o
do. The brief respite had been sufficient. As he moved, I managed
to draw my knees up, very slightly, for he was a big, heavy man, but
sufficiently to enable me to throw him off and roll over.

"Then, gentlemen, I dealt with him as he had meant to deal with me; only
I used my bare hands and made a job of it.

"I stood up, breathing heavily, and looked down at him where he lay in
the shadows at my feet. Dusk had come with a million stars, and almost
above my head were flowering creepers festooned from bough to bough. The
two campfires danced up and cast their red light upon the jagged rocks
of the hillock, which started up from the very heart of the thicket, to
stand out like some giant pyramid against the newly risen moon.

"There were night things on the wing, and strange whispering sounds came
from the forests clothing the hills. Then came a distant, hollow booming
like the sound of artillery, which echoed down the mountain gorges and
seemed to roll away over the lowland swamps and die, inaudible, by the
remote river. Yet I stood still, looking down at the dead man at my
feet. For this strange, mysterious artillery was a phenomenon I had
already met with on this fateful march--weird enough and inexplicable,
but no novelty to me, for I had previously met with it in the Shan Hills
of Burma.

"I was thinking rapidly. It was clear enough now why I had hitherto
been unmolested. To Vadi the task had been allotted by the mysterious
organization of which he was a member, of removing me quietly and
decently, under circumstances which would lead to no official inquiry.
Although only animals, insects, and reptiles seemed to be awake about
me, yet I could not get rid of the idea that I was watched.

"I remembered the phantom light, and that memory was an unpleasant
one. For ten minutes or more I stood there watching and listening, but
nothing molested me, nothing human approached. With a rifle resting
across my knees, I sat down in the entrance to my tent to await the
dawn.

"Later in the night, those phantom guns boomed out again, and again
their booming died away in the far valleys. The fires burned lower and
lower, but I made no attempt to replenish them; and because I sat there
so silent, all kinds of jungle creatures crept furtively out of the
shadows and watched me with their glittering eyes. Once a snake crossed
almost at my feet, and once some large creature of the cat species,
possibly a puma, showed like a silh