Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/225

 And I thought to myself, "Passing strange, truly! On this road ten men, ay, even thirty, and fifty, have already set out in companies and well armed, and they have one and all fallen into my power; and that ascetic there comes on alone, like any conqueror."

And it nettled me that he so openly set my power at defiance. I made up my mind to kill him, and the rather as I thought to myself that he might possibly be sent into the forest as a spy, by Satagira. For these ascetics—so I thought—are all hypocritical and venal, and are ready to be used in all kinds of ways, building upon the superstition of the people and the safety they enjoy as its outcome—for so I had been taught by my learned friend Vajaçravas to regard them.

Instantly making up my mind, I seized my spear, hung my bow and quiver over my shoulder, made for the road, and, step for step, followed the ascetic, who had now entered the forest.

Finally, when I had reached a favourable spot where no trees separated us, I took down my bow from my shoulder, and shot an arrow so that it must of necessity pierce the left side of his back and pass through his heart; but it flew away over the head of the ascetic.

"By some mistake, a very bad arrow must have got among the others," I said to myself, took the quiver in my hand, and chose out a beautifully feathered and faultless one, which I so aimed that it must necessarily transfix the neck of the ascetic. But the arrow struck into the trunk of a tree to his left. The next flew past him to the right, and the same thing happened with all my arrows till my quiver was empty.

"Inconceivable! Most extraordinary!" I thought to myself. "Have I not often amused myself by placing a