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Read Ebook: The Children of Alsace (Les Oberlés) by Bazin Ren
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Ebook has 911 lines and 76560 words, and 19 pages
CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY.
THE SERPENT CHARMER.
A brown man in a white turban sat by the river. It was night, and a little fire of sticks sent strange gleams sparkling across the water, and touched the form of the brown man with splashes of golden light.
The man was playing on a gourd flute. The music--if such it could be called--was in a high key, but stifled and subdued. Under the man, to keep his crouching body from the earth, had been spread a piece of scarlet cloth. In front of him was a round wicker basket, perhaps a foot in diameter by six inches high.
As the man played, the notes of the flute coming faster and faster, the lid of the basket began to tremble as by some pent-up force. Finally the lid slid open, and a hooded cobra lifted its flat, ugly head. With eyes on those of the serpent charmer, the cobra began weaving back and forth in time to the music. Now and then the snake would hiss and dart its head at the man. The latter would dodge to avoid the striking fangs, meanwhile keeping up his flute-playing.
It was an odd scene, truly, to be going forward in a country like ours--cut bodily from the mysteries of India and dropped down on the banks of the Wabash, there, near the intensely American city of Lafayette.
While the brown man was playing and the cobra swayed, and danced, and struck its lightning-like but ineffectual blows, another came into the ring of firelight, stepping as noiselessly as a slinking panther. He, like the other, wore a turban, and there was gold in his ears and necklaces about his throat.
The first man continued his flute-playing. The other, with a soft laugh, went to the player's side, sank down, and riveted his own snakelike orbs upon the diamond eyes of the cobra. Once the serpent struck at him, but he drew back and continued to look. With one hand the newcomer took the flute from the player's lips and laid it on the ground; then, in a silence broken only by the crackling fires, the eyes of the man snapped and gleamed and held those of the cobra.
The effect was marvelous. Slowly the cobra ceased its rhythmical movements and dropped down and down until it retreated once more into the basket; then, with a quick hand, the lid of the receptacle was replaced and secured with a wooden pin.
"Yadaba!" exclaimed the first man.
"Not here must you call me that, Dhondaram," said the second. "I am known as Ben Ali."
Dhondaram spat contemptuously.
"'Tis a name of the Turks," he grunted; "a dog's name."
"It answers as well as any other."
These men were Hindoos, and their talk was in Hindustani.
"You sent for me at Chicago," proceeded Dhondaram; "you asked me to come to this place on the river, and to bring with me my most venomous cobra. See! I am here; and the cobra, you have discovered that the flute has no power to quiet its hostility. Your eyes did that, Yada--your pardon; I should have said Ben Ali. Great is the power of your eyes. They have lost none of their charms since last we met."
Ben Ali received this statement moodily. Picking up a small pebble, he cast it angrily into the fire.
"Why have you brought me here?" inquired Dhondaram, rolling a cigarette with materials taken from the breast of his flowing robe.
"Because," answered Ben Ali, "I have made a vow."
"This one," hissed Ben Ali, "will bring trouble to an enemy of mine."
"And to yourself, it may be," added Dhondaram, resuming his squatting attitude on the scarlet cloth and whiffing a thin line of vapor into the air.
"The goddess Kali protects me," averred Ben Ali. "It is written in my forehead."
"What else is written in your forehead?" asked Dhondaram after a space. "What was it that caused you to send for me, and to ask me to leave my profitable work in the museum, come here, and bring the worst of my hooded pets?"
Ben Ali, in the silence that followed, picked up more pebbles and cast them into the fire.
"During the feast of Nag-Panchmi," he observed at last, "years since, Dhondaram, a mad elephant crushed a boat on the Ganges. You were in the boat, and I snatched you from certain death."
Dhondaram's face underwent a swift change.
"That, also," he said in a subdued tone, "is written in my forehead. I remembered it when your letter came to me. I owe you obedience until the debt is paid. I am here, Ben Ali. Command me."
A look of fear crossed Dhondaram's face. It passed quickly, but had not escaped the keen eyes of Ben Ali.
"You are afraid!" and he sneered as he spoke.
"And if I am?" protested the other. "I am bound to obey, and lose my life, if I must, in paying for the saving of it during the feast of Nag-Panchmi. Who is your enemy, Aurung Zeeb?"
Ben Ali struck the ground with his clinched fist.
Dhondaram nodded gravely.
"I know," he replied.
"What am I to do?" queried Dhondaram.
Dhondaram nodded.
Dhondaram stirred restlessly.
"The law of this country," he murmured, "has a long arm and a heavy fist."
"If you do as I say," went on Ben Ali, "you will not be reached by the arm nor caught by the fist. You will be safe, and so will I; and the vow of Ben Ali will have been carried out."
"You cannot do this yourself?"
"Had Motor Matt the power to do this when he saved Haidee?"
"He had."
"And he held his hand! Why?"
"Because Haidee was under the spell of my eyes. In order to free her, he had to bargain with me. The bargain was that I should go free, but never to trouble Motor Matt or the girl any more. With the girl in my hands, I could secure many rupees from my brother, the rajah, for her. And I hate that brother. He is rich, but he made me the keeper of his elephants! He lived in luxury, but I herded with the coolies."
Again Ben Ali struck his clinched fist on the earth.
"It may be," said Dhondaram, "that Burton Sahib has secured another keeper for the bad elephant, Rajah? In that case, he would not want me."
"Even so."
"Tell me what I am to do, and how."
Then, as the little tongues of flame threw their weird play of lights and shadows over the dusky plotters, the talk went on.
A BAD ELEPHANT.
"Great spark-plugs!"
Motor Matt was passing the canvas walls of the menagerie tent of the "Big Consolidated" when a human form ricocheted over the top of it and landed directly in front of him on a pile of hay. The dropping of the man on the hay was accompanied by a wild sound which the king of the motor boys recognized as the trumpeting of an angry elephant. Following this came the noise of quick movements on the other side of the wall, and hoarse voices giving sharp commands.
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