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But I wouldn't advise you to dispute the point with a peppery, fire-eating Anglo-Indian colonel. I did so once, myself, at the risk of my life, at a table d'hôte on the Continent; and the wonder is that I'm still alive to tell the story. I had nothing but facts on my side, while the colonel had fists, and probably pistols.
"We used to use alum in the old days," the man went on. "I guess the new dope's better, though I never tried it." "Are you in the business?" asked Joe. "Well, I er I used to be," and the man straightened himself up with an air of forgotten pride. "I was with a circus once used to do a fire-eating act and jump into a fake bonfire. I doped my clothes with alum water though.
For two mortal hours did I conjure up every possible disagreeable contingency that might arise. My being mulcted of my fifty and laughed at by the mess seemed inevitable, even were I fortunate enough to escape a duel with the fire-eating brother.
Tell that poor child to come and see me, as soon as she gets out of the clutches of those fire-eating devils down South. Honey, I couldn't be satisfied without seeing for myself, where they had laid my dear young mistiss. I got 'rections from the doctor, and I spent good part of a day huntin' the cemetery, and at last a man in a uniform showed me Doctor Grantlin's lot. Oh, my lamb!
"I can understand your fire-eating manners as being natural to you," Sheldon went on wearily, "but why you should try them on me is what I can't comprehend. You surely don't want to quarrel with me." "I certainly do." "But what in heaven's name for?" Tudor surveyed him with withering disgust. "You haven't the soul of a louse. I suppose any man could make love to your wife "
That fire-eating English lad that you have with you I warrant that he has proved a porcupine to travel with must be of some importance. At all events, an Englishman, who gives his name as Starling, has made his way here in pursuit. He tells a fair tale. He says that the lad, who is dear as a brother to him, is a cousin, who was captured in an Indian raid on the frontier.
"She is an enthusiastic, high-spirited girl," he urged upon his surprised hearer, who expected a very different expression of opinion. "This fellow Anstruther is a plausible sort of rascal, a good man in a tight place too just the sort of fire-eating blackguard who would fill the heroic bill where a fight is concerned. Damn him, he licked me twice." Further amazement for the shipowner.
Cheenbuk spoke the concluding sentence with a look and tone that was meant to convey a warning to any one who should dare to feel or act otherwise; but there was little need of the warning, for, with the exception of Aglootook the medicine-man, the chief leaders of the fire-eating portion of the tribe, Gartok and Ondikik, were at the time helpless.
But the Pagoda is almost purely Burmese; a group of sinister-looking southern Indian natives sometimes passes up or down the steps in their dirty white draperies, and seem to bring an evil atmosphere with them, and a band of our clean, sturdy red-necked soldiers in khaki may go up, flesh and fire-eating sons of Odin, with fixed glittering bayonets and iron heels clinking on the stone steps Gautama forgive us! but they don't break the picture nearly so much as the "natives," their frank expression is more akin to the Burman's, they have not got the keen hungry look of the Indian; or the challenging expression of some of our own upper classes.
VI, page 111, I find an account of one Quackensalber, who gave a new twist to the fire-eating industry by making a "High Pitch" at the fairs and on street corners and exhibiting feats of fire-resistance, washing his hands and face in melted tar, pitch and brimstone, in order to attract a crowd.
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