Strickland was very angry.  He said that we might all three have been knifed, and that Fleete should thank his stars that he had escaped without injury.

Fleete thanked no one.  He said that he wanted to go to bed.  He was gorgeously drunk.

We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful, until Fleete was taken with violent shivering fits and sweating.  He said that the smells of the bazaar were overpowering, and he wondered why slaughter-houses were permitted so near English residences.  ‘Can’t you smell the blood?’ said Fleete.

We put him to bed at last, just as the dawn was breaking, and Strickland invited me to have another whisky and soda.  While we were drinking he talked of the trouble in the temple, and admitted that it baffled him completely.  Strickland hates being mystified by natives, because his business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons.  He has not yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen or twenty years he will have made some small progress.

‘They should have mauled us,’ he said, ’instead of mewing at us.  I wonder what they meant.  I don’t like it one little bit.’

I said that the Managing Committee of the temple would in all probability bring a criminal action against us for insulting their religion.  There was a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly met Fleete’s offence.  Strickland said he only hoped and prayed that they would do this.  Before I left I looked into Fleete’s room, and saw him lying on his right side, scratching his left breast.  Then.  I went to bed cold, depressed, and unhappy, at seven o’clock in the morning.

At one o’clock I rode over to Strickland’s house to inquire after Fleete’s head.  I imagined that it would be a sore one.  Fleete was breakfasting and seemed unwell.  His temper was gone, for he was abusing the cook for not supplying him with an underdone chop.  A man who can eat raw meat after a wet night is a curiosity.  I told Fleete this and he laughed.

‘You breed queer mosquitoes in these parts,’ he said.  ’I’ve been bitten to pieces, but only in one place.’

‘Let’s have a look at the bite,’ said Strickland.  ’It may have gone down since this morning.’

While the chops were being cooked, Fleete opened his shirt and showed us, just over his left breast, a mark, the perfect double of the black rosettes—­the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle—­on a leopard’s hide.  Strickland looked and said, ’It was only pink this morning.  It’s grown black now.’

Fleete ran to a glass.

‘By Jove!’ he said,’ this is nasty.  What is it?’

We could not answer.  Here the chops came in, all red and juicy, and Fleete bolted three in a most offensive manner.  He ate on his right grinders only, and threw his head over his right shoulder as he snapped the meat.  When he had finished, it struck him that he had been behaving strangely, for he said apologetically, ’I don’t think I ever felt so hungry in my life.  I’ve bolted like an ostrich.’