Jack gave a cry of horror. He could not help it. He had meant to restrain all signs of feeling, but this was too much. He had been placed so that he stood almost breast to breast with the most dreadful and grisly horror that the mind of man could conceive. He looked upon the horrible, dry, shrivelled mummy of something which had been a man. The shape of the villager hung there in the bonds, but it was a mere framework of bones, upon which hung wrinkled brown folds of shrivelled skin. The haunting terror of the vision was beyond all description.
Jack tried to speak, to ask what had done this fearful thing. But his dried tongue refused its office; it clung to the roof of his mouth.
The half-caste at his shoulder now broke into a chuckling laugh.
"He looks pretty, does he not?" said Saya Chone. "And you see nothing has happened but what I said. He has been tied here all night." He was silent for a few moments in order to let the awful sight sink deeply into Jack's mind, then he went on. "You are puzzled. I can see it in your face. What has happened to him? I will tell you. You now see what a man looks like when every single drop of blood has been sucked out of his body."
The half-caste paused a little, then laughed gaily. "It is having a better effect on you than I should have hoped for, my young friend. You look sick with horror. But even through your disgust I see a glimmer of wonder as to the manner in which it is done. Simply enough, I assure you. This swamp is famous throughout the valley for the immense size and virulence of the mosquitoes which breed in it. With the fall of dusk they pour from its recesses in vast swarms, and fasten on man or beast or any creature into whose skin they may drive their stings, and from whose body they may suck its blood. Here has been a feast royal for them."
He waved his hand towards the dry, rattling, shrivelled remnants of humanity, fastened to the cross, and Jack understood the awful, the sickening cruelty of this exquisite torture.
"It is a slow death, but terribly sure," went on the half-caste. "As one gorged horde drop off, be certain that a thousand hungry swarms hover round, eager to fill the empty places, and taste also of the feast. Think of it to-day, think of it well."
He waved his hand and the Kachins marched away up the hill, leading Jack with them. The road back to the great house was taken in silence, and Jack was thrust once more into his solitary cell. There he spent the whole day alone, not seeing even those who thrust his dish of meat and rice through a small trap in the door.
The afternoon had worn far on, and he was sitting on his bench deep in thought. He had striven to keep out of his mind the spectacle he had seen that morning, but the impression it had produced upon him was one of such terrible power that it was before his eyes at every moment. What did it threaten to them, to his father and himself? His mind recoiled before the idea.
Suddenly, without a sound, the door of his cell swung back, and there was a swift rush of naked feet on the floor. Four of the guard were upon Jack before he could lift a finger, and at the next moment his hands were bound behind him, and his ankles fastened together with a rope which permitted him to walk with fair ease, but gave him no freedom to do aught beside take short steps. Within five minutes again he was in a procession such as he had walked in the night before.