Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/82

 fancy you can prevail against me? For it is I, Si-Hamid—I, who am invulnerable—I whom the very fire burns, but cannot devour!'

"With that, I thrust my right hand into the flame of a Chinese gaming-lamp, and being saturated with the white man's perfume, it blazed up bravely, even to my elbow, doing me no hurt, while I waved it flaming above my head.

"Verily the white men are very clever, who so cunningly devise the medicine of these perfumes.

"Now, when all the people in the gambling-house saw that my hand and arm were burned with fire, but were not consumed, a great fear fell upon them, and they fled shrieking, no man staying to gather up his silver. This presently I counted and put into sacks, and my youths bore it to my house, and my fame waxed very great in Klang. Men said that henceforth Si-Hamid should be named, not the Tiger Unbound, but the Fiery Rhinoceros. It was long ere the nature of my stratagem became known; and even then no man of all the many who were within the gambling-house at Klang that night had the hardihood or the imprudence to ask me for