“How I do hate for any one to fawn upon me like that!” I said to myself as soon as I was alone and I lay thinking about all my troubles, and being a prisoner, wondering how long it would be before I was strong again and able to escape; for I meant to do that. It was very pleasant to find that Ny Deen liked me, and recalled my civility to him sufficiently to make him wish to save my life; but all the same, I felt that I did not like him, for there was the treachery of a man who had come under false pretences to our cantonments, waiting, with others in his secret, for the time when they could throw off the British yoke.
And as I lay thinking, though I felt ready to acquit him of the atrocities that had been committed, I felt that he had opened the awful door and let loose the tide of miscreants who had raged through the cities, murdering every one whose skin was white.
“No,” I thought, “whatever cause Ny Deen and his people might have had for retaliation, it had not been by an open declaration of war, but by treachery.” And then I went to sleep, to dream about snakes.
Chapter Thirty One.
I suppose it was through being weak, and having passed through a feverish state, which made me dream to such a tremendous extent, with everything so real and vivid that it was horrible. It comes natural to a man to dread snakes. It is as part of his education, and the dread was upon me terribly that night.
For I was pursued by them in all kinds of grotesque shapes: now they were all sowars in white, but with serpents’ heads, galloping down upon me in a mad charge; now they were slimy monsters, creeping round my tent, trying to crawl in and murder me because the rajah had taken me under his protection. Then Ny Deen himself came to me, all glittering with gold and gems, but in a confused way. He did not seem to be any longer a man, for his face looked serpent-like and treacherous, and one moment there were glittering jewels, the next it was the light shimmering upon his brilliant scales.
And so on for the rest of the night, till I dreamed that the serpent slain by the attendant had revived, and crept back through the hole between the two portions of the canvas, after heaving off the earth and sand in which it had been buried. And then it came gliding and writhing its way over the carpet, nearer and nearer to where I lay, not with the graceful, gliding motion of an ordinary serpent, but clumsily, with its neck broken and a portion of its tail bent almost at right angles. But, all the same, as I lay there, it came on nearer and nearer, till it was close to my couch in the full light of the lamp, and then, to my horror, it raised itself up, bent its broken neck over me, and glared down with its horrible eyes threatening to strike.
I awoke then, and it was quite time, for the agony was greater than I seemed to be able to bear. And there was the bright glow of light, and the eyes gazing down into mine, not with the malignant glare of a serpent, but in a pleasant, friendly way.