George; old Sol is up before us. Next time you arouse me from my peaceful slumbers to witness a Siamese sunrise, I shall know enough to refuse to lend myself to your mad schemes. Why there’s not a particle of breath left in my body, to say nothing of the condition of my legs.”
“Peaceful slumbers, indeed!” I replied, contemptuously. “For my part, what with the mosquitoes and the howling of the jackals I haven’t slept a wink all night. Who was it, pray, that insisted upon dragging me two hundred miles into the wilderness to visit those miserable ruins? And now you complain because I make you share my discomforts. Come, Maurice, that’s not fair.”
Maurice laughed.
“My friend,” he said, “I take it all back. It’s grand, it’s glorious! I am beginning to breathe now, and my legs are rapidly returning to their normal condition. It is worth two years of a man’s life to gaze upon this view ten minutes. I for one do not regret my climb.”
But as for myself, I was indifferent. Two months had elapsed since my singular adventure in the streets of Panompin. Two months more had been given me to forget my troubles, yet they had not been forgotten. I needed something besides the dreamy existence I had been leading in the society of my friend Maurice De Veber to drive them from my thoughts.
On that night my escape from the mob had been less difficult than might be supposed.
It was not me they were after; besides they took me for a Frenchman, I fancy, and to interfere with a Frenchman in Cambodia would be a very dangerous matter.
When at last I succeeded in pushing my way through the excited throng and found myself at the door of the American consulate, I discovered that I still held the little hand bag which had been dropped by the stranger and which I must have picked up, although I have no recollection of having done anything of the sort.
I was dazed—absolutely confounded.
What I had seen I had seen. In one moment that man with his peculiar face had stood before me; his eyes had looked into my eyes; he had spoke; he had pressed my hand; and in the next he had disappeared as completely as if he had never been.
Where? How?
