Told in the East | Page 4

in a hurry to the man who held the lamp.
"He says that he will speak, sahib!"
"Halt, then," commanded Brown. "Order arms. Tell him to hurry up!"
The Beluchi translated, and the fakir answered him, in a voice that
sounded hard and distant and emotionless.
"He says that he, too, is here to watch the crossroads, sahib! He says
that he will curse you if you touch him!"
"Tell him to curse away!"
"He says not unless you touch him, sahib."
"Prog him off his perch!" commanded Brown.
The rifle leaped up at the word, and its butt landed neatly on the fakir's
ribs, sending him reeling backward off his balance, but not upsetting
him completely. He recovered his poise with quite astonishing activity,
and shuffled himself back again to the center of the dais. His eyes
blazed with hate and indignation, and his breath came now in sharp
gasps that sounded like escaping steam. He needed no further invitation
to commence his cursing. It burst out with a rush, and paused for better
effect, and burst out again in a torrent. The Beluchi hid his face
between his hands.
"Now translate that!" commanded Brown, when the fakir stopped for
lack of breath.
"Sahib, I dare not! Sahib--"
Brown took a threatening step toward him, and the Beluchi changed his
mind. Brown's disciplining methods were a too recently encountered
fact to be outdone by a fakir's promise of any kind of not-yet-met
damnation.
"Sahib, he says that because your man has touched him, both you and
your man shall lie within a week helpless upon an anthill, still living,
while the ants run in and out among your wounds. He says that the ants
shall eat your eyes, sahib, and that you shall cry for water, and there

shall be no water within reach--only the sound of water just beyond you.
He says that first you shall be beaten, both of you, until your backs and
the soles of your feet run blood, in order that the ants may have an
entrance!"
"Is he going to do all this?"
The Beluchi passed the question on, and the fakir tossed him an answer
to it.
"He says, sahib, that the gods will see to it."
"So the gods obey his orders, do they. Well, they've a queer sense of
duty! What else does he prophesy?"
"About your soul, sahib, and the sentry's soul."
"That's interesting! Translate!"
"He says, sahib, that for countless centuries you and your man shall
inhabit the carcasses of snakes, to eat dirt and be trodden on and
crushed, until you learn to have respect for very holy persons!"
"Is he going to have the ordering of that?"
"He says that the gods have already ordered it."
"It won't make much difference, then, what I do now. If that's in store
for me in any case, I may as well get my money's worth before the fun
begins! Tell him that unless he can give me a satisfactory reason for
being here I shall treat him to a little more rifle-butt, and something
else afterward that he will like even less!"
"He says," explained the Beluchi, after a moment's conversation with
the fakir, "that he is here to see what the gods have prophesied. He says
that India will presently be whelmed in blood!"
"Whose blood?"
"Yours and that of others. He says, did you not see the sunset?"
"What of the sunset?"
Brown looked about him and, save where the lantern cast a fitful light
on the fakir and the sentry and the native servant, and threw into faint
relief the shadowy, snake-like tendrils of the baobab, his eyes failed to
pierce the gloom. The sunset was a memory. In that heavy,
death-darkness silence it seemed almost as though there had never been
a sun.
"`A blot of blood,' he says. He says the order has been given. He says
that half of India shall run blood within a day, and the whole of it
within a week!"

"Who gave the order?"
"He answers `Hookum hai!'--which means `It is an order!' Nothing
more does the holy fakir say."
"To the clink with him!" commanded Brown. "I'm tired of these Old
Mother Shipton babblings. That's the third useless Hindu fanatic within
a week who has talked about India being drenched in blood. Let him go
in to the depot under guard, and do his prophesying there! Bring him
along."
The sentry's rifle-butt rose again and threatened business. The Beluchi
gave a warning cry, and the fakir tumbled off his dais. Then, with the
trembling Beluchi walking on ahead with the lantern, and Brown and
the sentry urging from behind, the fakir jumped and squirmed and
wabbled on his all but useless feet toward the guardroom. When they
reached the