But as he turned away and walked arm in arm with the adept through the dim interior of the shrine, amid armored gods and green and red dragons, I felt a strange calmness creep over me, and I simply stood there with the Doctor on one side and Ni-fan-lu on the other, watching them as they went out of sight.
Night came on.
Still it was the Doctor and I, with occasionally Ah Schow and always Ni-fan-lu, whose stupidity was as vast when he did not want to talk as was his shrewdness when he did. Poor Ah Schow, who really tried to do his best to draw some information out of him, particularly on the subject of Walla had given up long ago in despair.
And so hour succeeded hour, until Ni-fan-lu, returning after a brief absence a little later than eleven o’clock, announced that we were sent for and were to go to the temple at once, which proved to mean that horrible mausoleum beneath it, for it was thither he conducted us and here we were.
Not a little to our surprise we found five yellow lamas seated upon the floor cross-legged as we entered.
They bowed to us respectfully, bobbing their shaven heads like so many porcelain mandarins, but they did not speak. Ni-fan-lu made a sixth and stationed himself at the foot of the stone staircase. On the other side of the long room, lying in a dark corner, was what I then took to be a bundle of sheepskins thrown down carelessly; in fact it was not easy to get a clear view of anything, for the only light was that shed by the small bronze lamp resting on the altar, where I had seen old Padma place it after he closed the last of the coffin drawers, whose gilded hieroglyphics were now staring us out of countenance. Wondering what all this portended, the Doctor and I just resolved ourselves into a ways and means committee and stood there talking together in low tones, when all at once, clang! went the great gong in the temple above and I felt instinctively that the critical moment was at hand.
“Gad, George! It’s too late! We can do nothing!” exclaimed the Doctor. “The long and short of it is they’re going to sacrifice that poor wretch. It’s all a part of their devilish heathen dogmas—I know!”
Alas for the narrow bigotry of our vaunted age of light! As if no poor wretch has ever been offered up as a sacrifice by the priests of Christ!
