Told in the East | Page 3

one rudimentary act
than even a Stamboul Softa can.
"So he's holy, is he?"
"Very, very holy, sahib!"
Again the fakir chuckled, and again Brown held his breath and pushed
the lantern closer to him.
"I believe the brute understands the Queen's English!"
"He understanding all things, sahib! He knowing all things what will
happen! Mind, sahib! He may curse you!"
But Brown appeared indifferent to the danger that he ran. To the fakir's
unconcealed discomfort, he proceeded to examine him minutely, going
over him with the aid of the lantern inch by inch, from the toe-nails
upward.
"Well," he commented aloud, "if the army's got an opposite, here's it!
I'd give a month's pay for the privilege of washing this brute, just as a
beginning!"
The man's toe-nails--for he really was a man!--were at least two inches
long. They were twisted spirally, and some of them were curled back
on themselves into disgusting-looking knots. What walking he had ever
done had been on his heels. His feet were bent upward, and fixed
upward, by a deliberately cultivated cramp.
His legs, twisted one above the other in a squatting attitude, were lean
and hairy, and covered with open sores which were kept open by the
swarm of insects that infested him. His loin-cloth was rotting from him.
His emaciated body--powdered and smeared with ashes and dust and
worse--was perched bolt-up-right on a flat earth dais that had once on a
time been the throne of a crossroads idol. One arm, his right one, hung
by his side in an almost normal attitude, and his right fingers moved
incessantly like a man's who is kneading clay. But his other arm was
rigid--straight up in the air above his head; set, fixed, cramped,
paralyzed in that position, with the fist clenched. And through the back
of the closed fist the fakir's nails were growing.
But, worse than the horror of the arm was the creature's face, with the
evidence of torture on it, and fiendish delight in torture for the torture's
sake. His eyes were his only organs that really lived still, and they
expressed the steely hate and cruelty, the mad fanaticism, the greedy

self-love--self-immolating for the sake of self--that is the
thoroughgoing fakir's stock in trade. And his lips were like the graven
lips of a Hindu temple god, self-satisfied, self-worshiping,
contemptuous and cruel. He chuckled again, as Brown finished his
inspection.
"So that crittur's holy, is he? Well, tell him that I'm set here to watch
these crossroads. Tell him I'm supposed to question every one who
comes, and find out what his business is, and arrest him if he can't give
a proper account of himself. Say he's been here three days now, and
that that's long enough for any one to find his tongue in. Tell him if I
don't get an answer from him here and now I'll put him in the clink!"
"But, sahib--"
"You tell him what I say, d'you hear?"
The Beluchi made haste to translate, trembling as he spoke, and wilting
visibly when the baleful eyes of the fakir rested on him for a second.
The fakir answered something in a guttural undertone.
"What does he say?"
"That he will curse you, sahib!"
"Sentry!" shouted Brown.
"Sir!" came the ready answer, and the sling-swivels of a rifle clicked as
the man on guard at the crossroads shouldered it. There are some men
who are called "sir" without any title to it, just as there are some
sergeants who receive a colonel's share of deference when out on a
non-commissioned officer's command. Bill Brown was one of them.
"Come here, will you!"
There came the sound of heavy footfalls, and a thud as a rifle-butt
descended to the earth again. Brown moved the lamp, and its beams fell
on a rifleman who stood close beside him at attention--like a jinnee
formed suddenly from empty blackness.
"Arrest this fakir. Cram him in the clink."
"Very good, sir!"
The sentry took one step forward, with his fixed bayonet at the
"charge," and the fakir sat still and eyed him.
"Oh, have a care, sahib!" wailed the Beluchi. "This is very holy man!"
"Silence!" ordered Brown. "Here. Hold the lamp."
The bayonet-point pressed against the fakir's ribs, and he drew back an
inch or two to get away from it. He was evidently able to feel pain

when it was inflicted by any other than himself.
"Come on," growled the sentry. "Forward. Quick march. If you don't
want two inches in you!"
"Don't use the point!" commanded Brown. "You might do him an
injury. Treat him to a sample of the butt!"
The sentry swung his rifle round with an under-handed motion that all
riflemen used to practise in the short-range-rifle days. The fakir winced,
and gabbled something