Rung Ho! by Talbot Mundy
page 52 of 344 (15%)
page 52 of 344 (15%)
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"It was enough, bahadur, that he sat on that stone; for that alone he had been beaten! What he said was but the babbling of priests. All priests are alike. They have a common jargon--a common disrespect for what they dare not openly defy. These temple rats of fakirs mimic them. That is all, sahib. A whipping meets the case." "But the stone? Why shouldn't he sit on it?" "Wait one minute, sahib, and then see." He formed his hands into a trumpet and bellowed through them in a high-pitched, nasal, ululating order to somebody behind: "Oh-h-h--Battee-lao!" The black, dark roadside echoed it and a dot of light leapt up as a man came running with what gradually grew into a lamp. Mahommed Gunga seized the lamp, bent for a few seconds over the still sprawling fakir, whipped him again twice, cursed him and kicked him, until he got up and ran like a spectre for the gloom beyond the trees. Then, with a rather stately sweep of the lamp, and a tremble in his voice that was probably intentional--designed to make Cunningham at least aware of the existence of emotion before he looked--he let the light fall on the slab on which the fakir had been squatting. "Look, Cunningham-sahib!" The youngster bent down above the slab and tried, in the fitful light, to make out what the markings were that ran almost from side to side, |
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