"Halt! Port-arms! Charge bayonets!"
He was peering at something in the dark, something that chuckled
and smelled horrible, and sat unusually still for anything that lived.
"Numbers One, Two, Three--left wheel--forward! Halt! Numbers Seven,
Eight, Nine--right wheel--forward! Halt!"
They were standing now on three sides of a square. The fourth side
was the trunk of the baobab. Between them and the trunk, the streaming
tendrils swayed and swung, bats flitted and something still invisible
sat still and chuckled.
"One pace forward--march!"
They could see now. The fakir sat and stared at them and grinned.
Brown raised the lamp and let its rays fall on him. The light glinted
off his eyes, and off the only other part of him that shone--the long,
curved, ghastly fingernails that had grown through the palm of his
upstretched hand.
"How did you get here?" demanded Brown, not afraid to speak, for fear
that fright would take possession of himself as well as of his men,
but quite well aware that the fakir would not answer him.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87