to a dim-eyed, trembling wreck. I—I—sometimes I've thought that Durah has gone the farther on the road to death. Durah's eyes did not escape, as did my sister's. Perhaps—I wonder if it would be silly to think that because her eyes were blue—like the tiger's"
He broke off abruptly, rose, and said, bruskly, "Come. You shall see Durah, too."
They walked leisurely across the lawns to Durah's little pagoda-like house which the captain had provided for him. The captain opened the screened door and they entered a dim room, lit faintly by two sputtering candles.
A word in native dialect was spat at them from a corner. The captain answered, "It is I, Durah," and struck a match, lighting a kerosene lamp which swung from the ceiling.
The yellow, wavering light showed a man lying on a high bed with netting hung about it on a wire frame. The old, wrinkled face, the squinting eyes, the toothless, half-open mouth gave Carson a feeling of pity and of revulsion.
"Water, sahib, please," asked Durah, and held out a claw-like hand.
He drank thirstily and then sat up in bed, hunched, shaking as with an ague.
He wore a loose, white garment that fell away from his wasted limbs, so that he looked like a dark skeleton in grave clothes. He pushed back the bed-curtains and touched the captain on the sleeve with a plucking movement.
"Sahib," he whispered, hoarsely, "did you hear it as you came in?"
"Hear what, Durah?"
"The pad-pad-pad, sahib. . . the tiger of the blue eye—it is coming for me, sahib."
"You're nervous, Durah. You ought to go to sleep. In the morning, perhaps, you'll be better."
Durah shook his head. "No, sahib. I shall not be better in the morning. You don't understand. It is coming for me. I—think—I lose—the race, sahib."
He touched his brown breast with his trembling, claw like-hand. "Its paw. . . its very soft paw. . . here on my breast, sahib." Then, eagerly: "Perhaps she has heard it, too. . . the lady-sahib, yes?" His breath came panting; his eyes peered into the captain's face.
"No, I think not, Durah. She has not heard—yet."
Durah made a pitiful cry in the dialect. "Ai-ai-yah! Then it is I! Ai-ai-yah!"
He buried his head in his thin arms and rocked back and forth, then suddenly raised his head in a listening attitude.
"Hear, sahib?" he breathed.
The captain said nothing, looking at the poor fellow in pity.
There was a shriek in the still night. Durah pitched backward on the bed, clutching at the curtains and pulling them down with him.
The two men sprang to his side, but Durah was already dead, his wasted face twisted in an agony of fear, his bony hands spread out grotesquely on his breast.
At that moment Carson could have sworn that something passed him, something resembling a current of fetid air. It passed, and he felt his face clammy with the starting sweat of vague, paralyzing fear. Only a second it touched him and was gone.
In the silence that followed the death of Durah, they left the little house. Several natives, hearing the shriek, had come running to the door. In a few quiet words the captain told them that Durah was dead. They heard him in frightened dumbness. Only one wailed and he was hushed by the others.
Carson and the captain went back to the bungalow. Carson could scarcely keep step with the other man's stride.
