Next he felt a stout cord passed round his ankles and another about his legs just above the knees, after which the thick cloth was drawn from his head, and he gasped and panted as he filled his lungs again and again with the pure night air, which cleared his brain and sent the crowded ballroom, the thick costume, and the giddiness of the waltz far back into the unreal region from which they came.
For a moment he revelled in the sight of the brilliant star-lit heavens, and then, almost before he knew it, a cloth was bound tightly round his eyes.
“A seizure by banditti,” muttered Chumbley, “quite in the romantic style, and I shall be held to ransom, when, seeing that I have nothing but my pay—and that is hardly enough for my expenses—I may say, in the words of the monkey who held out his tail to the chained-up dog, ‘Don’t you wish you may get it!’ Oh, I say, though, I’m as sore as if I’d been thrashed. Whatever game is this?”
“If you will promise to be silent,” said a deep voice at his ear in the Malayan tongue, “we will not thrust a cloth into your mouth.”
“I wish they’d pour a glass of Bass into it instead,” thought Chumbley. “I say, you sir,” he replied, in as good Malayan as he could command, “what does this mean?”
“Wait and see.”
“Are you going to kris me?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” muttered Chumbley. “I might have known it by their taking so much trouble, though five minutes ago it would have been a charity to put me out of my misery.”
“Will you be silent if I leave your mouth free?” was asked again.