The Camp of the Snake/Chapter 8

HE last glow of sunset hung over the mountain peaks across the gorge, and the wind had died away. The camp was in shadow, and the paths under the deodars were dark. It was very likely that we were being watched, and it would not do to take a light where we were going. Miss Carnie saw that I'd decided on some course of action and she followed me into the deeper gloom near the car.

"We'll go to the look-out, where Captain Dixon went," I whispered, "before the moon rises. After we've gained touch with him we'll come right back to your brother. He's safe enough for the present."

"I don't want to leave him."

Neither did I, but we couldn't carry him, and it was important to find out what had happened to Dixon. Although I did not tell her, we couldn't help Arnold much by hanging around; and by slipping away in the interval of darkness anyone spying on us would lose track of us.

"As a matter of fact," a man's voice remarked at my ear, "Carnie is perfectly safe where he is."

Dr. Moorcroft had come up somehow without being heard, and I could just make out his square, pale face in the gloom. He seemed to be alone. When I reached out and caught his arm he did not make a move to resist.

"What have you done to Arnold?" I asked.

"A little  was put in his tobacco jar this morning, while you were all away from the camp."

"That is poison," said Gordon, a catch in her voice. "In quantity, yes. Scattered grains mixed with tobacco merely produce overpowering drowsiness, in fact a stupor that lasts for some hours." Moorcroft might have been lecturing to a class. "My servants were instructed to doctor your tobacco, Smith, but apparently they were not successful. If you are coming with us this evening, I must have your word that you will not resort to violence, no matter what happens." "Guess again," I laughed. "I never felt more like violence in my life and I'll begin with you, if anything more starts happening."

For a moment we were all silent and I could hear the girl's quick breathing. Twilight is very short under those immense heights and the afterglow had left the sky when Moorcroft spoke again.

"Miss Carnie, I had intended taking you with me alone tonight. You did not heed my warning to leave the grove. It is now too late. Your only chance is in coming with me to see the snake."

"What snake?" I asked.

"The one in the tomb. If you come and keep silence, I will do my utmost to guard you against the forces that are loosed within this grove at present."

"Where—where is—Captain Dixon?" I had never heard her speak of Dixon in such a hesitating way, but Moorcroft seemed to be able to read the girl's mind.

"He is unharmed at present, and you will see him before long." The man spoke as if he pitied the girl, and I wondered what had happened to Dixon. Probably he was a prisoner, in the hands of the Chitrali-Moorcroft-rajah party, although Miss Carnie had heard no shooting and the captain was not the sort of fellow to fall into a trap easily, or let himself be taken without using his gun.

"We will go to the tomb and be spectators of a time-honored ceremonial of the tribe—of the Chitralis," the doctor explained as if we were children. "Unfortunately the rajah is absent in Delhi, horse racing. If he were here, he would protect you, Miss Carnie." The grove was pitch dark by then, and a hazy light was growing over the eastern peaks. The air felt colder all at once. In some way the place seemed to take shape and form around us.

Gordon drew a little closer to me, and I knew she felt the same way I did. It's hard to explain. Neither of us were subject to ordinary fear of barren places, or heights. It was the camp itself that set our nerves on edge, that shapeless pit of blackness under the giant trees, already sighing and rustling with a chilly breeze.

We both knew without being told that the camp was not deserted any more. Something else was there, besides Moorcroft and ourselves. An hour before we'd had trees around us and a stretch of grass and a few canvas shelters. Now the confounded place felt as if it had taken on life. It was just as if we'd walked out of a garden into someone else's house, only we had not moved at all.

"How did Anim Dass die?" I asked Moorcroft suddenly, certain that he knew.

And he did, because he laughed and said under his breath, "Come, and you'll learn for yourself."

There was nothing else to do. If I'd pulled my gun on Moorcroft and demanded that he tell us the truth of all this mystery, I don't think the man would have opened his lips. His warning sounded crazier than ever, but my brain was beginning slowly to register the fact that Moorcroft was not mad.

He knew where we could find Dixon, and he could hold back the Chitralis if he wanted to. Some of them were probably in the grove and they could jump us any time we made a false move, to say nothing of Arnold. The girl at my side seemed nearly mad with worry about the man she loved. So we followed Moorcroft along the dark path, my hand on the butt of the six-shooter. And for all the good it did me, I might as well have been carting along a mouse-trap.

HE moon had cleared the peaks by the time we reached the small clearing with the stone heap in the center. It looked differently by moonlight, and with a hundred or more natives squatting in a solid ring at the edge of the grass, in the shadows.

It was hard to see them clearly, but they wore some kind of peaked head-dress, and after glancing at us they kept their eyes on the heap of boulders. To enter that ring was like walking into a menagerie with all the animal cages open. I know I felt my nerves tingle all over, and Miss Carnie stood as straight as a deodar, and kept her chin up.

Moorcroft whispered to us not to speak, and signed for us to sit down by him halfway between the ring of Chitralis and the mass of stones. Right in front of us, twenty yards away, some of the biggest locks had been moved aside, leaving a black hole about large enough for a man with a pack to crawl through. Taking away these boulders had not disturbed the others, so I guessed that hole led into a passageway, going down to the tomb. And once or twice I thought a glow of light came and went as if someone with a lantern was moving around below. But there was no mistaking the sudden feeling of danger that swept over us.

It wasn't the wind, either, that chilled me. A kind of electric shock twitched my arms and made my heart skip a beat. I tried to get up and found I could not move, and at the same time I stopped thinking.

The cold feeling of absolute fear passed away in a flash, leaving me too weak to lift a hand.

"Mr. Smith," Gordon whispered, "do you feel cold? I'm sure someone put a hand on my shoulder."

Now nothing had come near us. I noticed a shrill whining in the air, like the thin note of a violin, only this was immense and powerful as the shrill vibration that comes into the air when a hurricane is heading up. It was like wind, but the underbrush was still as the pews of a church. There was no wind stirring.

"Do not move, Miss Carnie, and do not go a step nearer the entrance to the tomb," Moorcroft whispered.

The whining was still in the air, which seemed to vibrate; but it was not sound, or anything moving. Sweat trinkled down into my eyes, and I had to set my teeth, to keep from turning around and crawling away—anything to get outside that cursed circle and away from the thing that hung over us in the air.

All at once drums started pounding behind the circle. The natives were beating a kind of tattoo. After a while the rhythm quickened and grew louder. Strangely enough it made me feel easier, though it sounded very much like taps for us. Then two men walked into the circle, one carrying fruit, the other a bowl of milk. They set down the stuff in front of the hole and went back.

"You will see the snake now," Moorcroft muttered. "But you must not get up or speak."

The vibration in the air grew less, and finally died down to a faint hissing. By and by I realized that the sound came from the open mouth of the tomb. It was almost drowned by the beat of the drums.

"Watch!" whispered Moorcroft.

The hole became darker, then lighter, as a head appeared. The head drew back and I heard something sliding over rocks. Then a man crawled out.

Propping himself up over the bowl of milk and the fruit, he swayed his head from side to side like a snake, keeping time to the beat of the drums. At first I thought it was one of the Chitralis, going through some mummery connected with their show. And then I nearly yelled out loud.

It was Dixon. And while we watched, his head suddenly sank down until the chin was on the ground. He began to wriggle, first around the bowl, then around the heap of stones. And he moved, not by his elbows as a man might, but by sliding his whole body along, as a snake moves.

I glanced at the girl beside me. She had seen Dixon—I knew that by her face—and now, mercifully, she had closed her eyes.

One look I had at the man's face. In the moonlight it seemed strangely loose and empty of expression. The full lips were drawn back and the eyes were narrowed to slits. Ordinarily Dixon was remarkably handsome, but now it made me shudder to see him. Because life itself seemed to have left him, and what we saw wriggling in the tall grass was no more than the body of a man, twisting in a kind of muscular strength.

I was thankful he had gone back of the stones, instead of toward us. For a moment he could be heard, moving away into the trees.

"This has gone far enough." I leaned back to whisper to Moorcroft, without being heard by Gordon Carnie. "That man was hypnotized."

"Yes," he nodded, "Dixon was a victim of group hypnotism, which is very well understood by the Chitralis. But it goes deeper than that. They have only stripped the mask from him—the mask, you know, of deceit. They have taken away from him his ability to control his face and his movements. What you saw was the man's true nature, devoid of every influence of civilization."

Curiously enough I thought of Dixon as Arnold and I had seen him twenty-four hours ago, asleep in his tent. His face had held a suggestion of brutishness then.

All at once the drums stopped, and I saw that the natives had disappeared. Miss Carnie stumbled to her feet and looked down at Moorcroft, and though she was shivering, her voice was like the swish of a sword.

"Kindly explain, everything, Dr. Moorcroft, at once." He got up and bowed, and I'll swear there was admiration for her and pity, too, in his manner.

"Come, Miss Carnie. We can do so safely, now."

Without looking around he walked to the hole, stooped and climbed through. A match flashed and I saw that he was lighting a candle. The hole was at the head of a narrow passage, and several big boulders had been propped over it, to hold up the loose stones above.

She followed him in at once and they started down a flight of stone steps, bending over because the passage was hardly large enough for a dwarf. I had to scramble down on heels and hands, but after what had happened I was not going to let the girl out of my sight.

The stair descended a dozen feet or so and ended in a square chamber with walls of dark sandstone and a teakwood door at one side. This was open, and we followed Moorcroft through. I've wondered afterward why we ventured down into the tomb; but Miss Carnie was not in the mood to stop at anything and I never thought of trying to stop her.