“Poisoned,” Gaston answered briefly, and even as he said it I knew that it was so.
I took the piece of bamboo in my hand. It was some ten inches long and sharpened at one end. I stooped and picked up the bag of skin that lay on the floor beside the body, still warm, of our fallen foe. Arranged in careful order within were other arrows like to the first, each red-tipped, each a swift and fatal messenger.
There was no hope, and the wounded man knew it.
He was a tall, muscular savage, a little stooped and grizzled with age, but powerful, save for the death sickness that had begun already to loosen his joints.
Many lines crossed and recrossed his face, and as I looked on him more closely, I saw that his features were not those of the neighboring tribe, nor indeed did his face resemble the natives that I had seen. Furthermore, his skin was more bronze than black.
A curious woven strip falling from one shoulder over the right breast bound his middle. Save for this, the man was naked, and I saw that some strange torture had twisted and distorted his wrists and hands. Moreover, his body bore in several places the mark of hot iron, and my gorge rose at the thought of the infernal cruelties that had been practised.
Meanwhile Lestrade, with something of a woman’s touch, and in that was I ever far behind my comrade, well-known as he is for skill and nicety in sickness,—Gaston, I say, had helped the stranger down, had placed a packet beneath his head, and now stood waiting, helpless to do more and pitiful of the drops of agony that stood bead-like upon the forehead of the dying man.
The end would not be long. Presently the savage spoke, and in the dialect of the neighboring tribe, but with the words somewhat clipped and altered as one speaking a strange language to strange ears.
“I am Sagamoso, priest of the Council,” he said, “and the door of Shimra opens.” He raised himself with pain, upon his elbow, and his eyes glittered strangely in the firelight. “Nevertheless, promise, O men of white countenance, that you will bury me, my feet to the rising sun, ashes upon my breast, in the name of Edba and of Hed; and deep, deep, so that no beast shall rend me, no enemy loose me from my grave. Inasmuch shall I escape the last evil.”
“Christian burial, and no heathen mummery shall you have,” said I; for in truth I was sore that this savage should have fled to us, as if our case was not evil enough, and so was like to bring the whole tribe of Fan, like a swarm of angry bees, about our ears.