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Jack knew that these were the mouths of caves, and he ran swiftly after the Panthays as they hurried for a hole which was within easy reach of the ground. A small fig tree grew below the mouth of the cave. Jack slipped his foot into the crutch where a bough struck away from the parent stem, swung himself up, and tumbled into the hollow, which was an irregular circle about nine feet across.
They had followed up the tracks of the flying elephants, and inquired in every village round-about. Then the Panthay, returning to his home for food, had spoken of the sahib they had found among the hills, and had put the pursuers on Jack's trail. As Jack turned he heard a grunt of surprise. One of the Panthays had stepped forward and caught sight of the approaching cavalcade.
But he had made one mistake, the error of supposing that the two Panthays in front of the horsemen were the first of the party. They were not. A single tracker had led the way some distance ahead, and him Jack had missed among the thickets and groves which hid the path here and there.
In 1855 the Panthays, oppressed, it is said, by the Chinese officials, rose up in rebellion against the imperial government. Led by an obscure Chinese follower of Mohammed, called Tu-win-tsen, the insurrection grew rapidly in extent and success.
By intermarriage, propagation, and adoption, they slowly but steadily communicated their belief to the original inhabitants, until, at the time of which we are writing, more than a tenth of the ten million inhabitants were fanatical Mussulmans. To the mixed race that embrace this creed the general name of Panthays has been given, though for what reason is not known.
When he could stand up and walk a little, the Panthays beckoned to him to accompany them, and they went down the ravine, following the track used by the wild inhabitants of the place. The dusk was falling over the jungle when they reached the camp of the Panthays, a deep cave in the side of the ravine, where a few simple cooking-pots and a small store of rice furnished all the woodmen needed.
Who were these men the Panthays were leading towards him? He remembered two of his enemies yesterday, and the two leading riders brought them to mind again. Saya Chone had worn a head-dress of brilliant flaming scarlet, the Strangler a turban of bright yellow. Again the little procession filed into sight, out of the bamboos.
One of them had but to fall into the mass of reeds, canes, dry grass, and withered brushwood, to cause a swift, fierce flame to run through the whole mass. This, then, it was which the Panthays had learned from their fellow who looked down from the rift. The Englishman was to be roasted out, and they were warned of the fearful fate about to befall him.
People were marching to the feast from a much greater distance away than this can be." Their progress was slow, for the day was one of scorching heat. The naked Panthays slipped through the jungle as easily as the monkeys skipped through the trees, but Jack could not move at any speed.
They resembled each other in one point, and that was that they were instigated and sustained by the Mohammedan population alone. The Panthays and the Tungani were either indigenous tribes or foreign immigrants who had adopted or imported the tenets of Islam.
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