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Updated: June 6, 2025
The garrison was so small that the police were alone ample for the work, supposing that the natural difficulties were not altogether insuperable. "Just at daybreak there was a distant noise of men moving in the jungle, and the Dacoit halfway down the path fired his gun. He was answered by a shout and a volley.
He struck lightly a little silver gong, dependent from the corner of the table, whereupon, from the curtained doorway, there entered a short, thickly built Burman whom I recognized for a dacoit. He wore a shoddy blue suit, which had been made for a much larger man; but these things claimed little of my attention, which automatically was directed to the load beneath which the Burman labored.
East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for. To the south was Fu-Manchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments, we started to run northward, the weird signal of a dacoit rose on the night and was answered was answered again. "Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits. Hopeless." "Take the revolver," I cried. "Smith, it's " "No," he rapped, through clenched teeth.
In the distracted and enfeebled state of all authority, royal and magisterial, the fields around remained for many years untilled; and the only evidence the land presented of the abode of man was here and there the bristling den of some feudal chief, a mere outlaw and dacoit, who rarely sallied from it but to carry torch and pillage wherever there was aught to sack or burn.
Yet it was written otherwise; for as I swept up to my goal, describing the inevitable arc which I had no power to check, I saw that one awaited me. Crouching forward half out of the open window was a Burmese dacoit, a cross-eyed, leering being whom I well remembered to have encountered two years before in my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu.
And the yellow face at the window was blotted out. One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone to his account. A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken window. Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.
That the Dacoit and his band were still upon the slopes of the Ghauts they knew, and were gradually narrowing their circle, but there were so many rocks and hiding places that the process of searching was a slow one, and the intelligence was so important that the news was off at once to the colonel, who gave orders for the police to surround the rock at daylight and to storm it if possible.
This, then was the outcome of my labors; and although it enlightened me to some extent, I realized that I still had much to learn. The dacoit, apparently, had met his death at the very hour when Nayland Smith should have been passing along Three Colt Street a thoroughfare with an unsavory reputation. Who had killed him?
A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this strange invasion of his precincts. A full minute I waited. From the lane behind me came Smith's voice: "Don't let him escape, Petrie!" Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly. But still the dacoit did not rise. I searched the surface in all directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed above it.
A little before I was inviladed from Burma, me an' four-an'-twenty young wans undher a Lift'nint Brazenose, was ruinin' our dijeshins thryin' to catch dacoits. An' such double-ended divils I niver knew! Tis only a dah an' a Snider that makes a dacoit, Widout thim, he's a paceful cultivator, an' felony for to shoot.
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