would have been left in a position which
would have enabled him to gnaw the hide with his strong
white teeth, or rub it until it wore through against
some sharp stone.
But this he could not do because his
wrists were bound behind, leaving the space of a foot
or two between his waist and the wall; and when he
leant back he had the tragic outline of a modern Prometheus
bound; when he strained forward, that of one of Muller’s
pupils undergoing treatment for the development of
the chest.
Neither could he, contort himself
as he might, have brought his teeth within gnawing
distance of deliverance; moreover, ruins exposed for
centuries to the soft manipulation of a jungle climate,
show no sharp stones; they are rounded and polished
by the passage of time, soft feet, and that which
crawls upon its belly.
At length, however, peace quite strangely
fell upon him, and though he could not move, the agony
of his hands and lacerated waist vanished entirely;
such perfect peace that he leant back against the wall
and idly tried to count the myriad tiny dainty hoof
marks in the dust between the doorway facing him,
and the ruined archway on his left.
He did not think it strange when turning
his head he discovered an ancient priest seated against
the wall with his mahogany coloured old body outlined
against the dull blues and reds of the painted stones;
and his eyes, bright with religious fervour, fixed
through the crumbling arch, beyond the delicate sun-dried
leaves, the blazing sun, and the steel blue heavens,
upon Eternity.
The fine old man had no intention
of torturing the white man, he had merely bound him
to the ring until his goddess should inspire him, her
servant, with her wishes concerning this stranger who
was intimately connected with the white woman in the
care of his beloved disciple, even Madhu Krishnaghar.
Neither did he intend to starve the
white man nor bring him to the point of madness from
thirst; but accustomed to hours and days of self-subjection
in which he neither ate, drank nor felt the need of
material sustenance, he failed to take into account
the inner cravings of a man when he had been tied
for two nights to a ring in the wall.
And he sprang to his feet and crossed
the floor when Cuxson, after an interval of forty-eight
hours during which he had neither eaten nor drunk,
tortured by cramp from his waist to his feet caused
by the strangling hold of the hide thong, with his
heart pounding the blood against his brain until it
shook, and his arms feeling like burning staves ending
in blocks of ice, suddenly scrambled somehow to his
knees, shouted, and fell forward with the soles of
his feet against the wall, and the whole weight of
his heavy body hanging upon the wrists.
It was but the work of an instant
and a flashing knife and he lay face down upon the
floor at the feet of the priest who passed swiftly
through the doorway out into the jungle, and returning
as swiftly, bound great green shining leaves about
the wounds, and squatting on his heels gently massaged
the black and swollen arms.
A holy man! a Hindu priest touching
the contaminating flesh of an infidel! Impossible!
There are many methods of purification
from contamination, but the main point in the priest’s
mental process of self-extenuation was that
an infidel awaiting the verdict of the Great Mother
should not be allowed to die.
Therefore more green and glistening
leaves were placed upon the floor, and food, and water
in coarse earthenware, set upon them, until Cuxson
had revived sufficiently to eat, and enter into conversation
with the priest, who, seeing no reason to withhold
the information sought, and secure in the knowledge
that the spreading jungle tied the sahib to the temple
even more securely than the thongs of hide, gradually
unfolded to him the dark history of the girl he loved.
“Eighteen years,” began
the tranquil voice of the old man, “as the sahibs
count the passing of the moons, have gone since a high
caste woman knelt at full moon in this temple at the
foot of the altar of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction.
“Kali the Black One; daughter
of the Himalayas, wife of Siva! Durga the inaccessible,
Uma so sweet!
“Chandika the fierce, Parvati
who steppeth lightly upon the mountains.
“Bhairavi the terrible, Kali of death, Kali!
Kali!”
The old priest, who had leapt to his
feet under the exaltation of his worship, sank down
again upon the floor, and continued his tale in the
Indian tongue.
“The high caste woman, chief
wife of a great prince of Northern India, held in
her arms her first, her only son, a weakling, a sickly
babe nigh unto death. Thrice had she been shamed
by the birth of a woman child, and now her crown,
her glory, her great gift unto her lord was like to
die.
“Followed only by her body servant
she had sped from her palace in the shadows of the
Everlasting Hills, even unto the southernmost limits
of Bengal, a pilgrim to this holy, secret temple where
I pass my last days in sacrifice and worship; I, even
I, foremost guru, once teacher of the Thugs,
those beloved servants of Kali-before the
law of the white man forbade their sacrifices unto
the goddess.”
Jan Cuxson, knowing of the sacrifices
both human and animal offered in bygone days to the
terrible goddess, shivered as the horror of the place
seemed to close in upon him.
“The high caste woman demanding
from the Goddess of Death the boon of life for her
son, cast her jewels upon the altar and made promise
of cattle and grain and her three daughters as handmaidens
in the secret places of the temple. And I, aforetime
great among the Thugs, lamented that I had but a coal
black kid to offer as a sacrifice, for behold, Kali
demands life for life, and will not be denied.
“Flowers flung by the woman,
O white man, strewed the stone floor upon which I
have worn a path during the passing of the years; hundreds
of small lights flickered in every corner, causing
the shadows to dance about these weary feet and the
eyes of the great gods to shine from the corners of
the roof; and without I heard against the wall the
rubbing of the great tiger as it waited for the blood
sacrifice which it nightly devoured before the dawn,
the striped cat upon which Kali rides forth at night
on her journeyings through the jungle.
“Even as I plunged the sacrificial
knife into the neck of the unworthy sacrifice, I heard
footsteps as of one running swiftly; and behold, there
came a low caste, pock-marked woman up the middle of
the temple, who flung herself at the feet of Kali,
laying a sleeping babe upon the altar steps.”
“Ah!” barely whispered
Jan Cuxson with his eyes fixed upon the fanatical
old face.
“And behold, the low caste woman
was ayah in the services of one, even a great colonel-sahib,
who, being raised above his fellows, was hastening
back across the Black Water to his own land, taking
with him his one wife, and the one child of their
union.
“Loving the white girl child
with the great strange love of the servant of India
for the offspring of the feringhee, the ayah
had secretly brought the babe in the absence of the
mem-sahib upon visits of farewell, that I might dedicate
her to the goddess, binding her in spirit for ever
to the land of her birth.”
The white man sat in silence when
the old man sprang to his feet, standing relentless
and formidable in the light of the one lamp.
“See’st thou? See’st
thou, sahib, my sin? The sacrifice was within
my hands, and yet I spared the child because of the
woman’s beseechings. I hesitated, yea!
I even asked a sign. Aye! and the sign was good,
twice pleasing to the Goddess of Death, for behold
the owl hooted not, neither was the voice of the jackal
uplifted as the doe, coming from the right,
looked through the open door.
“With the high caste woman I
made covenant, that her male child in return for his
life should be a servant of the Black One, obeying
in all things the mandates of her priests.
“And I held those sleeping babes
upon my arm, and within the lips of the girl child
I placed the goor, the sacred sugar, and around
her neck the roomal, the noose of sacrifice.
And I cut the sign of Kali between the breasts of
the man child and between the breasts of the woman
child, and marked him between the brows with her blood,
and marked her upon the forehead with his blood, so
that his mind should be her mind. And her will
I bent to my will, that her eyes should open
in sleep at the light of the full moon, and that she
should go forth upon the mission of the Black One,
making sacrifice to the spouse of Siva.
“And yet, though she be bound
to the secret temple and to Kali, and to the son of
princes until death shall release her, the Great Mother
is not pleased, nay, her wrath is terrible at the
averted sacrifice, and India, my land, has suffered
through my fault.”
The priest stood motionless, staring
down unseeingly upon the man at his feet who spoke
softly.
“And what became of the white child?”
“The white child, the infant
feringhee? She lay asleep in my arms
with eyes wide open, and the high caste woman, picking
up a jewel, even one of the colour and shape of cat’s
eye, smeared it with the blood of the kid, placed
it above the heart of Kali, and then hung it by a
slender golden chain about the neck of the woman child.
And the women, content, departed, bearing with them
the united babes, but since that ill-begotten night
my land has travailed in agony, stricken with plague
and pestilence and famine!”
“And?” Cuxson scarcely breathed the word.
The light of the moon slipped over
the ruined wall, drawing a nimbus round the old white
head as the tall thin figure in the snow-white garments
swayed slightly.
“I waited for the command of
Kali, and after many years I sent my beloved disciple,
the son of princes, across the Black Water to bring
the white woman by the force of his will back to the
land of her birth and up to the altar steps.
And now I wait-I wait-for a
little, little while.”
The old voice rose to a thin shout
of triumph which lapsed into silence as, totally oblivious
of his prisoner, he sank to the ground, lost, quite
suddenly, in that wonderful abstraction of the East
in which the native can find escape from the trials
of life at odd moments, and in unaccountably odd places.
During the long silence that followed,
Jan Cuxson sat patiently puffing at his pipe and trying
to piece the strange tale together, until at an advanced
hour of the night he once more felt the hawk-like eyes
fixed upon his face.
Eagerly he picked up the thread of
the story as though there had been no lapse.
“You mesmerised her, you say,
eighteen years ago, and you pretend you can still
bend her to your will?”
“Nay, Sahib! Through me
Kali the Terrible imprinted her will upon the babe’s
tender mind those many moons ago!”
Cuxson shook his head.
“You can’t make me believe
that-it’s rubbish-like
the mango tree and rope trick-it’s
impossible, simply impossible to make strong-minded,
level-headed people do things against their will.”
In such wise does the westerner account
to his own satisfaction for the mysterious workings
of the East.
The old man said no word, but looked
steadily between the young man’s eyes.
“If the sahib will look to his right hand!”
Cuxson turned his head and started.
Eyes glaring, tail thrashing the ground,
and ears flattened to the great head, a tiger half
crouched.
“The devil!” he ejaculated,
as the mouth of the great animal twisted spasmodically.
“Here’s a fix.”
“The sahib will place his hand upon the tiger’s
head.”
“Not much!”
“The sahib is afraid!”
The quiet scorn of the words struck
Cuxson like a whip, and he stretched out his hand
impulsively towards the smooth head with flattened
ears and glaring eyes.
There was not a sound, though the
tail swished the ground, and the huge mouth opened
slowly, showing the splendid ivories.
“The sahib, if he is not afraid,
will close his hand firmly upon the throat!”
Cuxson’s hand closed gently
upon the striped skin; then he exclaimed sharply on
perceiving that the only thing his hand grasped was
air.
“Why-what-how the !”
The old man nodded his head gently,
and answered without a smile. “It was
the will of the Black One that the sahib should see
the steed upon which she roams the jungle at night!”
But Cuxson was British, and would not be convinced.
“I don’t believe it,”
he said shortly. “That was a tame animal,
which strays in and out of the temple like a tame
cat.”
“Will the sahib look at the
dust upon the ground. Is there sign of feet,
marks of the body, or the lashing of the tail upon
the dust?”
Truly the dust, save for the deer
marks, was undisturbed, but Cuxson shook his head
stoutly, and refused to believe the evidence of his
own eyes.
“The sahib will not believe!
Then will I make her, the white woman, see thee,
the man she desires as husband, a prisoner in the House
of Kali, covered in blood, and she will hasten forthwith
to thee-and to me!”
Cuxson sprang to his feet with murder
in his eyes, but stopped and flung out his hands as
though to thrust aside some obstacle.
The priest laughed softly.
“O babe in wisdom! Behold,
thou shalt not be bound, yet shalt thou not stir beyond
yon temple wall until she come, and with her the son
of princes who yearns for her; then shall I lift my
will from thee and tie thee to the wall that thou
mayst behold the double sacrifice of love and
life made to Kali the Terrible.”
The priest was gone, and Jan Cuxson
sat down upon a fallen block of masonry, covering
his face with his wounded hands; and faintly from the
temple echoed the voice of the priest as he prayed
to his god before projecting his will across the space
that divided him from the white woman.
Only for a little moment of despondency,
and then he sat back and shook his great shoulders
with the light of battle in his eyes, and grim determination
in every line of the powerful jaw.
How he was going to circumvent the
priest and save his beloved he did not know-he
had no plan, but-he was going to pull it
off.
“The son of princes,”
he said, addressing a monkey which had flung a stick
at him from the top of the wall, “why I’d
trust my dear, bewitched or not, with a thousand sons
of princes. I love her and she loves me, you
gibbering bit of fur, and d’you think anything
could stand against that. Let her come!
Just let her be within reach of my arms, then
you’ll see what you will see. Let the priest
play into my hands, and bring her here, the sooner
the better, for that is exactly what I
want.”
And he laughed as he refilled his
pipe, blessing the old priest for his consideration
in annexing naught but his rifle and revolver.
Which is just about the simplest way
of starting to get out of a tight corner.
Ignoring all obstacles, owning to
no defeat. The splendid heritage of the English
speaking race.