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Updated: September 4, 2025
It was thereabouts that Feringhea, the Thuggee chief, king of the stranglers, held his sway. These ruffians, united by a secret bond, strangled victims of every age in honor of the goddess Death, without ever shedding blood. There was a period when this part of the country could scarcely be traveled over without corpses being found in every direction.
When the rest reached the spot a halt was called, for a rest or a smoke. The travelers were invited to sit. By signs, the chief appointed certain Thugs to sit down in front of the travelers as if to wait upon them, others to sit down beside them and engage them in conversation, and certain expert stranglers to stand behind the travelers and be ready when the signal was given.
In silence the Legionaries followed old Bara Miyan through the curtained doorway; and after them came the sub-chiefs. The Maghrabi stranglers, noiseless and bare-footed, fell in behind; a long ominous line of black human brutes, seeming hardly above the intellectual level of so many gorillas. Stout-hearted as the Legionaries were, a kind of numbing oppression was closing in upon them.
A minute after, Faringhea, the ex-chief of the Stranglers, appeared before Rodin, who instantly remembered having seen him at Cardoville Castle. The socius started, but he did not wish to appear to recollect his visitor. Still bending over his desk, he seemed not to seen Faringhea, but wrote hastily some words on a sheet of paper that lay before him.
A gang of forty-two Thugs came across two Brahmins and a shopkeeper on the road, beguiled them into a grove and got up a concert for their entertainment. While these poor fellows were listening to the music the stranglers were standing behind them; and at the proper moment for dramatic effect they applied the noose.
"I soon discovered that the men who had seized me, and who took me home with them to their village, formed part of a gang belonging to a religious sect known in some parts of the country by the name of Thugs or deceivers, and in other parts of the country by the name of Phansigars or stranglers.
Neither was there any trace of the note which Mahal was to have delivered to the captain of the "Ruyter," in order to be received as passenger. Finally, the searches and bushwhacking ordered throughout the country for the purpose of discovering Faringhea, were of no avail. The dangerous chief of the Stranglers was never seen again in Java.
"'Doc, he says to Doc Peets, while he's fillin' a canteen in the Red Light prior to his start; 'I won't tell you what I'm aimin' to accomplish, because the Stranglers might regyard it as their dooty to round me up.
And for a moment they stood there in the sunlight before the long colonnade that occupied the lower story of the citadel; while from beneath that colonnade issued a dozen or fifteen of the black, muscular Maghrabi men, two of whom in the rôle of official stranglers they had already seen. These powerful half-savages took the horses away, the hoofs clacking hollowly on the golden pavement.
The flame of the campfire flickered sneers, drawn torture, red and green shadows in the staring faces of the men who lay upon the ground, and the figures of the stranglers glowed red in its light, like devils who danced in hell. Hunsa had turned the merchant upon his back and his evil gorilla face was thrust into the face of his victim.
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