“Oh, have a care, sahib!” wailed the Beluchi.  “This is very holy man!”

“Silence!” ordered Brown.  “Here.  Hold the lamp.”

The bayonet-point pressed against the fakir’s ribs, and he drew back an inch or two to get away from it.  He was evidently able to feel pain when it was inflicted by any other than himself.

“Come on,” growled the sentry.  “Forward.  Quick march.  If you don’t want two inches in you!”

“Don’t use the point!” commanded Brown.  “You might do him an injury.  Treat him to a sample of the butt!”

The sentry swung his rifle round with an under-handed motion that all riflemen used to practise in the short-range-rifle days.  The fakir winced, and gabbled something in a hurry to the man who held the lamp.

“He says that he will speak, sahib!”

“Halt, then,” commanded Brown.  “Order arms.  Tell him to hurry up!”

The Beluchi translated, and the fakir answered him, in a voice that sounded hard and distant and emotionless.

“He says that he, too, is here to watch the crossroads, sahib!  He says that he will curse you if you touch him!”

“Tell him to curse away!”

“He says not unless you touch him, sahib.”

“Prog him off his perch!” commanded Brown.

The rifle leaped up at the word, and its butt landed neatly on the fakir’s ribs, sending him reeling backward off his balance, but not upsetting him completely.  He recovered his poise with quite astonishing activity, and shuffled himself back again to the center of the dais.  His eyes blazed with hate and indignation, and his breath came now in sharp gasps that sounded like escaping steam.  He needed no further invitation to commence his cursing.  It burst out with a rush, and paused for better effect, and burst out again in a torrent.  The Beluchi hid his face between his hands.

“Now translate that!” commanded Brown, when the fakir stopped for lack of breath.

“Sahib, I dare not!  Sahib—­”

Brown took a threatening step toward him, and the Beluchi changed his mind.  Brown’s disciplining methods were a too recently encountered fact to be outdone by a fakir’s promise of any kind of not-yet-met damnation.

“Sahib, he says that because your man has touched him, both you and your man shall lie within a week helpless upon an anthill, still living, while the ants run in and out among your wounds.  He says that the ants shall eat your eyes, sahib, and that you shall cry for water, and there shall be no water within reach—­only the sound of water just beyond you.  He says that first you shall be beaten, both of you, until your backs and the soles of your feet run blood, in order that the ants may have an entrance!”

“Is he going to do all this?”

The Beluchi passed the question on, and the fakir tossed him an answer to it.

“He says, sahib, that the gods will see to it.”