Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 13, 1923 — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

~ not. up to the wilderness to do with it whatever it listed. 3 But when the chuprassi said that a man going through that banyan would be born again, he was apparently referring to him- self. ‘“ From the time that we enter,” he went on, “ until by the grace of Vishnu the Pre- server we reach the other side of the forest I am no longer your chuprassi. This jungle changes every man. Some men are reincarnated into jackals, the souls of others transmigrate into flying foxes. If a huge fox comes at night and spreads its bat- wings over you, you may conceive the idea it is perhaps a goatherd’s wife who per- chance was Jost in this jungle. Now I my- self will change—lI will change from a lick- spittle body-servant to a shikari—that is. to say a pathfinder. No longer will the Heaven-born apply his blessed foot to my reborn hide. I am anew man—a man that must not be touched. Abuse me with your tongue—yes, for in the world outside or in this jungle, in heaven or hell, you are still numbered among the Twice-born, whereas I am at soul merely a louse. But touch me In the kingdom beyond that banyan I am king. Lowly pariah that I am, I am greater than you in the jungle—for there you shall be blind, and it is granted to my humble bleary eyes to see a few dim jungle truths. In the kingdom of the blind, so the saying goes, the one-eyed man is king.” When Dunboyne -passed that banyan and entered the jungle he felt that he was suddenly engulfed in a vast perfumed tem- ple. Arches of bamboo, bombax and poon, led to pitch dark naves on every side. Tamarind bows whipped him on the chest as he galloped past; webs clung gently to his cheeks; frightened owls winged down the limitless aisles, and in distant vistas, where the moonlight filtered as if they were beams from a stained rosace, jocks of bats zigzagged and fluttered across the glow and melted into the dark. Dunboyne knew that into those jungles men had entered strong and come out brok- en. Although a terrific sense of doom clung about him like a suffocating cloud, he pressed his horse on. If he had known ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, something of the actual doom to which the Shikari was leading him he might have given up his search for Diane Herries. But his only present foreboding was an intangible dread that there was something in store for him far worse than bodily tor- ture. The sikari kicked his ugly little tat-pony into a fast silent gallop over the aisles of dhoob grass and moss. Dunboyne followed submissive and helpless through his fear. CHAPTER VI. THE DWARF THAG, [° the heart of the Pangal jungle seven sepia colored men and their captive en- camped for the night. To the sacred “jungle people” who gibbered and squeaked and swung from the vines over- head, the group of human beings was new and peculiar. Six were coolies, naked but for brown turbans and loin cloths. Their captive was lying in a dhooly-dak, a small light palanquin which consisted of little more than a box and a long bamboo pole. The last member of the party was a dwarf whom the holy jungle-folk could very easily have claimed as one of their own kith and kin. When Diane Herries awoke and found herself lying in the coffin-like palanquin she saw this little dwarf. And the sight of him brought back in a vivid flash the remem- brance of that dreadful night in the dak- bungalow. How long ago that night was she did not know. Her sensations at first were confused—sensuous, and not disagree- able. On one side of the palanquin, through a bower of enormous fern trees she caught sight of a fire which sent up a heavy pillar of smoke, apparently because of the green fuel. On the other was an improvised cur- tain of grass upon which one of the coolies was throwing water. A breeze through this curtain created a deliciously cool draught. Diane could not remember having been so cool since first setting foot upon Indian soil —ages before, it seemed to her. If she thrust her head out of her little canopied box, she could see a dim and ex- Be 1 A ee COMME OOS, COM