leaning on their
rifles, their heads craned forward and their eyes strained in the
direction of the gloomy baobab.

"Form single rank!" commanded Brown.

There was no response. They stood there fixed like a row of chickens
staring at a snake!

"Form single rank!"

He leaped at them, and broke the first rule of the service--as a man may
when he is man enough, and the alternative would be black shame.

His fist was a hard one and heavy, and they felt the weight of it.

"Form single rank! Take one pace open order! Extend! Now, forward--by
the right! Right dress, there!"

He marched in front of them, and they followed him for very shame, now
that he had broken their paralysis.

"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. Then he remembered
the Beluchi.

"Ask him, you! Ask him how he came here."

The Beluchi found his tongue, and stammered out a question. The fakir
chuckled, and following his chuckle let a guttural remark escape him.

"He says, sahib, that he flew!"

"Ask him, could he fly with nine fixed bayonets in him!"

There was a little laughter from the men at that sally. It takes
very little in the way of humor to dispel a sense of the uncanny or
mysterious.

"He answers, sahib, that you have seen what comes of striking him. He
asks how many dead there be."

"Does he want me to hold him answerable for those men's lives?"

"He says he cares not, sahib! He says that he has promised what shall
befall you, sahib, befor