es of
the stranglers glowed red in its light, like devils who danced in hell.

Hunsa had turned the merchant upon his back and his evil gorilla face
was thrust into the face of his victim. No breath passed the thick
protruding lips upon which was a froth of death.

As the Jamadar tore the keys from the waist-band, snapping a silver
chain that was about the body, he said: "Sookdee, be quick. Have the
bodies carried to the pits. Do not forget to drive a spear through
each belly lest they swell up and burst open the earth."

"You have the keys to the chest, Hunsa?" Sookdee said, with suspicion
in his voice.

"Yes, Jamadar; I will open it. We will empty it, and place the iron
box on top of the bodies in a pit, for it is too heavy to carry, and if
we are stopped it might be observed."

"Take the dead," Sookdee commanded the Bagrees; "lay them out; take
down the tents that are over the pits, and by that time I will be there
to count these dead things in the way of surety that not one has
escaped with the tale.

"Come," he said to Hunsa, "together we will go to the iron box and open
it; then there can be no suspicion that the men of Alwar have been
defrauded."

Hunsa turned malignant eyes upon Sookdee, but, keys in hand, strode
toward the tent.

Sookdee, thrusting in the fire a torch made from the feathery bark of
the _kujoor_ tree, followed.

Hunsa kneeling before the iron box was fitting the keys into the double
locks. Then he drew the lids backward, and the two gasped at a glitter
of precious stones that lay beneath a black velvet cloth Hunsa stripped
from the gems.

Sookdee cried out in wonderment; and Hunsa, slobbering gutturals of
avarice, patted the gems with his gorilla paws. He lifted a large
square emerald entwined in a tracery of gold, delicate as the
criss-cross of a spider's web, and held it to his thick lips.

"A bribe for a princess!" he gloated. "Take you this, Sookdee, and
hide it as you would your life, for a gift to the son of the Peshwa,
who, methinks, is behind the Dewan in this, we will be men of honour.
And this"--a gleaming diamond in a circlet of gold--"for Sirdar
Baptiste," and he rolled it in his loin cloth. "And this,"--a string
of pearls, that as he laid it on the black velvet was like the tears of
angels,--"This for the fat pig of a Dewan to set his four wives at each
other's throats. Let not the others know of these, Sookdee, of these
that we have taken for the account."