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.
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