The Beluchi translated, or pretended to.  Brown was not sure which, for he was rewarded with nothing but another chuckle, which sounded like water gurgling down a drain.

“Does he still say nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing, sahib.”

Brown stepped up closer yet, and peered into the blackness, looking straight into the eyes that glared at him, and from them down at the body of the owner of them.  The Beluchi shrank away.

“Have a care, sahib!  It is dangerous!  This very holy—­most holy—­ most religious man!”

“Bring that lantern back.”

“He will curse you, sahib!”

“Do you hear me?”

The Beluchi came nearer again, trembling with fright.  Brown snatched the lamp away from him, and pushed it forward toward the fakir, moving it up and down to get a view of the whole of him.  There was nothing that he saw that would reassure or comfort or please a devil even.  It was ultradevilish; both by design and accident—­conceived and calculated ghastliness, peculiar to India.  Brown shuddered as he looked, and it took more than the merely horrible to make him betray emotion.

“What god do you say he worships?”

“Sahib, I know not.  I am a Mussulman.  These Hindus worship many gods.”

The fakir chuckled again, and Brown held the lantern yet nearer to him to get a better view.  The fakir’s skin was not oily, and for all the blanket-heat it did not glisten, so his form was barely outlined against the blackness that was all but tangible behind him.

Brown spat again, as he drew away a step.  He could contrive to express more disgust and more grim determination in that one rudimentary act than even a Stamboul Softa can.

“So he’s holy, is he?”

“Very, very holy, sahib!”

Again the fakir chuckled, and again Brown held his breath and pushed the lantern closer to him.

“I believe the brute understands the Queen’s English!”

“He understanding all things, sahib!  He knowing all things what will happen!  Mind, sahib!  He may curse you!”

But Brown appeared indifferent to the danger that he ran.  To the fakir’s unconcealed discomfort, he proceeded to examine him minutely, going over him with the aid of the lantern inch by inch, from the toe-nails upward.

“Well,” he commented aloud, “if the army’s got an opposite, here’s it!  I’d give a month’s pay for the privilege of washing this brute, just as a beginning!”

The man’s toe-nails—­for he really was a man!—­were at least two inches long.  They were twisted spirally, and some of them were curled back on themselves into disgusting-looking knots.  What walking he had ever done had been on his heels.  His feet were bent upward, and fixed upward, by a deliberately cultivated cramp.