Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/154

 "I have journeyed so far, dear friends. I was so near my goal. Oh, have pity upon me, don't delay to carry me thither. Don't think of the pain to me, have no fear that I shall sink under it—I shall not die till ye have laid me down at the feet of the Perfect One; then I shall die happy, and happy rise again."

Some of them ran to fetch poles and a mattress. A woman brought a strengthening draught of which Kamanita took a few spoonfuls. The men were divided as to which way was the shortest to the Hall of the Brotherhood in the Mango Grove, for every step would make a difference. It was clear to all that the pilgrim's life was ebbing fast.

"There come disciples of the Perfect One," cried a bystander, pointing along the little lane; "they will be best able to tell us."

And, as a fact, several monks of the Order of the Buddha were approaching, clad in yellow cloaks which left the right arm and hand—the hand with the alms bowl in it—free. Most of them were young men, but at their head walked two venerable figures—a grey-haired man whose earnest, if somewhat severe, face, with its piercing eye and powerful chin, involuntarily attracted attention to itself, and a middle-aged man whose features were illumined by such a heart-winning gentleness that he had almost the appearance of a youth. Yet an experienced observer might, in his bearing and somewhat animated movements, as also in his flashing glances, have detected the inalienable characteristics of the warrior caste, while the deliberate calm of the older man no less revealed the born Brahman. In loftiness of stature and princely carriage they were, however, alike.

When these monks halted by the group which had collected round the wounded man, many voluble tongues at once related to them what had happened, and