“This two-headed serpent,” explained Kayenna, carelessly, to Shacabac, “is a rare monster which delighteth in flinging himself bodily on his prey, striking it with the middle of his length, then tightening himself, fold on fold, around the victim, until, life being all but crushed out, he feasts with his double heads on the dying body. I care little for such spectacles myself, for I think they savor of the grotesque; but it will amuse our caravan, and make a weary hour pass pleasantly.”
CHAPTER VIII.
What is a cryptogram? asked the Pupil.
It is a cipher, replied the Sage.
What is a cipher? persisted the Pupil.
It is naught, answered the Sage.
Is there a cryptogram in this book? asked the Pupil.
If there be, a Sage alone will find it. It should explain aught that may seem irrelevant.—The Wisdom of Shacabac.
Now it happened that, some days before, a guard came unto the tent of Shacabac, leading a tattered remnant of humanity, who had been found crawling toward the spring in dire distress. After allowing him to slake his thirst, and being unable to obtain from him any coherent explanation of his forlorn condition, the guard brought him before Shacabac. The Sage, after bidding his body-servants to relieve the stranger of his valuables, asked him how he came to be in such woful plight. The outcast replied in the Lingua Franca dialect: “Truly, because I could not resist the inducement of a free ride from Nhulpar to Ubikwi; but the people of my caravan deserted me in the wilderness two days since, and I have been in sore straits to reach this oasis.”
“And what was thy business in Ubikwi?” asked the Sage.
“None whatever,” replied the stranger; “but it was a free ride,—have I not told thee so?—and of course I went along.”
Struck by this remarkable explanation, the Sage asked, “Of what country art thou?” and the enfeebled one, lifting his head proudly, replied, “I am an American.” “Nay,” responded Shacabac, “thou art more likely to prove erelong that thou dost belong to a yet more numerous race,—that of the deadheads.”
Nevertheless, he was so moved by the piteous condition of the stranger that he allowed him to join the caravan and lead a pack-camel every day during the rest of the march. And the Sage wrote upon his tablets this precious aphorism: “The free lunch is for the thirsty, not for the hungry.”
A happy thought now occurred to Shacabac, and he said:—