“Just a wee shade tighter!” ordered Brown.  “I’m not sure, but I think he’s seeing reason!”

The fakir gurgled.  No one but a native, and he a wise one, could have recognized a meaning in the guttural gasp that he let escape him.

“He says `All right! sahib!’ " translated the Beluchi.

“Good!” said Brown.  “Ease away on the rope; men!  And now!  You all heard what I told him.  If he says `Hookum hai!’ you all let go the rope, and fall flat.  But keep hold of your rifles!”

The fakir’s voice, rose in a high-pitched, nasal wail, and from the darkness all around them there came an answering murmur that was like the whispering of wind through trees.  By the sound, there must have been a crowd of more than a hundred there, and either the crowd was sneaking around them to surround them at close quarters, or else the crowd was growing.

“Keep awake, men!” cautioned Brown.

“Aye, aye, sir!  All awake, sir!”

“Listen, now!  And if he says one word except what I told him he might say, tip me the wink at once "

Brown swung the Beluchi out in front of him where he could hear the fakir better.

“I’ll hang you, remember, after I’ve hanged him, if anything goes wrong!”

“He is saying, sahib, exactly what you said.”

“He’d better!  Listen now!  Listen carefully!  Look out for tricks!”

The fakir paused a second from his high-pitched monologue, and a murmur from the darkness answered him.

“Stand by to haul tight, you men!”

“All ready, sir!”

The rope tightened just a little—­just sufficiently to keep the fakir cognizant of its position.  The fakir howled out a sort of singsong dirge, which plainly had imperatives in every line of it.  At each short pause for breath he added something in an undertone that made the Beluchi strain his ears.

“He says, sahib, that they understand.  He says, `Now is the time!’ He says now he will order `Hookum hai!’ He says, `Are you ready?’ He says, sahib,—­he says it, sahib,—­not I—­he says, ’Thou art a fool to stare thus!  Thou and thy men are fools!  Stare, instead, as men who are bewitched!’”

“Try to look like boiled owls, to oblige his Highness, men!” said Brown.  “Now, that’s better; watch for the word!  Easy on the rope a little!”

The men did their best to pose for the part of semimesmerized victims of a superhuman power.  The flame from the burning roofs was dying down already, for the thatch burned fast, and the glowing gloom was deep enough to hide indifferent acting.  With their lives at stake, though, men act better than they might at other times.

The fakir spun round on his heels and, clutching with his whole hand at the rope, began to execute a sort of dance—­a weird, fantastic, horrible affair of quivering limbs and rolling eyeballs, topped by a withered arm that pointed upward, and a tortured fingernail-pierced fist that nodded on a dried-out-wrist-joint.