The Land of Hidden Men By Edgar Rice Burroughs

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The Land of Hidden Men

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Published: 1931

Categorie(s): Fiction, Action & Adventure

Source: http://gutenberg.net.au About Burroughs:

Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 – March 19, 1950) was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan, although he also produced works in many genres. Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks Burroughs:

- Tarzan of the Apes (1912)

- A Princess of Mars (1912)

- John Carter and the Giant of Mars (1940)

- The Gods of Mars (1918)

- A Fighting Man of Mars (1930)

- The Master Mind of Mars (1927)

- Swords of Mars (1934)

- The Warlord of Mars (1918)

- The Chessmen of Mars (1922)

- Synthetic Men of Mars (1939)

Copyright: This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50.

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Chapter 1 The Jungle

"My Lord, I may go no farther," said the Cambodian.

The young white man turned in astonishment upon his native guide. Behind them lay the partially cleared trail along which they had come. It was overgrown with tall grass that concealed the tree-stumps that had been left behind the axes of the road-builders. Before them lay a ravine, at the near edge of which the trail ended. Beyond the ravine was the primitive jungle untouched by man.

"Why, we haven't even started yet!" exclaimed the white man. "You cannot turn back now. What do you suppose I hired you for?"

"I promised to take my lord to the jungle," replied the Cambodian. "There it is. I did not promise to enter it."

Gordon King lighted a cigarette. "Let's talk this thing over, my friend," he said. "It is yet early morning. We can get into the jungle as far as I care to go and out again before sundown."

The Cambodian shook his head. "I will wait for you here, my lord," he said; "but I may not enter the jungle, and if you are wise you will not."

"Why?" demanded King.

"There are wild elephants, my lord, and tigers," replied the Cambodian, "and panthers which hunt by day as well as by night."

"Why do you suppose we brought two rifles?" demanded the white. "At Kompong-Thom they told me you were a good shot and a brave man. You knew that we should have no need for rifles up to this point. No, sir, you have lost your nerve at the last minute, and I do not believe that it is because of tigers or wild elephants."

"There are other things deep in the jungle, my lord, that no man may look upon and live."

"What, for example?" demanded King.

"The ghosts of my ancestors," answered the Cambodian, "the Khmers who dwelt here in great cities ages ago. Within the dark shadows of the jungle the ruins of their cities still stand, and down the dark aisles of the forest pass the ancient kings and warriors and little sad-faced queens on ghostly elephants. Fleeing always from the horrible fate that overtook them in life, they pass for ever down the corridors of the jungle, and with them are the millions of the ghostly dead that once were their subjects. We might escape My Lord the Tiger and the wild elephants, but no man may look upon the ghosts of the dead Khmers and live."

"We shall be out before dark," insisted King.

"They are abroad both by day and by night," said the Cambodian. "It is the curse of Siva, the Destroyer."

King shrugged his shoulders, stamped out his cigarette and picked up his rifle. "Wait for me here, then," he said. "I shall be out before dark."

"You will never come out," said the Cambodian.

Beyond the ravine, savage, mysterious, rose the jungle, its depth screened from view by the spectral trunks of fromagers and a tangle of bamboo. At first the man could find no opening in that solid wall of vegetation. In its sheath, at his side, hung a heavy knife, but already the young day was so oppressively hot that the man did not relish the idea of exhausting himself at the very outset of his adventure if he could find some easier way. That it would be still hotter he knew, for Cambodia lies but twelve degrees above the equator in the same latitude as Nicaragua, the Sudan, and other places infamous for their heat.

Along the edge of the ravine he searched, until at last he was rewarded by what appeared to be not by any means a trail but a far less formidable growth of bamboo through which he saw that he might easily force his way. Glancing back, he saw his Cambodian guide squatted upon his heels in mournful meditation. For an instant the young man hesitated, as though he was of a mind to try again to persuade the Cambodian to accompany him; but, as though immediately conscious of the futility of any such appeal, he turned again and pushed his way into the jungle.

He had advanced but a short distance when the heavy undergrowth gave way to a much more open forest. The spreading branches of the lofty trees cast upon the ground a perpetual shade, which had discouraged a heavy growth of underbrush.

How different looked the jungle from any picture that his imagination had conjured! How mysterious, but above all, how gloomy and how sinister! A fitting haunt, indeed, for the ghosts of weeping queens and murdered kings. Beneath his breath King cursed his Cambodian guide. He felt no fear, but he did feel an unutterable loneliness.

Only for a moment did he permit the gloom of the jungle to oppress him. He glanced at his watch, opened his pocket compass, and set a course as nearly due north as the winding avenues of the jungle permitted. He may have realised that he was something of a fool to have entered upon such an adventure alone; but it was doubtful that he would have admitted it even to himself, for, indeed, what danger was there? He had, he thought, sufficient water for the day; he was well armed and carried a compass and a heavy knife for trail-cutting. Perhaps he was a little short on food, but one cannot carry too heavy a load through the midday heat of a Cambodian jungle.

Gordon King was a young American who had recently graduated in medicine. Having an independent income, he had no need to practice his profession; and well realising, as he did, that there are already too many poor doctors in the world, he had decided to devote himself for a number of years to the study of strange maladies. For the moment he had permitted himself to be lured from his hobby by the intriguing mysteries of the Khmer ruins of Angkor—ruins that had worked so mightily upon his imagination that it had been impossible for him to withstand the temptation of some independent exploration on his own account. What he expected to discover he did not know; perhaps the ruins of a city more mighty than Angkor Thom; perhaps a temple of greater magnificence and grandeur than Angkor Vat; perhaps nothing more than a day's adventure. Youth is like that.

The jungle that had at first appeared so silent seemed to awaken at the footfall of the trespasser; scolding birds fluttered above him, and there were monkeys now that seemed to have come from nowhere. They, too, scolded as they hurtled through the lower terraces of the forest.

He found the going more difficult than he had imagined, for the floor of the jungle was far from level. There were gulleys and ravines to be crossed and fallen trees across the way, and always he must be careful to move as nearly north as was physically possible, else he might come out far from his Cambodian guide when he sought to return. His rifle grew hotter and heavier; his canteen of water insisted with the perversity of inanimate objects in sliding around in front and bumping him on the belly. He reeked with sweat, and yet he knew that he could not have come more than a few miles from the point where he had left his guide. The tall grasses bothered him most, for he could not see what they hid; and when a cobra slid from beneath his feet and glided away, he realised more fully the menace of the grasses, which in places grew so high that they brushed his face.

At the end of two hours King was perfectly well assured that he was a fool to go on, but there was a certain proportion of bulldog stubbornness in his make-up that would not permit him to turn back so soon. He paused and drank from his canteen. The water was warm and had an unpleasant taste. The best that might be said of it was that it was wet. To his right and a little ahead sounded a sudden crash in the jungle. Startled, he cocked his rifle and stood listening. Perhaps a dead tree had fallen, he thought, or the noise might have been caused by a wild elephant. It was not a ghostly noise at all, and yet it had a strange effect upon his nerves, which, to his disgust, he suddenly realised were on edge. Had he permitted the silly folk tale of the Cambodian to so work upon his imagination that he translated into a suggestion of impending danger every unexpected interruption of the vast silence of the jungle?

Wiping the sweat from his face, he continued on his way, keeping as nearly a northerly direction as was possible. The air was filled with strange odours, among which was one more insistent than the others—a pungent, disagreeable odour that he found strangely familiar and yet could not immediately identify: Lazy air currents, moving sluggishly through the jungle, occasionally brought this odour to his nostrils, sometimes bearing but a vague suggestion of it and again with a strength that was almost sickening; and then suddenly the odour stimulated a memory cell that identified it. He saw himself standing on the concrete floor of a large building, the sides of which were lined with heavily barred cages in which lions and tigers paced nervously to and fro or sprawled in melancholy meditation of their lost freedom; and in his nostrils was the same odour that impinged upon them now. However, it is one thing to contemplate tigers from the safe side of iron bars, and it is quite another thing suddenly to realise their near presence unrestrained by bars of any sort. It occurred to him now that he had not previously considered tigers as anything more serious than a noun; they had not represented a concrete reality. But that mental conception had passed now, routed by the odour that clung in his nostrils. He was not afraid; but realising for the first time, that he was in actual danger, he advanced more warily, always on the alert.

Some marshy ground and several deep ravines had necessitated various detours. It was already almost noon, the time upon which he was determined he must turn back in order that he might reach the point where he had left his guide before darkness fell upon the jungle. Constantly for some tune there had lurked within his consciousness a question as to his ability to back-track upon his trail. He had had no experience in woodcraft, and he had already found it far more difficult than he had imagined it would be to maintain a true course by compass; nor had he taken the precautions to blaze his trail in any way, as he might have done by marking the trees with the heavy trail cutter that he carried.

Gordon King was disgusted with himself; he had found no ruins; he was hot, tired and hungry. He realised that he had lost all interest in ruins of any and all descriptions, and after a brief rest he turned back towards the south. It was then, almost immediately, that he realised the proportions of the task that lay ahead of him. For six hours he had been plodding deep into the jungle. If he had averaged two miles an hour, he had covered a distance of twelve miles. He did not know how fast he had walked, but he realised that twelve miles was bad enough when he considered that he had started out fresh and well fortified by a hearty breakfast and that he was returning empty, tired, and footsore.

However, he still believed that he could make the distance easily before dark if he could keep to the trail. He was well prepared physically by years of athletic training, having been a field and track man at college. He was glad now that he had gone in for long distance running; he had won a marathon or two and was never appalled at the thought of long distances to be covered on foot. That he could throw the javelin and hurl the discus to almost championship distances seemed less helpful to him in an emergency of the present nature than his running experience. His only regret on this score was that during the year that he had been out of college he had permitted himself to become soft—a condition that had become increasingly noticeable with every mile that he put behind him.

Within the first minute that Gordon King had been upon the back-trail toward his guide he had discovered that it was absolutely impossible for his untrained eyes to find any sign of the trail that he supposed he had made coming in. The way that he thought he had come, his compass told him, let towards the south-west; but he could find no directing spoor.

With a shake of his head, he resorted again to his compass; but due south pointed into a dense section of jungle through which he was positive he had not come. He wondered whether he should attempt to skirt every obstacle, thereby making long and wide detours or continue straight toward the south, deviating from his direct line only when confronted by insurmountable obstacles. The latter, he felt, would be the shortest way out of the jungle in point of distance, and he was confident that it would bring him as close to his Cambodian guide as any other route that he might elect to follow.

As he approached the patch of jungle that had seemed at first to bar his way completely, he found that it was much more open than he had suspected and that, while the trees were large and grew rather close together, there was little or no underbrush. Glancing often at his compass, he entered the gloomy forest. The heat, which had grown intense, possibly aggravated the fatigue which he now realised was rapidly attaining the proportions of a real menace. He had not appreciated when he stepped out upon this foolish adventure how soft his muscles had become, and as he contemplated the miles and hours of torture that lay ahead of him, he suddenly felt very helpless and alone.

The weight of his rifle, revolver, ammunition, and water represented a definite handicap that he knew might easily defeat his hope of escaping from the jungle before dark. The smell of the great cats was heavy in the air. Against this ever-present premonition of danger, however, was the fact that he had already spent over six hours in the jungle without having caught a glimpse of any of the dread Carnivore. He was convinced, therefore, that he was in little danger of attack by day and that he might have a better chance of getting out of the jungle before dark if he discarded his weapons, which would unquestionably be useless to him after dark.

And then again, he argued, perhaps, after all, there were no man-eaters in the jungle, for he had heard that not all tigers were man-eaters. For the lesser cats, the panthers and leopards, he did not entertain so great a fear, notwithstanding the fact that he had been assured that they were quite as dangerous as their larger cousins. The size, the reputation and the fearful mien of My Lord the Tiger dwarfed his estimate of the formidable nature of the others.

A large, flat stone, backed by denser foliage, suggested that he rest for a moment while deliberating upon the wisdom of abandoning his weapons. The canteen of water, with its depleted store of warm and unpleasant-tasting liquid, he knew he must cling to until it had been emptied. Before he sat down upon the stone he leaned his rifle against a tree, and unbuckling the belt which supported his revolver and also held his ammunition, he tossed it upon the ground at his feet. What a relief! Instantly there left him the fear that he might not be able to get out of the jungle before dark. Relieved of what had become a constantly increasing burden, he felt like a new man and equal to any efforts that the return march might demand of him. He seated himself upon the flat rock and took a very small swallow from the contents of his canteen. He had been sparing of his water and he was glad that he had been, for now he was convinced that it would last him through the remainder of the day, giving him strength and refreshment when he would most need them.

As he replaced the screw cap upon his canteen, he chanced to glance at the rock upon which he was sitting and for the first time was struck by the fact that it seemed incongruously out of place in the midst of this jungle of great trees and foliage. Idly he brushed an accumulation of leaf mould from its surface, and what he saw revealed beneath increased his curiosity sufficiently to cause him to expose the entire surface of the rock, disclosing in bold bas-relief the head and shoulders of a warrior.

Here, then, was the reward for which he had struggled; but he found that it left him a little cold. His interest in Khmer ruins seemed to have evaporated beneath the torrid heat of the jungle. However, he still maintained sufficient curiosity to speculate upon the presence of this single relic of the past. His examination of the ruins of Angkor Thom suggested that this must have been a part of some ancient edifice and if this were true the rest must be close at hand— perhaps just behind the screen of jungle that formed the background of this solitary fragment.

Rising, he turned and tried to peer through the foliage, separating the leaves and branches with his hand. A few hours before his heart would have leaped at what he glimpsed vaguely now through the leafy screen—a vast pile of masonry through whose crumbling arches he saw stately columns still defying the ruthless inroads of the jungle in the lonely, hopeless battle they had been waging through the silent centuries.

And then it was that, as he stood gazing, half-fascinated by the tragic magnificence that still clung to this crumbling monument to the transient glories and the vanities of man, his eye was attracted by a movement within the ruins; just a glimpse he got where a little sunlight filtered through a fallen roof—a little patch of fawn with dark brown stripes. In the instant that he saw it, it was gone. There had been no sound, just a passing of something among the ruins. But Gordon King felt the cold sweat upon his brow as hastily he gathered up his belt and buckled it about his waist and seized his rifle. Blessed weight! He thanked God that he had not gone on without it.

Forgotten were the ruins of the Khmers as he strode cautiously on through the forest, constantly alert now, looking to the right and to the left, and turning often a hasty glance behind him. Soft are the pads of the carnivores. They give forth no sound. When the end came, if it did come, he knew that there would be a sudden rush and then the terrible fangs and talons. He experienced the uncanny sensation of unseen eyes upon him. He was sure that the beast was stalking him. It was maddening not to be able to see it again.

He found it necessary to consult his compass frequently in order to keep to his course. His instrument was a small one, constructed like a hunting-case watch. When the catch was released the cover flew open, releasing the needle, which, when the cover was closed, was locked in position, that its bearings might not be injured by sudden changes of position.

King was on the point of checking his direction; but as he held the compass open in his hand, he thought that he heard a slight noise behind him. As he glanced back the toe of his boot struck a rock; and trying to regain his equilibrium, he stumbled into a patch of tumbled sandstone rocks, among which he sprawled heavily upon his face. Spurred by thoughts of the sound that he had heard behind him, he scrambled quickly to his feet; but though he searched the jungle as far as his eyes could reach in every direction, he could discern no sign of any menacing beast.

When he had fallen he had dropped his compass, and now that he was satisfied that no danger lurked in his immediate vicinity, he set about to recover the instrument. He found it quickly enough, but one glance at it sent his heart into his boots—his compass was broken beyond possibility of repair. It was several seconds before the full measure of this calamity unfolded itself to his stunned consciousness.

For a moment Gordon King was appalled by the accident that had befallen him, for he knew that it was a real catastrophe. Practically unversed in woodcraft, he found himself in a jungle overhung by foliage so dense that it was impossible to get his bearings from the sun, menaced by the ever-present danger of the great cats and faced with what he felt now was definite assurance that he would have to spend the night in these surroundings with only a remote likelihood that he ever would be able to find his way out in the event that he did not fall prey to the carnivores or to thirst.

But only momentarily did he permit himself to be crushed by contemplation of his predicament. He was well armed, and he knew that he was resourceful and intelligent. Suddenly there came to him a realisation of something that gave him renewed strength and hope.

Few men know until they are actually confronted by lethal danger whether at heart they are courageous or cowardly. Never before had Gordon King been called upon to make such an appraisal of himself. Alone in this mysterious forest, uninfluenced by the possibilities of the acclaim or reproaches of another, there was borne in upon his consciousness a definite realisation of self-sufficiency. He fully realised the dangers that confronted him; he did not relish them, but he felt no sensation of fear.

A new feeling of confidence pervaded him as he set out again in the direction that he had been going before he had fallen and broken his compass. He was still alert and watchful, but he did not glance behind him as much as he had previously. He felt that he was making good headway, and he was sure that he was keeping a true course toward the south. Perhaps, after all, he would get out before dark, he thought. The condition that irritated him most was his increasing thirst, against which he was compelled to pit every ounce of his will power that he might conserve the small amount of water that remained in his canteen.

The route he was following was much more open than that along which he had entered the jungle, so that he was buoyantly hopeful that he would come out of his predicament and the jungle before night had enveloped the gloomy haunt of the great cats; yet he realised that at best he would win by but a small margin.

He was very tired now, a fact that was borne in upon him by the frequency with which he stumbled, and when he fell he found that each time it was only with increased effort that he rose again to his feet. He was rather angry with himself for this seeming weakness. He knew that there was only one thing that he could do to overcome it, and that thing he could not afford to do, for the fleeting minutes of precious daylight would not pause in their flight while he rested.

As the miles fell slowly and painfully behind him and the minutes raced as though attempting to escape him and leave him to the mercy of the darkness and the tigers, the hope that had been newborn in him for a while commenced to desert him; yet he stumbled wearily on, wondering if the jungle had no end and hoping against hope that beyond the next wall of verdure he would break through into the clearing that would mean life and food and water for him.

"It can't be far now," he thought, "and there must be an hour of full daylight ahead." He was almost exhausted; a little rest would renew his strength, he knew, and there, just ahead of him, was a large, flat rock. He would rest for a moment upon it and renew his strength.

As he seated himself upon this hard resting-place, something upon its surface caught his horrified gaze. It was the head and shoulders of a warrior, cut in bold bas-relief.

Chapter 2 The Delirium

There are circumstances in which even the bravest of men experience a hopelessness of utter despair. Such was King's state of mind when he realised that he had wandered in an aimless circle since noon and was back again at his starting-point. Weakened by physical exhaustion and hunger, he contemplated the future with nothing but pessimism. He had had his chance to escape from the jungle, and he had failed. There was no reason to believe that another day might bring greater opportunity. Rest might recoup his strength slightly, but what he needed was food, and on the morrow he would set forth not with a canteen full of water, but with only a few drops with which to moisten his parched throat. He had stumbled through plenty of mud-holes during the day, but he knew that it would doubtless prove fatal to drink from such wells of pollution.

As he stood there with bowed head, searching his mind for some solution of his problem, his eyes gradually returned to focus, and as they did so he saw on the surface of the soft ground beneath his gaze something that, for the moment, drove thoughts of hunger and thirst and fatigue from his mind—it was the pug of a tiger, fresh made in the soft earth.

"Why worry about to-morrow?" murmured King. "If half what that Cambodian told me about this place at night is true, I'll be in luck if I see another to-morrow."

He had read somewhere that tigers started to hunt late in the afternoon, and he knew that they seldom climbed trees; but he was also aware of the fact that leopards and panthers do and that the latter, especially, on account of their size and inherent viciousness, were fully as much to be dreaded as My Lord the Tiger himself. Realising that he must find some sort of shelter as quickly as possible and recalling the ruins that he had seen through the screen of foliage behind the rock before which he stood, he parted the leafy screen ahead of him and forced his way through.

Here the vegetation was less dense, as though the lesser growth of the jungle had halted in fearful reverence before this awe-inspiring work of man. Majestic even in its ruin was the great rectangular pile that loomed clearly now before the eyes of the American. But not all of the jungle had feared to encroach upon its sanctity. Great trees had taken root upon its terraced walls, among its columns and its arches, and by the slow and resistless pressure of their growth had forced aside the supporting foundation and brought much of the edifice into complete ruin.

Just before him rose a tower that seemed better to have withstood the ravages of time than other portions of the building. It rose some sixty feet above the ground, and near the summit was carved in heroic size the face of a god that King suspected was Siva, the Destroyer. A few feet above the rectangular doorway was a crumbling ledge and just above that a smaller opening that might have been a window. Behind it all was dark, but it carried to King's mind the suggestion of a hiding-place—a sanctuary in the very bosom of Siva.

The face of the weather-worn tower offered sufficient foothold for an agile climber, and the way was made easier by the corbelled construction that supported a series of bas-reliefs rising one above another from the ground level to the edge above the doorway. It was not, however, without considerable difficulty that King, already almost exhausted, finally reached the ledge, where he sat down for a moment's rest. Just above him was the opening which he wished to investigate. As he let his thoughts precede him in that investigation of this possible refuge, they discovered, as thoughts are prone to do, enough unpleasant possibilities to cast a pall of gloom over him. Doubtless it was the den of a panther.

What more secluded spot could this horrid beast discover in which to lie up after feeding or in which to bear and rear its young?

The suggestion forced him to immediate action. He did not believe that there was any panther there, but he could not endure the suspense of doubt. Cocking his rifle, he arose and approached the opening, the lower sill of which was just about level with his breast as he stood upon the ledge above the doorway. Within all was black and silent. He listened intently. If there were anything hiding there, he should hear it breathe; but no sound broke the utter silence of the tomb-like vault. Pushing his rifle ahead of him, King climbed to the sill, where he remained in silence for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the gloom of the interior, which was slightly relieved by light filtering in through a crack at one side. A few feet below him was a stone floor, and he could see dimly now that the chamber extended the full breadth and width of the tower. In the centre of the apartment rose something, the nature of which he could not distinguish; but he was sure that it was inanimate.

Stepping down to the floor and advancing cautiously, his rifle ready, King made a complete circuit of the walls. There was no panther there, nor any signs that one ever had been there. Apparently the place had never been entered by any creature since that day of mystery, centuries gone, when the priests and temple girls had departed never to return. Turning toward the object in the centre of the room, King quickly identified it as the symbol of Siva and realised that he was doubtless in the Holy of Holies.

Walking back to the window, he seated himself upon the sill, took a small swallow from his scant store of water and lighted a cigarette; and as the sudden night fell upon the jungle, he heard the crisp fall of padded feet upon dry leaves in the courtyard of the temple beneath him.

His position, well above the floor of the jungle, imparted a feeling of security; and the quiet enjoyment of a cigarette soothed his nerves and, temporarily at least, allayed the gnawing pangs of hunger. He derived a form of mild enjoyment by speculating upon the surprise and consternation of his friends could they visualise his present situation. Perhaps uttermost in his thoughts was Susan Anne Prentice, and he knew that he would be in for a good scolding could she be aware of the predicament into which his silly and ill-advised adventure had placed him.

He recalled their parting and the motherly advice she had given him. What a peach of a girl Susan Anne was! It seemed strange to him that she had never married, for there were certainly enough eligible fellows always hanging around her. He was rather glad that she had not, for he realised that he should feel lost without the promise of her companionship when he returned home. He had known Susan Anne as far back as he could remember, and they had always been pals. In the city of their birth their fathers' grounds adjoined and there was no fence between; at the little lake where they spent their summers they were next-door neighbours. Susan Anne had been as much a part of Gordon King's life as had his father or his mother, for each was an only child and they had been as close to one another as brother and sister.

He remembered telling her, the night before he had left home for this trip, that she would doubtless be married by the time he returned. "No chance," she had said with an odd little smile.

"I do not see why not," he had argued. "I know at least half a dozen men who are wild about you."

"Not the right one," she had replied.

"So there is someone?"

"Perhaps."

He wondered who the fellow could be and decided that he must be an awful chump not to appreciate the wonderful qualities of Susan Anne. In so far as looks were concerned, she had it on all the girls of his acquaintance, in addition whereto she had a good head on her shoulders and was a regular fellow in every other respect. Together they had often bemoaned the fact that she was not a man, that they might have palled around on his wanderings together.

His reveries were blasted by a series of low, coughing roars down there somewhere in the darkness at a little distance from the ruins. They were followed by a crashing sound, as of a large body dashing through underbrush. Then there was a scream and a thud, followed by low growls and silence. King felt his scalp tingle. What tragedy of the jungle night had been enacted in that black, mysterious void?

The sudden and rather terrifying noise and its equally abrupt cessation but tended to impress upon the man and to accentuate the normal, mysterious silence of the jungle. He knew that the jungle teemed with life; yet, for the most part, it moved as silently as might the ghosts of the priests and the temple girls with which imagination might easily people this crumbling ruin of the temple of the Destroyer. Often from below him and from the surrounding jungle came the suggestion of noises—furtive, stealthy sounds that might have been the ghosts of long-dead noises. Sometimes he could interpret these sounds as the cracking of a twig or the rustling of leaves beneath a padded paw, but more often there was just the sense of things below him—grim and terrible creatures that lived by death alone.

And thus the night wore on, until at last day came. He had dozed intermittently, sitting upon the window ledge with his back against its ancient stone frame, his rifle across his lap. He did not feel much refreshed, but when the full light of the day had enveloped the jungle he clambered swiftly down the ruins to the ground and set out once again toward the south, filled with a determination to push on regardless of hunger and fatigue until he had escaped the hideous clutches of this dismal forest, which now seemed to him to have assumed a malignant personality that was endeavouring to foil his efforts and retain him for ever for some sinister purpose of its own. He had come to hate the jungle; he wanted to shout aloud against it the curses that were in his heart. He was impelled to discharge his rifle against it as though it were some creature barring his way to liberty. But he held himself in leash, submerging everything to the desire for escape.

He found that he moved more slowly than he had upon the preceding day. Obstacles were more difficult to surmount, and he was forced to stop more often to rest. These delays galled him; but when he tried to push on more rapidly he often stumbled and fell, and each time he found it more difficult to arise. Then there dawned upon him the realisation that he might not have sufficient strength to reach the edge of the jungle, and for the first time unquestioned fear assailed him.

He sat down upon the ground and, leaning his back against a tree, argued the matter out thoroughly in his own mind. At last his strength of will overcame his fears, so that realisation of the fact that he might not get out that day no longer induced an emotional panic.

"If not to-day, to-morrow," he thought; "if not tomorrow, then the day after. Am I a weakling that I cannot carry on for a few days? Am I to die of starvation in a country abounding in game?"

Physical stamina being so considerably influenced as it is by the condition of the mind, it was with a sense of renewed power that King arose and continued on his way, but imbued now not solely with the desire to escape immediately from the jungle but to wrest from it sustenance and strength that it might be forced to aid him in his escape even though the consummation of his hope might be deferred indefinitely. The psychological effect of this new mental attitude wrought a sudden metamorphosis. He was no longer a hunted fugitive fleeing for his life; he had become in fact a jungle dweller hunting for food and for water. The increasing heat of the advancing day had necessitated inroads upon his scant supply of the latter, yet he still had a few drops left; and these he was determined not to use until he could no longer withstand the tortures of thirst.

He had by now worked out a new and definite plan of procedure; he would work constantly downhill, keeping a sharp look out for game, knowing that eventually he must come to some of the numerous small streams that would ultimately lead him to the Mekong, the large central river that bisects Cambodia on its way to the China Sea; or per-chance he might hit upon one of those streams that ran south and emptied into the Tonle-Sap.

He found it much easier going downhill, and he was glad on this account that he had adopted his present plan. The nature of the country changed a little, too; open spaces were more numerous. Sometimes these flats were marshy, requiring wide detours, and usually they were covered with elephant grass that resembled the cat tails with which he had been familiar as a boy during his summer vacations in the country. He did not like these spaces because they appeared too much the natural habitat of snakes, and he recalled having read somewhere that in a single year there had been sixteen thousand recorded deaths from snake bites in British India alone. This recollection came to him while he was in the centre of a large patch of elephant grass, and consequently he moved very slowly, examining the ground ahead of him carefully at each step. This, of course, necessitated pushing the reeds apart, a slow and laborious procedure; but it also resulted in his moving more quietly; so that when he emerged from the reeds a sight met his eyes that doubtless he would not have seen had he crashed through noisily.

Directly in front of him and maybe fifty paces distant under a great spreading banyan tree lay several wild pigs, all of them comfortably asleep except one old boar, which seemed to be on guard. That King's approach had not been entirely noiseless was evidenced by the fact that the great beast was standing head-on and alert, his ears up-pricked, looking straight at the point at which the man emerged from the elephant grass.

For an instant man and beast stood silently eyeing one another. King saw lying near the boar a half-grown pig, that would make better eating than the tough old tusker. He brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired at the sleeping pig, expecting the remainder of the herd to turn and flee into the jungle; but he had not taken into consideration the violent disposition of the boar. The rest of the herd, awakened with startling suddenness by the unaccustomed report of the rifle, leaped to their feet, stood for an instant in bewilderment, and then turned and disappeared among the undergrowth. Not so the boar. At the crack of the rifle he charged.

There is something rather awe-inspiring in the charge of a wild boar, especially if one happens to be in the path of it, as King was. Perhaps because of his unfamiliarity with the habits of wild boars, the charge was entirely unexpected; and in the brief instant that he had in which to defend himself, he realised that he did not know what was the most vulnerable spot in a boar's anatomy. All that he sensed in that all too short interval were a pair of great flashing tusks, huge jowls, two red-rimmed wicked little eyes, and a stiffly upright tail bearing down upon him with all the velocity and apparently quite the weight of a steam locomotive.

There seemed to be nothing to shoot at but a face. His first shot struck the boar squarely between the eyes and dropped him, but only for an instant. Then he was up again and coming. Giving thanks for a magazine rifle, King pumped three more bullets straight into that terrifying countenance, and to the last one the great beast rolled over against King's feet. None too sure that he had more than stunned him, the man quickly put a bullet through the savage heart.

It had been a close call, and he trembled a little to think what his fate might have been had he been seriously wounded and left there dying in the jungle. Assured that the boar was dead, he went quickly to the pig that had been killed instantly by his first shot. As his knife sank into the flesh, he became suddenly conscious of a change within him. He was moved by urgings that he had never sensed before. He was impelled to bury his teeth in the raw flesh and gorge himself. He realised that this was partially the result of gnawing hunger; but yet it seemed deeper, something primitive and bestial that always had been a part of him but that never before had had occasion to come to the surface. He knew in that brief instant the feeling of the wild beast for its kill. He looked quickly and furtively about to see if there might be any creature bold enough to contest his possession of the fruit of his prowess. He felt the snarling muscles of his upper lip tense and he sensed within him the rumblings of a growl, though no sound passed his lips.

It required a determined effort of will power to refrain from eating the flesh raw, so hungry was he; but he managed to conquer the urge and set about building a fire, though the meal that he finally produced was scarcely more than a compromise, the meat being charred upon the outside and raw within. After he had eaten he felt renewed strength, but now the tortures of thirst assailed him more poignantly than before. His canteen was empty; and though he had passed by stagnant pools of water during the day, he had been able to resist the temptation to drink, realising, as he did, the germs of terrible fever that lurked in these slimy pools.

The next few days constituted a long nightmare of suffering and disappointment. He found his path toward the Mekong barred by impassable swamps that forced him northward over a broken terrain of ravines and ridges that taxed his rapidly waning strength. For some time after leaving the marshes he had seen no water, but upon the third day he came to a pool in the bottom of a ravine. That it was the drinking-hole of wild beasts was evidenced by the multitude of tracks in the muddy bank. The liquid was green and thick, but not for an instant did the man hesitate. Throwing himself upon his belly, he plunged his hands and face into the foul mess and drank. Neither fever nor death could be worse than the pangs of thirst.

Later that day he shot a monkey and, cooking some of the flesh, appeased his hunger; and thus for several days he wandered, shooting an occasional monkey for food and drinking water wherever he found it. He was always conscious of the presence of the great cats, though only upon one or two occasions did he catch fleeting glimpses of them; but at night he heard them moving softly beneath some tree in which he had found precarious sanctuary, where he crouched nursing the hope that no leopard or panther would discover him. Occasionally he saw small herds of wild elephants, and these he always gave a wide berth. He had long given up all hope of escaping from the jungle, and he could not but wonder at man's tenacity in clinging to life in the face of suffering and hardship when he knew that at best he was but prolonging his agony and only temporarily delaying the inevitable.

Seven days and seven nights he had spent in the jungle, and the last night had been the worst of all. He had dozed intermittently. The jungle had been full of noises, and he had seen strange, dim figures passing beneath him. When the eighth morning broke, he was shivering with cold. His chattering teeth reminded him of castanets. He looked about him for dancers and was surprised that he saw none. Something moved through the foliage of the jungle beneath him. It was yellowish-brown with dark stripes. He called to it and it disappeared. Quite remarkably he ceased to be cold, and instead his body burned as though consumed by internal fires. The tree in which he sat swayed dizzily, and then with an effort he pulled himself together and slipped to the ground. He found that he was very tired and that he was forced to stop to rest every few minutes, and sometimes he shook with cold and again he burned with heat.

It was about noon; the sun was high and the heat terrific. King lay shivering where he had fallen at the foot of a silk-cotton tree, against the bole of which he leaned for support. Far down a jungle aisle he saw an elephant. It was not alone; there were other things preceding it—things that could not be in this deserted primeval jungle. He closed his eyes and shook his head. It was only an hallucination brought on by a touch of fever, of that he was certain. But when he opened his eyes again the elephant was still there, and he recognised the creatures that preceded it as warriors clothed in brass. They were coming closer. King crawled back into the concealing verdure of the underbrush. His head ached terribly. There was a buzzing hum in his ears that drowned all other sounds. The caravan passed within fifty feet of him, but he heard no sound. There were archers and spear men—brown men with cuirasses of burnished brass—and then came the elephant trapped in regal splendour, and in a gorgeous howdah upon its back rode a girl. He saw her profile first, and then as something attracted her attention she turned her face full toward him. It was a face of exquisite and exotic beauty, but a sad face with frightened eyes. Her trappings were more gorgeous than the trappings of the elephant. Behind her marched other warriors, but presently all were gone down the aisles of the jungle in spectral silence.

"Weeping queens on misty elephants!" He had read the phrase somewhere in a book. "Gad!" he exclaimed. "What weird tricks fever plays upon one's brain. I could have sworn that what I saw was real."

Slowly he staggered to his feet and pushed on, whither or in what direction he had no idea. It was a blind urge of self-preservation that goaded him forward; to what goal, he did not know; all that he knew was that if he remained where he was he must inevitably perish. Perhaps he would perish anyway, but if he went on, there was a chance. Figures, strange and familiar, passed in jumbled and fantastic procession along the corridors of his mind. Susan Anne Prentice clothed in brass rode upon the back of an elephant. A weeping queen with painted cheeks and rouged lips came and knelt beside him offering him a draft of cold, crystal-clear water from a golden goblet, but when he lifted it to his lips the goblet became a battered canteen from which oozed a slimy green liquid that burned his mouth and nauseated him. Then he saw soldiers in brass who held platters containing steaming sirloin steaks and French-fried potatoes, which changed magically to sherbert, iced tea, and waffles with maple syrup.

"This will never do," thought King. "I am going absolutely daffy. I wonder how long the fever lasts, or how long it takes to finish a fellow."

He was lying upon the ground at the edge of a little clearing partially hid by the tall grass into which he had sunk. Suddenly everything seemed to whirl around in circles, and then the world went black and he lost consciousness. It was very late in the afternoon when he came to; but the fever seemed to have left him, temporarily at least, and his mind was clear.

"This can't go on much longer," he soliloquised. "If I don't find some place pretty soon where I can lie in safety until after the fever has passed entirely, it will be just too bad. I wonder what it feels like to be mauled by a tiger."

But when he attempted to rise he discovered to his horror that he had not sufficient strength to get to his feet. He still clung to his rifle. He had long since made up his mind that in it lay his principal hope of salvation. Without it, he must go hungry and fall prey to the first beast that attacked him. He knew that if he discarded it and his heavy belt of ammunition he might stagger on a short distance and then, when he fell again, he would be helpless.

As he lay there looking out into the little clearing, speculating upon his fate and trying to estimate the number of hours of life that might remain to him, he saw a strange figure enter the clearing. It was an old man with a straggly white beard growing sparsely upon his chin and upper lip. He wore a long, yellow cloak and a fantastic headdress, above which he carried a red umbrella. He moved slowly, his eyes bent upon the ground.

"Damned fever," muttered King, and shut his eyes.

He kept them closed for a minute or two, but when he opened them the old man was still in sight, though by this time he had almost crossed the clearing, and now there was another figure in the picture. From out of the foliage beyond the clearing appeared a savage, snarling face—a great, vicious, yellow-fanged face; yellowish-white and tan with broken markings of dark brown stripes that looked almost black—a hideous head, and yet, at the same time, a gorgeously majestic head. Slowly, silently the great tiger emerged into the clearing, its gaunt, flat-sided body moving sinuously, its yellow-green eyes blazing terribly at the back of the unconscious old man.

"God, how real!" breathed King. "I could swear that I really saw them both. Only the impossible figure of that old man with the red parasol could convince me that they are both made of the same material as the spectral elephant, the weeping queen, and the brass-bound soldiers."

The tiger was creeping rapidly toward the old man. His speed gradually accelerated.

"I can't stand it," cried King, raising his rifle to his shoulder. "They may be only an hallucination—"

There was a short coughing roar as the tiger charged, and at the same instant King squeezed the trigger of his rifle and fainted.

Chapter 3 The Hunter

Vay Thon, high priest of the temple of Siva in the city of Lodidhapura, was the source of much anxiety on the part of the lesser priests, who felt responsible to Siva and the King for the well-being of Vay Thon. But how might one cope with the vagaries of a weakness so holy and, at the same time, so erratic as that which occasionally claimed the amnesic Vay Thon? They tried to watch over him at all times, but it is difficult to maintain constant espionage over one so holy, whose offices or whose meditations may not lightly be broken in upon by lesser mortals, even though they be priests of the great god, Siva.

All was well when Vay Thon confined himself in his meditations to the innermost sanctum of the Holy of Holies; here, in the safe-keeping of his god, he was isolated from mankind and safe from danger. But the meditations of Vay Thon were not always thus securely cloistered. Often he strolled along the broad terrace beside the mighty temple, where wrapped in utter forgetfulness of himself and of the world he walked in silent communion with his god.

With his long, yellow cloak and his red parasol he was also a familiar figure upon the streets of Lodidhapura. Here he was often accompanied by lesser priests, who walked in cuirasses of polished brass, who marched ahead and in the rear. Of all these symbols of worldly pomp and power, Vay Thon was entirely unconscious. During those periods that he was wrapped in the oblivion of meditation and upon the numerous occasions when he had managed to leave the temple ground unperceived, he had walked through the streets of the city equally unaware of all that surrounded him. Upon three separate and distinct occasions he had been found wandering in the jungle, and Lodivarman, the King, had threatened to wreak dire punishment upon the lesser priests should harm ever befall Vay Thon during one of these excursions.

It so happened that upon this very day Vay Thon had walked out of the city and into the jungle alone. That he had been able to leave a walled city, the gates of which were heavily guarded by veteran warriors, might have seemed a surprising thing to the citizens of Lodidhapura; but not so to the one familiar with the secret galleries that lay beneath the temple and the palace, through which the ancient builders of Lodidhapura might well have expected to flee the wrath of the downtrodden slaves who comprised 75 per cent of the population. Though times have changed with the passing centuries, the almost forgotten passageways remain. It was through one of these that Vay Thon reached the jungle. He did not know that he was in the jungle. He was as totally oblivious of his surroundings as is one who is wrapped in deep and dreamless sleep.

The last that the lesser priests had seen of Vay Thon was when he had entered the Holy of Holies, which houses the symbol of Siva. As they had noticed a glassy expression in his eyes, they had known that he was entering upon a period of meditation. Therefore, they maintained a watch at the entrance to the chamber, but felt no concern during the passing hours since they knew that Vay Thon was safe. What they did not know of was the loose stone in the flooring of the chamber directly behind the symbol of Siva, or the passageway beneath, which led to a ravine in the jungle beyond the city wall. And so during those hours Vay Thon wandered far into the jungle, and with him, perhaps, walked Siva, the Destroyer.

His rapt meditation, which amounted to almost total unconsciousness of his mundane surroundings, was shattered by a noise of terrific violence such as had never before impinged upon the ears of Vay Thon or any other inhabitant of Lodidhapura, Awakened suddenly as from a deep sleep, the startled priest wheeled about amazed at his surroundings, but more amazed by the sight which greeted his eyes. Wallowing in its own gore scarce three paces behind him lay a great tiger in its death throes; and a little to his right, a wisp of blue smoke rose from some grasses at the edge of the clearing.

When King regained consciousness he was vaguely aware of voices that seemed to be floating in the air about him. The sounds were meaningless, but they conveyed to his fevered brain an assurance of human origin. He opened his eyes. Above him was a brown face. Supporting his head and shoulders he felt the naked flesh of a human arm. His eyes wandered. Standing close was a woman, naked but for a sampot drawn diaperwise between her legs and knotted at the belt. Hiding fearfully behind her was a naked child. The man who supported him spoke to him, but in a language that he could not understand.

From whence had these people come, or were they but figments of his fevered imagination like the old man with the yellow cloak and the red parasol? Were they no more real than the spectral tiger that he had shot at in his delirium? He closed his eyes in an effort to gain control of his senses, but when he opened them again the man and the woman and the child were still there. With a sigh of resignation he gave it up. His throbbing temples were unequal to the demands of sustained thought. He closed his eyes, and his chin dropped upon his breast.

"He is dying," said Che, looking up at the woman.

"Let us take him to our dwelling," replied Kangrey, the woman. "I will watch over him while you lead the holy priest back to Lodidhapura."

As the man lifted King in his arms and turned to carry him away, the American caught a glimpse of an old man in a long, yellow cloak and a strange headdress, who carried above his head a red parasol. The American closed his eyes against the persistent hallucination of his fever. His head swam, and once again he lost consciousness.

King never knew how long he remained unconscious, but when he next opened his eyes he found himself lying upon a bed of grasses in the interior of a dark retreat which he thought, at first, was a cave. Gradually he discerned the presence of a man, a woman, and a child. He did not remember ever having seen them before. The child was naked, and the man and woman were clothed only in sampots. The woman was ministering to him, forcing a liquid between his lips.

Slowly and sluggishly his mind commenced to function, and at last he recalled them—the creatures of the hallucination that had conjured the image of the old man in the yellow cloak with the red parasol, and the charging tiger that he had dreamed of shooting. Would the fever never leave him? Was he to die thus alone in the sombre jungle tortured by hallucinations that might terminate only with his discovery by a tiger?

But yet how real was the feeling and taste of the liquid that the woman was forcing between his lips. He could even feel the animal warmth of the bare arm that was supporting his head and shoulders. Could any figment of a fever-tortured brain be as realistic as these? Repeatedly he closed his eyes and opened them again, but always the same picture was there before him. He raised one hand weakly and touched the woman's shoulder and face. They seemed real. He was almost convinced that they were when he sank again into unconsciousness.

For days Gordon King hovered between life and death. Kangrey, the woman, ministered to him, utilising the lore of the primitive jungle dweller in the brewing of medicinal potions from the herbs of the forest. Of equal or perhaps greater value were certain incantations which she droned monotonously above him.

Little Uda, the child, was much impressed with all these unusual and remarkable occurrences. The stranger with the pale skin was the first momentous event of his little life. The strange clothing that his parents had removed from their helpless charge thrilled him with awe, as did the rifle, the knife, and the revolver, which he rightfully guessed to be weapons, though he had no more conception of the medianism of the firearms than did his parents. Uda was indefatigable in his search for the herbs and roots that Kangrey, his mother, required; and when Che returned from the hunt it was always Uda who met him first with a full and complete history of their patient's case brought down to the last minute with infinite attention to details.

At last the fever broke. Though it left King weak and helpless in body, his mind was clear, and he knew at last that the man and the woman and the child were no figments of his imagination. Of course, the old man with the yellow cloak and the red parasol had been but an hallucination of a kind with the charging tiger; but this kindly brown woman, who was nursing him back to health, was real; and his eyes filled as the thanks which he could not voice welled up within his breast.

A day and a night without any return of the fever or hallucination convinced King that the ministration of the kindly natives had rid him of the illness that had nearly killed him, yet he was so weak that he still had little or no hope of ultimate recovery. He had not the strength to raise a hand to his face. It required a real physical effort to turn his head from side to side upon the rough pallet of grasses upon which he lay. He noticed that they never left him alone for long. Either the woman or the child was with him during the day, and all three slept near him upon the floor of their little den at night. In the daytime the woman or the child brushed the flies and other insects from him with a leafy branch and gave him food at frequent intervals. What the food was he did not know except that it was semi-liquid, but now that his fever had passed he was so ravenous that whatever it was they gave him he relished it.

One day when he had been left alone with the little boy longer than usual, the child, possibly tiring of the monotony of brushing insects from the body of the pale one, deserted his post, leaving King alone. King did not care, for much of his time, anyway, was spent in sleep and he had become so accustomed to the insects that they no longer irritated him as they formerly had. He was awakened from a sleep by the feel of a rough hand upon his face. Opening his eyes, he saw a monkey squatting beside him. When King opened his eyes the animal leaped nimbly away, and then the American saw that there were several monkeys in the chamber. They were quite the largest that he had seen in the jungle, and in his helpless condition he knew that they might constitute a real menace to his life. But they did not attack him, nor did they come close to him again; and it soon became evident that their visit was prompted solely by curiosity.

A little later he heard a scraping sound behind him in one corner of the chamber. Having regained his strength during the past few days sufficiently to be able to move his head and hands with comparative ease, he turned his head to see what was going on. The sight that met his eyes would have been highly amusing had it not been fraught with the possibility of such unhappy results.

The monkeys had discovered his weapons and his clothing. All had congregated at the point of interest. They were dragging the things about and chattering excitedly. They seemed to be quarrelling about something; and their chattering and scolding rose in volume until finally one old fellow, who was apparently contesting possession of the rifle with two others, leaped angrily upon them, growling and biting. Instantly the other two relinquished their holds upon the firearm and scurried to a far corner of the chamber; whereupon the victor seized the weapon again and dragged it toward the doorway.

"Hey!" shouted King in the loudest voice he could muster. "Drop that; and get out of here!"

The sound of the human voice seemed to startle the monkeys, but not sufficiently to cause them to relinquish the purpose they had in mind. It is true that they scampered from the chamber, but they gathered up all of King's belongings and took them with them, even to his socks.

King shouted to the boy whom he had heard the parents address as Uda; but when at last the little chap came, breathless and frightened, it was too late to avert or remedy the catastrophe, even if King had been able to explain to Uda what had happened.

The night when she returned, Kangrey found her patient very weak, but she did not guess the cause of it since she could not know that in the mind of the pale one was implanted the conviction that his only hope for eventual escape from the jungle had lain in the protection that the stolen weapons would have afforded him.

The days and nights wore slowly on as gradual convalescence brought returning strength to the sick man. To while away the tedious hours he sought to learn the language of his benefactors; and when, finally, they understood his wish they entered with such spirit into its consummation that he found himself deluged with such a variety of new words that his mind became fogged with information. But eventually some order and understanding came out of the chaos, so that presently he was able to converse with Che and Kangrey and Uda. Thereafter his existence was far less monotonous; but his slow recovery irked and worried him, for it seemed impossible that his strength ever would return. He was so emaciated that it was well for his peace of mind that he had no access to any mirrors.

Yet surely though slowly, his strength was returning. From sitting up with his back against the wall he came at length to standing upon his feet once more; and though he was weak and tottering, it was a beginning; and each day now he found his strength returning more rapidly.

From talking with Che and Kangrey, King had learned the details of the simple life they led. Che was a hunter. Some days he brought back nothing, but as a rule he did not return without adding to the simple larder. The flesh was usually that of a monkey or bird or one of the small rodents that lived in the jungle. Fish he brought, too, and fruit and vegetables and sometimes wild honey.

Che and Kangrey and Uda were equally proficient in making fires with a primitive fire stick, which they twirled between the palms of their hands. Kangrey possessed a single pot in which all food was cooked. It was a brass pot, the inside of which she kept scrupulously polished, using earth and leaves for this purpose.

Che was, indeed, a primitive hunter, armed with a spear, bow and arrows, and a knife. When King explained to him the merits of the firearms that had been stolen by the monkeys, Che sympathised with his guest in their loss; but he promised to equip King with new weapons such as he himself carried; and King expressed his gratitude to the native, though he could not arouse within himself much enthusiasm at the prospect of facing a long trip through this tiger-infested forest armed only with the crude weapons of primitive man, even were he skilled in their use.

As King's strength had returned, he had tried to keep together in his mind the happenings that had immediately preceded his illness, but he always felt that the old man with the yellow cloak and the red parasol and the charging tiger that had fallen to a single shot were figments of a fever-tortured brain. He had never spoken to Che and Kangrey about the hallucination because it seemed silly to do so; yet he found its memory persisting in his mind as a reality rather than an hallucination, so that at last, one evening, he determined to broach the subject, approaching it in a roundabout way.

"Che," he said, "you have lived in the jungle a long while, have you not?"

"Yes," replied the native. "For five years I was a slave in Lodidhapura, but then I escaped, and all the rest of my life I have spent in the jungle."

"Did you ever see an old man wandering in the jungle," continued King, "an old man who wore a long yellow cloak and carried a red parasol?"

"Of course," replied Che, "and you saw him, too. It was Vay Thon, whom you saved from the charge of My Lord the Tiger."

King looked at the native in open-mouthed astonishment. "Have you had a touch of fever too, Che?" he asked "No," replied the native. "Che is a strong man; he is never ill."

"No," Kangrey said proudly. "Che is a very strong man.

In all the years that I have known him, he has never been ill."

"Did you see this old man with the yellow cloak and the red parasol, Kangrey?" asked King, sceptically.

"Of course I did. Why do you ask?" inquired the woman.

"And you saw me kill the tiger?" demanded the American.

"I did not see you kill him; but I heard a great noise, and I saw him after he had died. There was a little round hole just behind his left ear; and when Che cut him open to see why he died, he found a piece of metal in his brain, the same metal that the walls of the palace of Lodivarman are covered with."

"That is lead," said Che with an air of superiority.

"Then you mean to tell me that this old man and the tiger were real?" demanded King.

"What do you think they were?" asked Che.

"I thought they were of the same stuff as were the other dreams that the fever brought into my brain," replied King.

"No," said Che, "they were not dreams. They were real. And it was good for you and for me and for Vay Thon that you killed the tiger, though how you did it neither Vay Thon nor I can understand."

"It was certainly good for Vay Thon," said King.

"And good for you and for me," insisted Che.

"Why was it so good for us?" asked the American.

"Vay Thon is the high priest of Siva in the city of Lodidhapura. He is very powerful. Only Lodivarman, the King, is more powerful. Vay Thon had wandered far from the city immersed in deep thought. He did not know where he was. He did not know how to return to Lodidhapura. Kangrey and I are runaway slaves of Lodidhapura. Had we been discovered before this happened, we should have been killed; but Vay Thon promised us our freedom if I would lead him back to the city. In gratitude to you for having saved his life he charged Kangrey and me to nurse you back to health and to take care of you. So you see it was good for all of us that you killed the tiger that would have killed Vay Thon."

"And you would not have nursed me back to health, Che, had Vay Thon not exacted the promise from you?" inquired King.

"We are runaway slaves," said the native. "We fear all men, or until Vay Thon promised us our freedom, we did fear all men; and it would have been safer for us to let you die, since you were unknown to us and might have carried word to the soldiers of Lodidhapura and led them to our hiding-place."

For a time King remained in silent thought, wondering, in view of what he had just heard, where the dividing line had lain between reality and hallucination. "Perhaps, then," he said with a smile, "the weeping queen on the misty elephant and the many soldiers in cuirasses of polished brass were real too."

"You saw those?" asked Che.

"Yes, "replied King.

"When and where?" demanded the native excitedly.

"It could not have been very long before I saw the high priest and the tiger."

"They are getting close," said Che nervously to Kangrey. "We must search for another hiding-place."

"You forget the promise of Vay Thon," Kangrey reminded him. "We are free now; we are no longer slaves."

"I had forgotten," said Che. "I am not yet accustomed to freedom, and perhaps I think, too, that possibly Vay Thon may forget."

"I do not think so," said the woman. "Lodivarman might forget, but not Vay Thon, for Vay Thon is a good man. Every one in Lodidhapura said so."

"You really believe that I saw an elephant, a queen, and soldiers?" demanded King.

"Why not?" asked Che.

"There are such things in the jungle?" inquired the young man.

"Of course," said Kangrey.

" And this city of Lodidhapura?" demanded King. "I have never heard of it before. Is that close beside the jungle?"

"It is in the jungle," said Che.

King shook his head. "It is strange," he said. "I wandered through the jungle for days and never saw signs of a human being or a human habitation."

"There are many things in the jungle which men do not always see," replied Che. "There are the Nagas and the Yeacks. You may be glad that you did not see them."

"What are the Nagas and the Yeacks?" asked King.

"The Nagas are the Cobra people," replied Che. "They live in a great palace upon a mountain and are very powerful. They have seven heads and can change themselves into any form of creature that they desire. They are workers of magic. It is said that Lodivarman's principal wife is the queen of the Nagas and that she changed herself into the form of a beautiful woman that she might rule directly over the mortals as well as the gods. But I do not believe that, because no one, not even a Naga, would choose to be the queen of a leper. But the Yeacks are most to be feared because they do not live far away upon a mountain-top, but are everywhere in the jungle."

"What are they like?" asked King.

"They are horrible Ogres who live upon human flesh," replied Che.

"Have you ever seen them?" asked King.

"Of course not," replied the native. "Only he who is about to be devoured sees them."

Gordon King listened with polite attention to the folk tales of Che and Kangrey, but he knew that they were only legends of a kind with the fabulous city of Lodidhapura and its Leper King, Lodivarman. He was somewhat at a loss to account for Vay Thon, the high priest, but he decided finally that the old man was an eccentric hermit who had come into the jungle to live and that to him might be attributed many of the fabulous tales that Che and Kangrey narrated so glibly. That his two friends were runaway slaves from the fabulous city of Lodidhapura, King doubted, attributing their story to the desire of primitive minds to inject a strain of romance into their otherwise monotonous lives.

As King's strength returned rapidly, he insisted more and more upon getting out into the open. He was anxious to accompany Che upon his hunting trips, but the native insisted that he was not yet sufficiently strong. So the American had to content himself with remaining with Kangrey and Uda at home, where he practised using the weapons that Che had made for him, which consisted of a bow and arrow and a short, heavy javelin-like spear. Thanks to the training of his college days, King was proficient in the use of the latter; and he practised assiduously with his bow and arrows until his marksmanship aroused the admiring applause of even Kangrey, who considered Che the best bowman in the world, to whose expert proficiency no other mortal might hope to attain.

The dwelling of Che and Kangrey and Uda was in an ancient Khmer ruin and consisted of a small room which had withstood the march of the centuries—a room that was peculiarly suited to the requirements of the little jungle family since it had but a single entrance, a small aperture that could be effectually blocked at night with a flat slab of stone against the depredations of marauding cats.

Their existence was as simple and primitive as might have been that of the first man; yet there was inherent in it an undeniable charm that King felt in spite of the monotony and his anxiety to escape from the jungle.

Che knew nothing but the jungle and the fabulous city of Lodidhapura. It is difficult for us to conceive of an endless infinity of space, but Che could imagine an endless jungle. The question of limitation did not enter his mind and, therefore, did not confuse him. To him, the world was a jungle. When King realised this, he knew, too, that it was hopeless to expect Che to attempt to lead him out of a jungle that he believed had no end.

For some time King had been making short excursions into the jungle in search of game while he repeatedly sought to impress upon Che that he was strong enough to accompany the native upon his hunts; but he was met with so many excuses that he at last awoke to the fact that Che did not want him along; and so the American determined to set out by himself upon a prolonged and determined effort to prove his efficiency. He left one morning after Che had departed, turning his steps in a different direction from that taken by the native. He was determined to bring back something to demonstrate his prowess to Che, but though he moved silently through the jungle, keeping the sharpest look out, he saw no sign of game of any description; and having had past experience of the ease with which one might become lost in the jungle, he turned back at last empty-handed.

During his long convalescence King had had an opportunity to consider many things, and one of them had been his humiliating lack of jungle craft. He knew, therefore, that he must mark the trail in some way if he were to hope to return to the dwelling of Che and Kangrey. He could not blaze the trees with his knife on a hunting excursion since the noise would unquestionably frighten away the game, and so he invented several other ways of marking the trail—sticking twigs in the rough bark of trees that he passed, scraping the ground with the sharp point of his javelin, and placing three twigs in the form of an arrow, pointing backward along the trail over which he had come. Accordingly, he had little difficulty to-day in back-tracking along the way to the home of Che.

Practising jungle craft necessitated moving as noiselessly as possible, and so it was that he came as silently as might a hunting cat to the edge of the ruin where lay the dwelling of his friend. As King came within sight of the familiar entrance, a scene met his eyes that froze his blood and brought his heart into his throat. In the small clearing that Che had made, little Uda was at play. He was digging with a sharp stick in the leafy mould of the ground, while watching him at the edge of the clearing crouched a great panther.

King saw the beast gradually drawing its hind feet well beneath its body as it prepared to charge.

Chapter 4 Fou-tan

Returning early from a successful hunt, Che approached the clearing. He, too, moved silently, for thus he always moved through the jungle. Along a forest aisle he could see the clearing before he reached it. He saw Uda digging among the dry leaves, which made a rustling sound that would have drowned the noise of the approach of even a less careful jungle animal than Che. The father smiled as his eyes rested upon his first-born, but in the same instant the smile froze to an expression of horror as he saw a panther leap into the clearing.

Kangrey, emerging at that moment from their gloomy dwelling, saw it too, and screamed as she rushed forward barehanded, impelled by the mother instinct to protect its young. And then, all in the same brief instant, Che saw a heavy javelin streak lightning-like from the jungle. He saw the panther crumple in its charge, and as he ran forward he saw the pale one leap into the clearing and snatch Uda into his arms.

Che, realising, as had King, the fury of a wounded panther, rushed upon the scene with ready spear as the pale one tossed Uda to Kangrey and turned again to face the great cat. But there was no necessity for the vicious thrust with which Che drove his spear into the carcass of the beast, for the panther was already dead.

For a moment they stood in silence, looking down upon the kill—four primitive jungle people, naked but for sampots. It was King's first experience of a thrill of the primitive hunter. He trembled a little, but that was reaction to the fear that he had felt for the life of little Uda.

"It is a large panther," said Che simply.

"Only a strong man could have slain it thus," said Kangrey. "Only Che could thus have slain with a single cast so great a panther."

"It was not the spear of Che. It was the spear of the pale one that laid low the prince of darkness," said Che.

Kangrey looked her astonishment and would not be convinced until she had examined the spear that protruded from beneath the left shoulder of the great cat. "This, then, is the reward that Vay Thon said would be ours if we befriended the pale one," she declared.

Uda said nothing, but, squirming from his mother's arms, he ran to the side of the dead panther and belaboured it with his little stick.

The next day Che invited King to accompany him upon his hunt. When after a hard day they returned empty-handed, King was convinced that in the search for small game a lone hunter would have greater chances for success. In the morning, therefore, he announced that he would hunt alone in another part of the jungle, and Che agreed with him that this plan would be better.

Marking his trail as he had before, King hunted an unfamiliar territory. The forest appeared more open. There was less underbrush; and he had discovered what appeared to be a broad elephant trail, along which he moved with far greater speed than he had ever been able to attain before in his wanderings through this empire of trees and underbrush.

He had no luck in his hunting; and when he had about determined that it was time to turn back, his ears caught an unfamiliar sound. What it was he did not know. There was a peculiar metallic ring and other sounds that might have been human voices at a distance.

"Perhaps," soliloquised King, "I am about to see the Nagas or the Yeacks."

The sound was steadily approaching; and as he had learned enough from his intercourse with Che and Kangrey to know that no friendly creatures might be encountered in the jungle, he drew to one side of the elephant trail and concealed himself behind some shrubbery.

He had not waited long when he saw the authors of the sounds approaching. Suddenly he felt his head. It did not seem over-hot. As he had upon other similar occasions, he closed his eyes tightly and then opened them again, but still the vision persisted—a vision of brown-skinned soldiers in burnished brass cuirasses over leather jerkins that fell midway between their hips and their knees, with heavy sandals on their feet, strange helmets on their heads, and armed with swords and spears and bows and arrows.

They came on talking among themselves, and as they passed close to King he discovered that they spoke the same language that he had learned from Che and Kangrey. Evidently the men were arguing with their leader, who wanted to go on, while the majority of his followers seemed in favour of turning back.

"We shall have to spend the night in the jungle as it is," said one. "If we go on much farther, we shall have to spend two nights in the jungle. Only a fool would choose to lair with My Lord the Tiger."

They had stopped now almost opposite King, so that he could clearly overhear all that passed between them. The man in charge appeared to be a petty officer with little real authority, for instead of issuing orders he argued and pleaded.

"It is well enough for you to insist upon turning back," he said, "since if we return to the city without the apsaras you expect that I alone shall be punished; but let me tell you that, if you force me to turn back, the entire truth will be made known and you will share in any punishment that may be inflicted upon me."

"If we cannot find her, we cannot find her," grumbled one of the men. "Are we to remain in the jungle the rest of our lives searching for a runaway apsaras?"

"I would as lief face My Lord the Tiger in the jungle for the rest of my life," replied the petty officer, "as face Lodivarman if we return without the girl."

"What Vama says is true," said another. "Lodivarman, the King, will not be interested in our reason for returning empty-handed. Should we return to the city to-morrow without the girl and Vama charged that we had forced him to turn back, Lodivarman, if he were in ill-humour, as he usually is, would have us all put to death; but if we remain away for many days and then return with a story of many hardships and dangers he will know that we did all that might be expected of brave warriors, and thus the anger of Lodivarman might be assuaged."

"At last," commented Vama, "you are commencing to talk like intelligent and civilised men. Come, now, and let us resume the search."

As they moved away King heard one of the men suggest that they find a safe and comfortable camp site where they might remain for a sufficient length of time to impress upon the King the verity of the story that they would relate to him. He waited only until they were out of sight before he arose from his place of concealment, for he was much concerned with the fact that they were proceeding in the general direction of the dwelling of Che and Kangrey. King was much mystified by what he had seen. He knew that these soldiers were no children of a fevered brain. They were flesh and blood warriors and for that reason a far greater mystery than any of the creatures he had seen in his delirium, since they could not be accounted for by any process of intelligent reasoning. His judgment told him that there were no warriors in this uninhabited jungle and certainly none with the archaic accoutrements and weapons that he had seen. It might be reasonable to expect to meet such types in an extravaganza of the stage or screen; and, doubtless, centuries ago warriors such as these patrolled this very spot which the jungle and the tiger and the elephant had long since reclaimed.

He recalled the stories that his guide had told him of the ghosts of the ancient Khmers, which roamed through the sombre aisles of the forest. He remembered the other soldiers that he had seen and the girl with the frightened eyes that rode upon the great elephant, and the final result was a questioning of his own sanity. Since he knew that a fever, such as the one through which he had passed, might easily affect one's brain either temporarily or permanently, he was troubled and not a little frightened as he made his way in the direction of the dwelling of Che and Kangrey. But the fact that he took a circuitous route that he might avoid the warriors indicated that either he was quite crazy or, at least, that he was temporising with his madness.

"'Weeping queens on misty elephants!'" he soliloquised. "'Warriors in brass!' 'A mystery of the Orient.' Perhaps after all there are ghosts. There has been enough evidence accumulated during historic times to prove that the materialisation of disembodied spirits may have occurred upon countless occasions. That I never saw a ghost is not necessarily conclusive evidence that they do not exist. There are many strange things in the Orient that the western mind cannot grasp. Perhaps, after all, I have seen ghosts; but if so, they certainly were thoroughly materialised, even to the dirt on their legs and the sweat on their faces. I suppose I shall have to admit that they are ghosts, since I know that no soldiers like them exist in the flesh anywhere in the world."

As King moved silently through the jungle, he presented an even more anachronistic figure than had the soldiers in brass; for they, at least, personified an era of civilisation and advancement, while King, to all outward appearances, was almost at the dawn of human evolution—a primitive hunter, naked but for a sampot of leopard skin and rude sandals fashioned by Kangrey because the soles of his feet, innocent of the callouses that shod hers and Che's, had rendered him almost helpless in the jungle without this protection. His skin was brown from exposure to the sun, and his hair had grown thick and shaggy. That he was smooth-shaven was the result of chance. He had always made it a habit, since he had taken up the study of medicine and surgery, to carry a safety razor blade with him, for what possible emergency he could not himself have explained. It was merely an idiosyncrasy, and it had so chanced that among several other things that the monkeys had dropped from his pockets and scattered in the jungle the razor blade had been recovered by little Uda along with a silver pencil and a handful of French francs.

He moved through the jungle with all the assurance of a man who has known no other life, so quickly does humankind adapt itself to environment. Already his ears and his nostrils had become inured to their surroundings to such an extent, at least, as to permit them to identify and classify easily and quickly the more familiar sounds and odours of the jungle. Familiarity had induced increasing self-assurance, which had now reached a point that made him feel he might soon safely set out in search of civilisation. However, to-day his mind was not on this thing; it was still engaged in an endeavour to solve the puzzle of the brass-bound warriors. But presently the baffling contemplation of this matter was rudely interrupted by a patch of buff coat and black stripes of which he caught a momentary, fleeting glimpse between the boles of two trees ahead of him.

A species of unreasoning terror that had formerly seized him each time that he had glimpsed the terrifying lord of the jungle had gradually passed away as he had come to recognise the fact that every tiger that he saw was not bent upon his destruction and that nine times out of ten it would try to get out of his way. Of course, it is the tenth tiger that one must always reckon with; but where trees are numerous and a man's eyes and ears and nose are alert, even the tenth tiger may usually be circumvented.

So now King did not alter his course, though he had seen the tiger directly ahead of him. It would be time enough to think of retreat when he found that the temper and intentions of the tiger warranted it, and, further, it was better to keep the brute in sight than to feel that perhaps he had circled and was creeping up behind one. It was, therefore, because of this that King pushed on a little more rapidly; and soon he was rewarded by another glimpse of the great carnivore and of something else, which presented a tableau that froze his blood.

Beyond the tiger and facing it stood a girl. Her wide eyes were glassy with terror. She stood as one in a trance, frozen to the spot, while toward her the great cat crept. She was a slender girl, garbed as fantastically as had been the soldiers that had passed him in the jungle shortly before; but her gorgeous garments were soiled and torn, and even at a distance King could see that her face and arms were scratched and bleeding. In the instant that his eyes alighted upon her he sensed something strangely familiar about her. It was a sudden, wholly unaccountable impression that somewhere he had seen this girl before; but it was only a passing impression, for his whole mind now was occupied with her terrifying predicament.

To save her from the terrible death creeping slowly upon her seemed beyond the realms of possibility, and yet King knew that he must make the attempt. He recognised instantly that his only hope lay in distracting the attention of the tiger. If he could centre the interest of the brute upon himself, perhaps the girl might escape.

He shouted, and the tiger wheeled about. "Run!" he cried to the girl. "Quick! Make for a tree!"

As he spoke, King was running forward. His heavy spear was ready in his hand, but yet it was a mad chance to take. Perhaps he forgot himself and his own danger, thinking only of the girl. The tiger glanced back at the girl, who, obeying King's direction, had run quickly to a nearby tree into which she was trying to scramble, badly hampered by the long skirt that enveloped her.

For only an instant did the tiger hesitate. His short and ugly temper was fully aroused now in the face of this rude interruption of his plan. With a savage snarl and then the short coughing roars with which King was all too familiar, he wheeled and sprang toward the man in long, easy bounds. Twelve to fifteen feet he covered in a single leap. Flight was futile. There was nothing that King could do but stand his ground and pit his puny spear against this awful engine of destruction.

In that brief instant there was pictured upon the screen of his memory a tree-girt athletic field. He saw young men in shirts and shorts throwing javelins. He saw himself among them. It was his turn now. His arm went back. He recalled how he had put every ounce of muscle, weight, and science into that throw. He recalled the friendly congratulations that followed it, for every one knew without waiting for the official verdict that he had broken a world's record.

Again his arm flew back. To-day there was more at stake than a world's record, but the man did not lose his nerve. Timed to the fraction of an instant, backed by the last ounce of his weight and his skill and his great strength, the spear met the tiger in mid-leap; full in the chest it struck him. King leaped to one side and ran for a tree, his single, frail hope lying in the possibility that the great beast might be even momentarily disabled.

He did not waste the energy or the time even to glance behind him. If the tiger were able to overtake him, it must be totally a matter of indifference to King whether the great brute seized him from behind or in front—he had led his ace and he did not have another.

No fangs or talons rent his flesh as King scrambled to the safety of the nearest tree. It was not without a sense of considerable surprise that he found himself safely ensconced in his leafy sanctuary, for from the instant that the tiger had turned upon him in its venomous charge he had counted himself already as good as dead.

Now that he had an opportunity to look about him, he saw the tiger struggling in its death throes upon the very spot where it had anticipated wreaking its vengeance upon the rash man-thing that had dared to question its right to the possession of its intended prey; and a little to the right of the dying beast the American saw the girl crouching in the branches of a tree. Together they watched the death throes of the great cat; and when at last the man was convinced that the beast was dead, he leaped lightly to the ground and approached the tree among the branches of which the girl had sought safety.

That she was still filled with terror was apparent in the strained and frightened expression upon her face. "Go away!" she cried. "The soldiers of Lodivarman, the King, are here; and if you harm me they will kill you."

King smiled. "You are inconsistent," he said, "in invoking the protection of the soldiers from whom you are trying to escape; but you need not fear me. I shall not harm you."

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"I am a hunter who dwells in the jungle," replied King. "I am the protector of high priests and weeping queens, or so, at least, I seem to be."

"High priests? Weeping queens? What do you mean?"

"I have saved Vay Thon, the high priest, from My Lord the Tiger," replied King; "and now I have saved you."

"But I am no queen and I am not weeping," replied the girl.

"Do not disillusion me," insisted King. "I contend that you are a queen, whether you weep or smile. I should not be surprised to learn that you are the queen of the Nagas. Nothing would surprise me in this jungle of anachronism, hallucination, and impossibility."

"Help me down from the tree," said the girl. "Perhaps you are mad, but you seem quite harmless."

"Be assured, your majesty, that I shall not harm you," replied King, "for presently I am sure there will emerge from nowhere ten thousand elephants and a hundred thousand warriors in shining brass to succour and defend you. Nothing seems impossible after what I have witnessed; but come, let me touch you; let me assure myself that I am not again the victim of a pernicious fever."

"May Siva, who protected me from My Lord the Tiger a moment ago, protect me also from this madman!"

"Pardon me," said King. "I did not catch what you said."

"I am afraid," said the girl.

"You need not be afraid of me," King assured her; "and if you want your soldiers I believe that I can find them for you; but if I am not mistaken, I believe that you are more afraid of them than you are of me."

"What do you know of that?" demanded she.

"I overheard their conversation while they halted near me," replied the American, "and I learned that they are hunting for you to take you back to someone from whom you escaped. Come, I will help you down. You may trust me."

He raised his hands toward her, and after a moment's hesitation she slipped into his arms and he lowered her to the ground.

"I must trust you," she said. "There is no other way, for I could not remain for ever in the tree; and then, too, even though you seem mad there is something about you that makes me feel that I am safe with you."

As he felt her soft, lithe body momentarily in his arms, King knew that this was no tenuous spirit of a dream. For an instant her small hand touched his shoulder, her warm breath fanned his cheek, and her firm, young breasts were pressed against his naked body. Then she stepped back and surveyed him.

"What manner of man are you?" she demanded. "You are neither Khmer nor slave. Your colour is not the colour of any man that I have ever seen, nor are your features those of the people of my race. Perhaps you are a reincarnation of one of those ancients of whom our legends tell us; or perhaps you are a Naga who has taken the form of man for some dire purpose of your own."

"Perhaps I am a Yeack," suggested King.

"No," she said quite seriously, "I am sure you are not a Yeack, for it is reported that they are most hideous, while you, though not like any man I have ever seen, are handsome."

"I am neither Yeack nor Naga," replied King.

"Then perhaps you are from Lodidhapura—one of the creatures of Lodivarman."

"No," replied the man. "I have never been to Lodidhapura. I have never seen the King, Lodivarman, and, as a matter of fact, I have always doubted their existence."

The girl's dark eyes regarded him steadily. "I cannot believe that," she said, "for it is unconceivable that there should be anyone in the world who has not heard of Lodidhapura and Lodivarman."

"I come from a far country," explained King, "where there are millions of people who never heard of the Khmers."

"Impossible!" she cried.

"But nevertheless quite true," he insisted.

"From what country do you come?" she asked.

"From America."

"I never heard of such a country."

"Then you should be able to understand that I may never have heard of Lodidhapura," said the man.

For a moment the girl was silent, evidently pondering the logic of his statement. "Perhaps you are right," she said finally. "It may be that there are other cities within the jungle of which we have never heard. But tell me—you risked your life to save mine—why did you do that?"

"What else might I have done?" he asked.

"You might have run away and saved yourself."

King smiled, but he made no reply. He was wondering if there existed any man who could have run away and left one so beautiful and so helpless to the mercies of My Lord the Tiger.

"You are very brave," she continued presently. "What is your name?"

"Gordon King."

"Gordon King," she repeated in a soft, caressing voice. "That is a nice name, but it is not like any name that I have heard before."

"And what is your name?" asked King.

"I am called Fou-tan," she said, and she eyed him intently, as though she would note if the name made any impression upon him.

King thought Fou-tan a pretty name, but it seemed banal to say so. He was appraising her small, delicate features, her beautiful eyes and her soft brown skin. They recalled to him the weeping queen upon the misty elephant that he had seen in his delirium, and once again there arose within him doubts as to his sanity. "Tell me," he said suddenly. "Did you ever ride through the jungle on a great elephant escorted by soldiers in brass?"

"Yes," she said.

"And you say that you are from Lodidhapura?" he continued.

"I have just come from there," she replied.

"Did you ever hear of a priest called Vay Thon?"

"He is the high priest of Siva in the city of Lodidhapura," she replied.

King shook his head in perplexity. "It is hard to know," he murmured, "where dreams end and reality begins."

"I do not understand you," she said, her brows knit in perplexity.

"Perhaps I do not understand myself," he admitted.

"You are a strange man," said Fou-tan. "I do not know whether to fear you or trust you. You are not like any other man I have ever known. What do you intend to do with me?"

"Perhaps I had better take you back to the dwelling of Che and Kangrey," he said, "and then to-morrow Che can guide you back to Lodidhapura."

"But I do not wish to return to Lodidhapura," said the girl.

"Why not?" demanded King.

"Listen, Gordon King, and I shall tell you," said Fou-tan.

Chapter 5 The Capture

"Let us sit down upon this fallen tree," said Fou-tan, "and I shall tell you why I do not wish to return to Lodidhapura."

As they seated themselves, King became acutely conscious of the marked physical attraction that this girl of a forgotten age exercised over him. Every movement of her lithe body, every gesture of her graceful arms and hands, each changing expression of her beautiful face and eyes were provocative. She radiated magnetism. He sensed it in the reaction of his skin, his eyes, his nostrils. It was as though ages of careful selection had produced her for the purpose of arousing in man the desire of possession, and yet there enveloped her a divine halo of chastity that aroused within his breast the protective instinct that governs the attitude of a normal man toward a woman that Fate has thrown into his keeping. Never in his life had King been similarly attracted to any woman.

"Why do you look at me so?" she inquired suddenly.

"Forgive me," said King simply. "Go on with your story."

"I am from Pnom Dhek," said Fou-tan, "where Beng Kher is king. Pnom Dhek is a greater city than Lodidhapura; Beng Kher is a mightier king than Lodivarman.

"Bharata Rahon desired me. He wished to take me to wife. I pleaded with my father the—I pleaded with my father not to give me in marriage to Bharata Rahon; but he told me that I did not know my own mind, that I only thought that I did not like Bharata Rahon, that he would make me a good husband, and that after we were married I should be happy.

"I knew that I must do something to convince my father that my mind and soul sincerely revolted at the thought of mating with Bharata Rahon, and so I conceived the idea of running away and going out into the jungle that I might prove that I preferred death to the man my father had chosen for me.

"I did not want to die. I wanted them to come and find me very quickly, and when night came I was terrified. I climbed into a tree where I crouched in terror. I heard My Lord the Tiger pass beneath in the darkness of the night, and my fear was so great that I thought that I should faint and fall into his clutches; yet when day came again I was still convinced that I would rather lie in the arms of My Lord the Tiger than in those of Bharata Rahon, who is a loathsome man whose very name I detest.

"Yet I moved back in the direction of Pnom Dhek, or rather I thought that I did, though now I am certain that I went in the opposite direction. I hoped that searchers sent out by my father would find me, for I did not wish to return of my own volition to Pnom Dhek.

"The day dragged on and I met no searchers, and once again I became terrified, for I knew that I was lost in the jungle. Then I heard the heavy tread of an elephant and the clank of arms and men's voices, and I was filled with relief and gratitude, for I thought at last that the searchers were about to find me.

"But when the warriors came within view, I saw that they wore the armour of Lodivarman. I was terrified and tried to escape them, but they had seen me and they pursued me. Easily they overtook me, and great was their joy when they looked upon me.

"'Lodivarman will reward us handsomely,' they cried, 'when he sees that which we have brought to him from Pnom Dhek.'

"So they placed me in the howdah upon the elephant's back and took me through the jungle to Lodidhapura, where I was immediately taken into the presence of Lodivarman.

"Oh, Gordon King, that was a terrible moment. I was terrified when I found myself so close to the leper king of Lodidhapura. He is covered with great sores, where leprosy is devouring him. That day he was ugly and indifferent. He scarcely looked at me, but ordered that I should be taken to the quarters of the apsarases, and so I became a dancing girl at the court of the leper king.

"Not in a thousand years, Gordon King, could I explain to you what I suffered each time that we came before Lodivarman to dance. Each sore upon his repulsive body seemed to reach out to seize and contaminate me. It was with the utmost difficulty that, half fainting, I went through the ritual of the dance.

"I tried to hide my face from him, for I knew that I was beautiful and I knew the fate of beautiful women in the court of Lodivarman.

"But at last, one day, I realised that he had noticed me. I saw his dead eyes following me about. We were dancing in the great hall where he holds his court. Lodivarman was seated upon his throne. The lead-covered walls of the great apartment were gorgeous with paintings and with hangings. Beneath our feet were the polished flagstones of the floor, but they seemed softer to me than the heart of Lodivarman.

"At last the dance was done, and we were permitted to retire to our apartments. Presently there came to me a captain of the King's household, resplendent in his gorgeous trappings.

" 'The King has looked upon you,' said he, 'and would honour you as befits your beauty.'

"'It is sufficient honour,' I replied, 'to dance in the palace of Lodivarman.'

"'You are about to receive a more signal manifestation of the King's honour,' he replied.

"'I am satisfied as I am,' I said.

"'It is not for you to choose, Fou-tan,' replied the messenger. 'The King has chosen you as his newest concubine. Rejoice, therefore, in the knowledge that some day you may become queen.'

"I could have fainted at the very horror of the suggestion.

What could I do? I must gain time. I thought of suicide, but I am young, and I do not wish to die. 'When must I come?' I asked.

"'You will be given time to prepare yourself,' replied the messenger. 'For three days the women will bathe and anoint your body, and upon the fourth day you will be conducted to the King.'

"Four days! In four days I must find some way in which to escape the horrid fate to which my beauty had condemned me. 'Go!' I said. 'Leave me in peace for the four days that remain to me of even a semblance of happiness in life.'

"The messenger, grinning, withdrew, and I threw myself upon my pallet and burst into tears. That night the apsarases were to dance in the moonlight in the courtyard before the temple of Siva; and though they would have insisted that my preparation for the honour that was to be bestowed upon me should commence at once, I begged that I might once more, and for the last time, join with my companions in honouring Siva, the Destroyer.

"It was a dark night. The flares that illumined the courtyard cast a wavering light in which exaggerated shadows of the apsarases danced grotesquely. In the dance I wore a mask, and my position was at the extreme left of the last line of apsarases. I was close to the line of spectators that encircled the courtyard, and in some of the movements of the dance I came quite close enough to touch them. This was what I had hoped for.

"All the tune that I was dancing I was perfecting in my mind the details of a plan that had occurred to me earlier in the day. The intricate series of postures and steps, with which I had been familiar since childhood, required of me but little mental concentration. I went through them mechanically, my thoughts wholly centred upon the mad scheme that I had conceived. I knew that at one point in the dance the attention of all the spectators would be focused upon a single apsaras, whose position was in the centre of the first line, and when this moment arrived I stepped quickly into the line of spectators.

"Those in my immediate vicinity noticed me, but to these I explained that I was ill and was making my way back to the temple. A little awed by my close presence, they let me pass unmolested, for in the estimation of the people the persons of the apsarases are almost holy.

"Behind the last line of the audience rose a low wall that surrounds the temple courtyard. Surmounting it at intervals rise the beautifully carved stone figures of the seven-headed cobra—emblem of the Royal Nagas. Deep were the shadows between them; and while all eyes were fixed upon the leading apsaras, I clambered quickly to the top of the low wall, where for a moment I hid in the shadow of a great Naga. Below me, black, mysterious, terrifying, lay the dark waters of the moat, beneath the surface of which lived the crocodiles placed there by the King to guard the Holy of Holies. Upon the opposite side the level of the water was but a few inches below the surface of the broad avenue that leads to the stables where the King's elephants are kept. The avenues were deserted, for all who dwelt within the walls of the royal enclosure were watching the dance of the apsarases.

"To Brahma, to Vishnu, and to Siva I breathed a prayer, and then I slid as quietly as possible down into the terrifying waters of the moat. Quickly I struck out for the opposite side, every instant expecting to feel the hideous jaws of a crocodile close upon me; but my prayers had been heard, and I reached the avenue in safety.

"I was forced to climb two more walls before I could escape from the royal enclosure and from the city. My wet and bedraggled costume was torn, and my hands and face were scratched and bleeding before I succeeded.

"At last I was in the jungle, confronted by danger more deadly, yet far less horrible, than that from which I had escaped. How I survived that night and this day I do not know. And now the end would have come but for you, Gordon King."

As King gazed at the sensitive face and delicately moulded figure of the girl beside him, he marvelled at the courage and strength of will, seemingly so out of proportion to the frail temple that housed them, that had sustained her in the conception and execution of an adventure that might have taxed the courage and stamina of a warrior. "You are a brave girl, Fou-tan," he said.

"The daughter of my father could not be less," she replied simply.

"You are a daughter of whom any father might be proud," said King, "but if we are to save you for him we had better be thinking about getting to the dwelling of Che and Kangrey before night falls."

"Who are these people?" asked Fou-tan. "Perhaps they will return me to Lodidhapura for the reward that Lodivarman will pay."

"You need have no fear on that score," replied King. "They are honest people, runaway slaves from Lodidhapura. They have been kind to me, and they will be kind to you."

"And if they are not, you will protect me," said Fou-tan with a tone of finality that evidenced the confidence which she already felt in the dependability and integrity of her newfound friend.

As they set out in the direction of Che's dwelling, it became apparent to King immediately that Fou-tan was tired almost to the point of exhaustion. Will-power and nerve had sustained her so far; but now, with the discovery of someone to whom she might transfer the responsibility of her safety, the reaction had come; and he often found it necessary to assist and support her over the rough places of the trail. She was small and light, and where the going was exceptionally bad he lifted her in his arms and carried her as he might have a child.

"You are strong, Gordon King," she said once as he carried her thus. Her soft arms were around his neck, her lips were very close to his.

"I must need be strong," he said. But if she sensed his meaning she gave no evidence of it. Her eyes closed wearily and her little head dropped to his shoulder. He carried her thus for a long way, though the trail beneath his feet was smooth and hard.

Vama and his warriors had halted in a little glade where there was water. While two of them hunted in the forest for meat for their supper, the others lay stretched out upon the ground in that silence which is induced by hunger and fatigue. Presently Vama sat up alert. His ears had caught the sound of the approach of something through the jungle.

"Kau and Tchek are returning from the hunt," whispered one of the warriors who lay near him and who, also, had heard the noise.

"They did not go in that direction," replied Vama in a low tone. Then signalling his warriors to silence, he ordered them to conceal themselves from view.

The sound, already close when they had first heard it, approached steadily; and they did not have long to wait ere a warrior, naked but for a sampot, stepped into view, and in his arms was the runaway apsaras whom they sought. Elated, Vama leaped from his place of concealment, calling to his men to follow him.

At sight of them King turned to escape, but he knew that he could make no speed while burdened with the girl. She, however, had seen the soldiers and slipped quickly from his arms. "We are lost!" she cried.

"Run!" cried King as he snatched a handful of arrows from his quiver and fitted one to his bow. "Stand back!" he cried to the warriors. But they only moved steadily forward. His bow-string twanged, and one of Lodivarman's brass-bound warriors sank to earth, an arrow through his throat. The others hesitated. They did not dare to cast their spears or loose their bolts for fear of injuring the girl.

Slowly King, with Fou-tan behind him, backed away into the jungle from which he had appeared. At the last instant he sped another arrow, which rattled harmlessly from the cuirass of Vama. Then, knowing that he could not fire upon them from the foliage, the soldiers rushed forward, while King continued to fall back slowly with Fou-tan, another arrow fitted to his bow.

Kau and Tchek had made a great circle in their hunting. With their arrows they had brought down three monkeys, and now they were returning to camp. They had almost arrived when they heard voices and the twang of a bow-string, and then they saw, directly ahead of them, a man and a girl crashing through the foliage of the jungle toward them. Instantly, by her dishevelled costume, they recognised the apsaras and guessed from the attitude of the two that they were backing away from Vama and his fellows.

Kau was a powerful, a courageous, and a resourceful man. Instantly he grasped the situation and instantly he acted. Leaping forward, he threw both his sinewy arms around Gordon King, pinning the other's arms to his body; while Tchek, following the example of his companion, seized Fou-tan. Almost immediately Vama and the others were upon the scene. An instant later Gordon King was disarmed, and his wrists were bound behind him; then the soldiers of Lodivarman dragged the captives back to their camping place.

Vama was tremendously elated. Now he would not have to make up any lies to appease the wrath of his king but could return to Lodidhapura in triumph, bearing not only the apsaras for whom he had been dispatched, but another prisoner as well.

King thought that they might make quick work of him in revenge for the soldier he had killed, but they did not appear to hold that against him at all. They questioned him at some length while they cooked their supper of monkey meat over a number of tiny fires; but as what he told them of another country far beyond their jungle was quite beyond their grasp, they naturally believed that he lied and insisted that he came from Pnom Dhek and that he was a runaway slave.

They were all quite content with the happy outcome of their assignment; and so, looking forward to their return to Lodidhapura on the morrow, they were inclined to be generous in their treatment of their prisoners, giving them meat to eat and water to drink. Their attitude toward Fou-tan was one of respectful awe. They knew that she was destined to become one of the King's favourites, and it might prove ill for them, indeed, should they offer her any hurt or affront. Since their treatment of Gordon King, however, was not dictated by any such consideration, it was fortunate, indeed, for him that they were in a good humour.

Regardless, however, of the respectful attention shown her, Fou-tan was immersed in melancholy. A few moments before, she had foreseen escape and counted return to her native city almost an accomplished fact; now, once again, she was in the clutches of the soldiers of Lodivarman, while simultaneously she had brought disaster and, doubtless, death to the man who had befriended her.

"Oh, Gordon King," she said, "my heart is unstrung; my soul is filled with terror and consumed by horror, for not only must I return to the hideous fate from which I had escaped, but you must go to Lodidhapura to slavery or to death."

"We are not in Lodidhapura yet," whispered King. "Perhaps we shall escape."

The girl shook her head. "There is no hope," she said. "I shall go to the arms of Lodivarman, and you—"

"And I?" he asked.

"Slaves fight with other slaves and with wild beasts for the entertainment of Lodivarman and his court," she replied.

"We must escape then," said King. "Perhaps we shall die in the attempt, but in any event death awaits me and worse than death awaits you."

"What you command I shall do, Gordon King," replied Fou-tan.

But it did not appear that there was to be much opportunity for escape that night. After King had eaten they bound his wrists behind his back again and also bound his ankles together securely, while two warriors remained constantly with the girl; the others, their simple meal completed, stripped the armour and weapons from their fallen comrade and laid him upon a thick bed of dry wood that they had gathered. Upon him, then, they piled a great quantity of limbs and branches, of twigs and dry grasses; and when night fell they lighted their weird funeral pyre, which was to answer its other dual purpose as a beast fire to protect them from the prowling carnivores. To King it was a gruesome sight, but neither Fou-tan nor the other Khmers seemed to be affected by it. The men gathered much wood and placed it near at hand that the fire might be kept burning during the night.

The flames leaped high, lighting the boles of the trees about them and the foliage arching above. The shadows rose and fell and twisted and writhed. Beyond the limits of the firelight was utter darkness, silence, mystery. King felt himself in an inverted cauldron of flame in which a human body was being consumed. .

The warriors lay about, laughing and talking. Their reminiscences were brutal and cruel. Their jokes and stories were broad and obscene. But there was an undercurrent of rough kindness and loyalty to one another that they appeared to be endeavoring to conceal as though they were ashamed of such soft emotion. They were soldiers. Transplanted to the camps of modern Europe, given a modern uniform and a modern language, their campfire conversation would have been the same. Soldiers do not change. One played upon a little musical instrument that resembled a Jew's harp. Two were gambling with what appeared to be very similar to modern dice, and all that they said was so interlarded with strange and terrible oaths that the American could scarcely follow the thread of their thought. Soldiers do not change.

Vama came presently and squatted down near King and Fou-tan. "Do all the men in this far country of which you tell me go naked?" he demanded.

"No," replied the American. "When I had become lost in the jungle I was stricken with fever, and while I was sick the monkeys came and stole my clothing and my weapons."

"You live alone in the jungle?" asked Vama.

King thought quickly; he thought of Che and Kangrey and their fear of the soldiers in brass. "Yes," he said.

"Are you not afraid of My Lord the Tiger?" inquired Vama.

"I am watchful and I avoid him," replied the American.

"You do well to do so," said Vama, "for even with spear and arrows no lone man is a match for the great beast."

"But Gordon King is," said Fou-tan proudly.

Vama smiled. "The apsaras has been in the jungle but a night and a day," he reminded her. "How can she know so much about this man unless, as I suspect, he is, indeed, from Pnom Dhek?"

"He is not from Pnom Dhek," retorted Fou-tan. "And I know that he is a match for My Lord the Tiger because this day I saw him slay the beast with a single spear-cast."

Vama looked questioningly at King.

"It was only a matter of good fortune," said King.

"But you did it nevertheless," insisted Fou-tan.

"You killed a tiger with a single cast of your spear?" demanded Vama.

"As the beast charged him," said Fou-tan.

"That is, indeed, a marvellous feat," said Vama, with a soldier's ungrudging admiration for the bravery or prowess of another. "Lodivarman shall hear of this. A hunter of such spirit shall not go unrecognised in Lodidhapura. I can also bear witness that you are no mean bowman," added Vama, nodding toward the blazing funeral pyre. Then he arose and walked to the spot where King's weapons had been deposited. Picking up the spear he examined it closely. "By Siva!" he ejaculated. "The blood is scarcely dry upon it. Such a cast! You drove it a full two feet into the carcass of My Lord the Tiger."

"Straight through the heart," said Fou-tan.

The other soldiers had been listening to the conversation. It was noticeable immediately that their attitude toward King changed instantly, and thereafter they treated him with friendliness tinged by respect. However, they did not abate their watchfulness over him, but rather were increasingly careful to see that he was given no opportunity to escape, nor to have his hands free for any length of time.

Early the next morning, after a meagre breakfast, Vama set out with his detachment and his prisoners in the direction of Lodidhapura, leaving the funeral fire still blazing as it eagerly licked at a new supply of fuel.

The route they selected to Lodidhapura passed by chance, close to the spot where King had slain the tiger; and here, in the partially devoured carcass of the great beast, the soldiers of Lodivarman found concrete substantiation of Fou-tan's story.

Chapter 6 The Leper King

It was late in the afternoon when the party emerged suddenly from the jungle at the edge of a great clearing. King voiced an involuntary exclamation of astonishment as he saw at a distance the walls and towers of a splendid city.