Part 34 (2/2)
A black figure comes out from the gloom as he speaks--a tall, masked man on horseback--and before Quinton realises his presence he is seized violently by the throat and dragged from his saddle. A hissing sound as of suppressed rage issues from the a.s.sa.s.sin's lips--he towers above Quinton, and is muscular and active. Carol is taken unawares, and therefore at a disadvantage. He is like a rat in the paws of a tiger, he can neither cry out nor speak, for the cruel fingers press with deadly force upon his windpipe, and he is flung backwards and forwards, shaken till his teeth rattle in his head and his eyes all but drop from their sockets.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The cruel fingers press with deadly force.]
The moon swims round in a sea of blood--he gasps, gargles, struggles.
The savage man in whose clutches he suddenly finds himself seems glorying in his power.
Quinton feels himself face to face with death: he is a child in the hands of this dark highwayman.
The thought rises suddenly to his fading senses:
”By night an Atheist half believes in G.o.d.”
The terror of judgment is upon him--h.e.l.l threatens. Through the black slits of the mask he faintly discerns the eyes of his tormentor, whose face is in such close proximity to his own that the hot breath of pa.s.sion brushes his brow. They are the eyes of a devil, burning as coals of fire--glowing, scintillating. The broad white teeth of the man glisten as they press his lower lip; then he loosens his hold on Quinton's throat and gropes for his hand.
The two are fighting now like twin devils under the dark trees, through which the moonlight flits. They roll over in the dust, while Quinton breathes out curses, struggling for mastery. More than once he feels one finger of his left hand caught in the stranger's grasp, then, as with a cry of triumph which rends the air with hideous mirth, super-human strength seems to possess the masked man. He picks up Quinton in his sinewy arms, whirls him once wildly above his head, and drops him over a rock, down a bank--a fall of only a few feet, on to thick undergrowth below. Then leaping back into his saddle, he gallops at full speed towards the jungle, while Quinton lies gasping and shaking, cut and bleeding.
He rises dizzily--strange!--there are no bones broken, only the uncomfortable feeling of those hot fingers at his throat, and the giddy sensation from the violent shaking. He feels for his watch; it is still there. Some money fallen from his pocket lies loose on the wayside. Nothing apparently is stolen.
Then he looks down suddenly at his finger, the one twice captured in their struggle.
His cat's-eye ring has gone!
CHAPTER XVII.
”WHERE THERE AIN'T NO TEN COMMANDMENTS.”
”_The Road to Mandalay._”--_Rudyard Kipling_.
As Carol goes on through the night, fear is in his heart.
How easily the dark, vindictive, savage creature could have cast him wantonly into eternity, yet he stayed his hand. Evidently he had not desired Quinton's life, since he took nothing but a little band of gold, with a cat's-eye. Such a worthless prize--a woman's ring.
The scene is a puzzle to Carol Quinton, the mystery of it haunts him.
In every shadow he sees a black mask, at the slightest sound his blood runs cold, the creaking of the boughs above are to him the echo of pursuing hoofs, and the cry of the parrot, that sinister yell which accompanied his fall. Even the stars are flas.h.i.+ng eyes, the moon an enemy, and the stones devils.
Quinton is not a brave man; truth to tell, he is a coward. His whole system is suffering from the shock, while the long tramp he has taken in search of his horse, which strayed from the road, increased his nervous agitation.
His hands tremble as they hold the reins, his knees knock against his frightened horse, who in sympathy with his master, starts at every step, appearing to find his route peopled with spirits.
”What did it all mean--what could it mean?” he asks himself again and again.
The beating of his heart seems to Quinton as thunder on the air, which is heavy and oppressive, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours!
Surely this can be no fancy--the slow tread of a sure-footed beast on the path before him. Carol quails and whitens to the lips. The moon pa.s.ses behind the cloud--a second figure is at his side. He spurs his horse, and the frantic swish of his crop lays a deep weal on the animal's withers. It breaks into a gallop, throwing up the dust around and flying down a steep descent. He hears the hoofs following closely in the rear, someone is nearly upon him gaining inch by inch. His courage sinks--dies--he is white, perspiring, terrified, limp! His senses reel, he drops the reins, falling forward on his horse's neck.
His fingers clutch the mane, while a woman's voice cries behind:
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