"You have forgotten me, Schultz Sahib? It is not so long since we worked together on the railway. One of us at least learned a great deal about the other in those days, Sahib. Smile!—keep smiling!"
A wild revolt surged up in the German, subsided, without exterior evidence, under the glare of the dominating eyes which held his fascinated. He tried to turn away his gaze, was checked by the level, purposeful voice of the fakir.
"Keep your eyes on mine, Sahib! Look elsewhere and you are dead before you have looked!"
He heard the words reverberating through him, endlessly re-echoing in chambers of his soul magically open to them. He felt himself fixed, immobile, in a strange paralysis of the faculties. The terrible eyes looked into his that he could not close—he felt, as it were, waves of immeasurable strange force flowing from them, rolling over him, submerging him. And yet still he looked into the eyes of the fakir, his own eyes an open port to their influence.
A subtle, pervading odour ascended his nostrils, filled his lungs, mounted to his head. His brain grew dizzy with it. And still the compelling eyes held him, prevented him from turning his own eyes to the source of the odour. He lost the sense of his environment, was oblivious to the awed tribesmen staring silently at the pair in the blaze of light. He saw nothing but the eyes—lost consciousness of his own body. He stared—and lost consciousness even of the eyes at which he stared.
There was vacuity, oblivion, an annihilation of time—and then out of that vacuity a voice commenced to speak. He heard it with a shock of the nerves—it crashed through darkness with a mighty power. He seemed suspended like a lost spirit in everlasting night, fumbling around the vague yet massive foundations of the world—indefinitely remote from all that he had ever known. He could not detach himself from those foundations. They quivered under the booming voice, communicated an unpleasant thrill to the core of him. An awful unimaginable disaster seemed to envelop him. The tiny germ of consciousness that was still his fought for extension, strove to see. All was blackness—blackness. And still the voice went on relentlessly, driving through darkness, like a ploughshare thrust forward by the firm grip of a mighty and inexorable hand. Immeasurable results seemed dependent on its progress. He listened to it—and as he focused himself on the listening, a dim perception of his environment came to him. He was vaguely conscious of a sea of faces, upturned, listening—as he himself listened. Those faces—they were in some relation to him, there was a link between them and him—he could not determine it. He listened. The words rang like sounding brass, the vowels roaringly sonorous, the consonants clashing. He concentrated himself on their meaning—penetrated to it suddenly as through veils smitten asunder.
"Lies and again lies, O children of the Prophet! A mockery of lies! The Sultan Willem is a servant of Shaitan who feigneth religion that he may lure true believers to their damnation while they unwittingly serve the Evil One!" His perception leaped up, clawing at danger, and then was dragged down again, engulfed. He felt himself like a man drowning in black waters at night—down—down—and then, fighting obscurely, he shot up again, heard the inexorable voice continuing: "This magic you have looked upon is a false magic—the magic of unbelievers in league with Eblis!" He heard the re-echoing denunciation in a spasm of full consciousness—was suddenly cognizant of the sea of faces, of fierce passions exhaling from it—was completely aware of the menace of utter ruin. A great revulsion surged in him. This must be stopped—stopped! The necessity for instant protest was an anguish in him. All of himself that he could summon from the darkness as his own shrieked the negative, and yet he did not utter a sound—knew that he did not. "Climb up into that box some of you, and ye shall find no magic but a Frank there!" He strained with all his soul towards the faculty of speech—felt his powers vanquishing the spell of dumbness—on the verge of utterance shaped his words of denial. "Lo! have I not spoken the truth? Yea, I cannot speak other than the truth, for I am the runaway servant of Muhammed Din, and his sanctity hath broken the compact between me and the Evil One!" In staggering horror he realized—the voice was his own!
He stood fixed, incapable of movement, and saw—like a man that has dreamed and cannot yet distinguish dream from reality—the mob of tribesmen surging obscurely in the long stone room, saw the blinding white eye of the lantern still shining steadfastly upon him—saw it waver, swing from side to side, and then, with one last blinding flash, disappear. In the utter darkness he heard shouts and shrieks and fierce derisive laughter. He heard crash upon crash as heavy objects were flung from a height at the other end of the room. He heard a piercing yell, an agonized, appealing utterance of his own name. For a brief second it shocked him into complete consciousness—his operator! Then, ere he could break his invisible bonds, he felt a pair of cool hands pressed tightly against his brow, over his eyes, and he relapsed totally—with a last little gasp—into nothingness.
He awoke again to see the tribesmen surging round him, fiercely shouting. The room re-echoed with reiterated cries of "Sharm! Sharm!"[1] and a howl that was so unmistakably for blood that it chilled him to the heart. The room was lighter now—the rags had been pulled down from the high loopholes in the wall. He saw Muhammed Din standing before him, fending off his adversaries. He was still incapable of voluntary movement. A great faintness swept over him. He reeled back; found himself supported by the angle of the wall. He had been thrust back there all unconscious of the movement.