ll 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