Then as something out of the void struck him cruelly between the eyes he gave a mighty shout which made no sound at all, and fell with a crash, scattering the brass vessels and tiny earthenware saucers to the four corners of the space around the altar.

Sunstroke?—­well, hardly.

Because the next morning, when he awoke with the hide thongs fastening him by the wrist and the waist to the ring in the wall, he felt fit, and fresh, and extremely wide awake.

Perhaps it was that the blow, or whatever had struck Jan Cuxson down on the threshold of the temple, had served to sharpen his wits; anyway, for some unknown reason, words uttered by the priest on the first day of his imprisonment began to repeat themselves over and over again in his brain, as he sat uncomfortably with his back to the wall and his eyes fixed with a certain crafty understanding upon a piece of rusty metal half hidden under a fallen brick.

Wherefore he wheedled and cajoled when the priest came to visit him until the thongs were unfastened and his somewhat prescribed liberty restored.

“Only until the shadows fall, sahib,” the old man said as he gathered the hide thongs in his hands.  “Tonight is the night of the full moon and the white woman is even now approaching.”

“Leonie—–­I mean the mem-sahib—­is in the jungle—­with whom?”

“Verily, sahib, with the man who loves her!”

“Oh, my God!” said Cuxson slowly.  “How do you know?”

“We need no wires or poles to carry us news, sahib!  We have a surer way, aye, and a quicker one.  Struggle not to-night, sahib, when I tie you to the ring in the wall.  Bound you must be, for the Black One has spoken; and it is her pleasure that I shall lift my will from you, even as I did by mischance yesterday.  India has suffered through this white woman; my people have been tormented by her, and Kali, the Black One, has commanded that the sufferings of the land shall be wiped out in the white woman’s blood, and the torments of the people in your torments.”

It has been said that Jan Cuxson was plodding to a degree akin to slowness.

He was!  But you may be sure that if an idea came to him even at the eleventh hour it would be a good idea and would be developed until it reached an advanced stage of perfection.

Some time after the priest had departed he drew the piece of metal, which proved to be the broken blade of a knife, from under the fallen stone, slipped it into his pocket, and was as well content as his harassed mind and overwrought imagination would allow him to be.

CHAPTER XLV

  “Behold, thou art fair, my beloved,
          thou art fair!”—­S. of Solomon.

  “Yea! he is altogether lovely.”—­S. of Solomon.

With her bearer’s hand to balance her, Leonie stepped off the gangway into the rocking, canoe-shaped boat, made in the dim past by digging out the interior of some tree trunk, and in the bows of which were huddled the coolies with her luggage.