CHAPTER XVII

LAMP OF HEAVEN

The white men peered from among the oil-jars, like two of the Forty Thieves.  They could detect no movement, friendly or hostile:  the black head lodged there without stirring.  The watcher, whether he had seen them or not, was in no hurry; for with chin propped among the weeds, he held a pose at once alert and peaceful, mischievous and leisurely, as though he were master of that hollow, and might lie all night drowsing or waking, as the humor prompted.

Wutzler pressed his face against the earth, and shivered in the stifling heat.  The uncertainty grew, with Rudolph, into an acute distress.  His legs ached and twitched, the bones of his neck were stretched as if to break, and a corner of broken clay bored sharply between his ribs.  He felt no fear, however:  only a great impatience to have the spy begin,—­rise, beckon, call to his fellows, fire his gun, hit or miss.

This longing, or a flash of anger, or the rice-brandy working so nimbly in his wits, gave him both impulse and plan.

“Don’t move,” he whispered; “wait here.”  And wriggling backward, inch by inch, feet foremost among the crowded bellies of the jars, he gained the further darkness.  So far as sight would carry, the head stirred no more than if it had been a cannon-ball planted there on the verge, against the rosy cloud.  From crawling, Rudolph rose to hands and knees, and silently in the dust began to creep on a long circuit.  Once, through a rift in smoke, he saw a band of yellow musketeers, who crouched behind some ragged earthwork or broken wall, loading and firing without pause or care, chattering like outraged monkeys, and all too busy to spare a glance behind.  Their heads bobbed up and down in queer scarlet turbans or scarfs, like the flannel nightcaps of so many diabolic invalids.

Passing them unseen, he crept back toward his hollow.  In spite of smoke, he had gauged and held his circle nicely, for straight ahead lay the man’s legs.  Taken thus in the rear, he still lay prone, staring down the slope, inactive; yet legs, body, and the bent arm that clutched a musket beside him in the grass, were stiff with some curious excitement.  He seemed ready to spring up and fire.

No time to lose, thought Rudolph; and rising, measured his distance with a painful, giddy exactness.  He would have counted to himself before leaping, but his throat was too dry.  He flinched a little, then shot through the air, and landed heavily, one knee on each side, pinning the fellow down as he grappled underneath for the throat.  Almost in the same movement he had bounded on foot again, holding both hands above his head, as high as he could withdraw them.  The body among the weeds lay cold, revoltingly indifferent to stratagem or violence, in the same tense attitude, which had nothing to do with life.

Rudolph dropped his hands, and stood confounded by his own brutal discourtesy.  Wutzler, crawling out from the jars, scrambled joyfully up the bank.