Rujub, the Juggler, G. A. Henty [top fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

Doctor,” Captain Doolan said, “for it was certainly you masquerading as a native. I believe the other was Bathurst; it struck me so; and he seemed to be running off with some native girl. What on earth could that all mean?”

“It is no use puzzling ourselves about it,” the Doctor said. “It may or may not come true. I have no inclination to go about dressed out as a native at present, but there is no saying what I may come to. There is quite enough for us to wonder at in the other things. The mango and basket tricks I have seen a dozen times, and am no nearer now than I was at first to understanding them. That ascension trick beats me altogether, and there was something horribly uncanny about the snake.”

“Do you think it was a real snake, Doctor?”

“That I cannot tell you, Richards. Every movement was perfectly natural. I could see the working of the ribs as it wound itself round the girl, and the quivering of its tongue as it raised its head above her. At any other time I should be ready to take my affidavit that it was a python of unusual size, but at the present moment I should not like to give a decided opinion about anything connected with the performance.”

“I suppose it is no use asking the juggler any questions, Hunter?” one of the other men said.

“Not in the least; they never do answer questions. The higher class of jugglers treat their art as a sort of religious mystery, and there is no instance known of their opening their lips, although large sums have frequently been offered them. In the present case you will certainly ask no questions, for the man and girl have both disappeared with the box and apparatus and everything connected with them. They must have slipped off directly the last trick was over, and before we had the lamp lighted. I sent after him at once, but the servant could find no signs of him. I am annoyed because I have not paid them.”

“I am not surprised at that,” Dr. Wade said. “It is quite in accordance with what I have heard of them. They live by exhibiting what you may call their ordinary tricks; but I have heard from natives that when they show any what I may call supernatural feats, they do not take money. It is done to oblige some powerful Rajah, and as I have said, it is only on a very few occasions that Europeans have ever seen them. Well, we may as well go in to the ladies. I don't fancy any of them would be inclined to come out onto the veranda again this evening.”

No one was indeed inclined even for talk, and in a very short time the party broke up and returned home.

“Come and smoke a pipe with me, Bathurst, before you turn in,” the Doctor said, as they went out. “I don't think either of us will be likely to go to sleep for some time. What is your impression of all this?”

“My impression, certainly, is that it is entirely unaccountable by any laws with which we are acquainted, Doctor.”

“That is just my idea, and always has been since I first saw any really good juggling out here. I don't believe in the least in anything supernatural, but I can quite believe that there are many natural laws of which at present we are entirely ignorant. I believe the knowledge of them at one time existed, but has been entirely lost, at any rate among Western peoples. The belief in magic is as old as anything we have knowledge of. The magicians at the court of Pharaoh threw down their rods and turned them into serpents. The Witch of Endor called up the spirit of Samuel. The Greeks, by no means a nation of fools, believed implicitly in the Oracles. Coming down to comparatively later times, the workers of magic burnt their books before St. Paul. It doesn't say, mind you, that those who pretended to work magic did so; but those who worked magic.

“Early travelers in Persia and India have reported things they saw far surpassing any we have witnessed this evening, and there is certainly a sect in India at present, or rather a body of men, and those, as far as I have been able to learn, of an exceptionally intelligent class, who believe that they possess an almost absolute mastery over the powers of nature. You see, fifty years back, if anyone had talked about traveling at fifty miles an hour, or sending a message five thousand miles in a minute, he would have been regarded as a madman. There may yet be other discoveries as startling to be made.

“When I was in England I heard something of a set of people in America who called themselves Spiritualists, some of whom—notably a young man named Home—claimed to have the power of raising themselves through the air. I am far from saying that such a power exists; it is of course contrary to what we know of the laws of nature, but should such a power exist it would account for the disappearance of the girl from the top of the pole. Highland second sight, carried somewhat farther, and united with the power of conveying the impressions to others, would account for the pictures on the smoke, that is, supposing them to be true, and personally I own that I expect they will prove to be true—unlikely as it may seem that you, I, and Miss Hannay will ever be going about in native attire.”

By this time they had reached the Doctor's bungalow, and had comfortably seated themselves.

“There is one thing that flashed across me this evening,” Bathurst said. “I told you, that first evening I met Miss Hannay, that I had a distinct knowledge of her face. You laughed at me at the time, and it certainly seemed absurd, but I was convinced I was not wrong. Now I know how it was; I told you at dinner today about the feat of the girl going up and not coming down again; but I did not tell you—for you can understand it is a thing that I should not care to talk much about—that he showed me a picture like those we saw tonight.

“It was a house standing in a courtyard, with a high wall round it. I did not particularly observe the house. It was of the ordinary native type, and might, for anything I know, be the house in the middle of this station used as a courthouse by Hunter, and for keeping stores, and so on. I don't say it was that; I did not notice it much. There was a breach in the outside wall, and round it there was a fierce fight going on. A party of officers and civilians were repelling the assault of a body of Sepoys. On the terraced roof of the house others were standing firing and looking on, and I think engaged in loading rifles were two or three women. One of them I particularly noticed; and, now I recall it, her face was that of Miss Hannay; of that I am absolutely certain.”

“It is curious, lad,” the Doctor said, after a pause; “and the picture, you see, has so far come true that you have made the acquaintance with one of the actors whom you did not previously know.”

“I did not believe in the truth of it, Doctor, and I do not believe in it now. There was one feature in the fight which was, as I regret to know, impossible.”

“And what was that, Bathurst?”

Bathurst was silent for a time.