o look like boiled owls, to oblige his Highness, men!" said Brown.
"Now, that's better; watch for the word! Easy on the rope a little!"

The men did their best to pose for the part of semimesmerized victims
of a superhuman power. The flame from the burning roofs was dying down
already, for the thatch burned fast, and the glowing gloom was deep
enough to hide indifferent acting. With their lives at stake, though,
men act better than they might at other times.

The fakir spun round on his heels and, clutching with his whole hand at
the rope, began to execute a sort of dance--a weird, fantastic, horrible
affair of quivering limbs and rolling eyeballs, topped by a withered arm
that pointed upward, and a tortured fingernail-pierced fist that nodded
on a dried-out-wrist-joint.

"Hookum hai!" he screamed suddenly, waving his sound hand upward, and
bringing it down suddenly with a jerk, as though by sheer force he was
blasting them.

"Down with you!" ordered Brown, and all except Brown and the Beluchi
tumbled over backward.

"Keep hold of your rifles!" ordered Brown.

The fakir's wailing continued for a while. With his own hand he took the
noose from his neck and, now that the flames had died away to nothing
but spasmodic spurts above a dull red underglow, there was no one in
the watching ring who could see Brown's sword-point. Only Brown and
the fakir knew that it was scratching at the skin between the fakir's
shoulder-blades.

"It is done!" said the fakir presently. "Now take me back to my dais
again!" And the Beluchi translated.

"I'd like to hear their trigger-springs released," suggested Brown.
"This has all been a shade too slick for me. I've got my doubts yet
about it's being done. Tell him to order them to uncock their rifles, so
that I can hear them do it."

"He says that they are gone already!" translated the Beluchi.

"Tell him I don't believe it!" answered Brown, whose eyes were straining
to pierce the darkness, which was blacker than the pit again by now.

The fakir raised his voice into a howl--a long, low, ululating howl like
that he had uttered when they found him on his dais. From the distance,
beyond the range of rifles, came a hundred answering howls. The fakir
waited, and a minute later a hundred howls were raised again, this time
from an even greater distance.

Then he spoke.

"He says that they are gone," translated the Beluchi. "He says he will
go back to his dais again."

"'Tshun!" orde