Chapter VIII: “Move along, Biff—just a little—”

Chandra, crouched on the ledge, was holding a chunk of stone in his extended hand as he pressed Biff slightly to one side. Chandra dropped the stone, and Biff watched it plummet downward into the courtyard well, where it struck with a splash that sent ripples spreading like a bull’s eye.

“Now watch me,” said Chandra. He tossed his pack down into the courtyard and stood straight up at the exact spot where he had crouched. “My feet are here, by this mark. I step off to there”—he extended his arm again—“and bring hands at sides, feet together....”

Chandra finished by doing just that. He stepped out into space, hands at sides, brought his other foot forward and arrowed straight downward! Biff and Kamuka watched amazed, expecting a crash landing. Instead, Chandra followed the exact path of the stone that he had dropped. The circular well seemed to spread its opening wide to receive him as he hit the water with a sharp _plunk_ and vanished.

Then, after what seemed interminable seconds, Chandra popped up from the surface, reached his arms wide and pulled himself out of the well, which Biff was pleased to see was larger in diameter than it looked. That, Biff realized, was the real mental hazard.

“Either look straight ahead, Kamuka,” he told his friend, tossing his pack-kit and his Sikh turban down into the court, “or just shut your eyes the way I am going to do. Anyway, stand right on Chandra’s mark”—Biff took that position as he spoke—“step off, bring your feet together—”

With that, Biff, too, dropped. Never before had he known a split second to divide itself into as many moments as those. All the way down, he was wondering if his step had been too long or too short, or whether he had let his body waver. Thirty feet seemed like thirty years, until Biff punched the water squarely and went deep, deep, deep, then came upward faster, faster, and hauled himself out the way Chandra had.

Before Chandra could extend congratulations to Biff, another pack-kit hit the paving beside them. Kamuka was ready to take off, and for the first time, Chandra expressed the worry that he really felt.

“Climb up quick, Biff!” he said, from his side of the well. “If Kamuka misses—if he wiggles—we must keep him from hitting stones too hard!”

Biff came up on the opposite side, ready to help break Kamuka’s fall, but it proved unnecessary. A lithe brown form streaked feet first between the ready hands that Biff and Chandra extended and was gone as the water sprayed up from the well.

“Gone!” exclaimed Chandra. “Like Jinnah Jad says when I do basket trick. Now watch me bring him back!”

He waved his hands above the well, and Kamuka bobbed up grinning. Chandra and Biff grabbed his arms and hauled him out, anxious to get started on their way. Picking up their luggage, they cut off to a far corner of the courtyard where steps led down into another jungle path.

Minutes later, they were lost beneath a lattice of spreading green, descending a slope that was leading them away from danger instead of into it. Chandra began to chuckle happily and finally exploded into mirth.

“They will never guess where we have gone,” the Indian boy said gleefully. “They will wait, those followers of Kali, thinking that we will come creeping back like the monkeys and the cobras. They will look for us and will think that we are hiding, waiting, somewhere in the ancient temple.”

“Maybe,” put in Kamuka, “they will look where we jumped.”

“What then?” rejoined Chandra. “They will find nothing. Everything will be dry around the well by that time.”

“I’ll say it will,” agreed Biff. “Our clothes are dry already. You certainly found the quick way out, Chandra.”

“Like I did from the porthole in your cabin,” reminded Chandra. “You said it was a good trick, so I showed you.”

“But where did you learn it?”

“From my great-great-great-grandfather, up near Delhi. He still dropped into an eighty-foot well when he was eighty years old.”

Biff had heard of the famous well jumpers, who for centuries had performed their amazing feat of dropping straight down an eighty-foot shaft that was only eight feet wide. That dated back to when the Great Moguls had ruled India and the skill had been handed down from father to son for generations until the British government had forbidden it as too dangerous.

“But I thought they stopped well jumping—”

Biff caught himself, afraid that he would offend Chandra, but the Indian boy took it in good humor.

“You mean like they stop thugee?” laughed Chandra. “They tried, but thugs go underground so we still go under water. The big difference”—Chandra turned serious now—“was that thugs hurt other people and _should_ be stopped, but well jumpers hurt nobody but themselves and even then, not very often.”

“I guess not,” agreed Biff, “or your great-great-grandfather wouldn’t have been in the game at eighty.”

“My great-great-great-grandfather.”

“My mistake,” said Biff. “So your people still kept on jumping down wells?”

“No, we obey the law,” returned Chandra. “We stop. But we practice in open pools, just like other people dive. Sometimes at night, we take full moon as target. We drop a stone from a high riverbank, where the moon shows in the water. Then we step off like we three just did.”

“It’s lucky you showed us how, Chandra,” Biff said. “We never would have tried it on our own. Would we, Kamuka?”

Kamuka shook his head emphatically. “I should say not!” he responded.

Fortunately, Biff, who was a good diver, had often stepped off springboards or diving platforms as a stunt. Kamuka, too, had used the same technique from the edge of high piers on the Amazon, when boats were moored too close to allow a normal dive. So they had been ready and able to copy Chandra’s well jump without hesitation, when the time had called for instant action.

A few hours of steady plodding along the gradually descending path brought the boys to a level clearing studded with the remains of a long-abandoned town. Piles of ancient bricks represented the walls of houses, though enough were still standing to mark the lines of streets and market squares. A slightly higher clearing showed a row of sculptured stone pillars, remains of an ancient temple. From another such space loomed the ruins of what must have been a maharajah’s palace, for its walls gleamed like alabaster in the sunlight.

“I have heard of this place,” nodded Chandra. “They have been making excavations here. Down a road we will come to a waterfall, then we will go past big quarries, then finally we will reach the Grand Trunk Road.”

Though the boys were practically sure that they had outdistanced any pursuit, they still were taking no chances. They found the road that Chandra mentioned, and though it was scarcely more than wheel ruts, the hiking was good along it. After a few miles they came to the waterfall, which tumbled from a rocky ledge amid the massed green foliage, forty feet above. Its sheer descent ended in a rock-rimmed pool, which brought a whimsical comment from Kamuka.

“Looks like the waterfall is trying a well jump itself. Maybe we should go up and drop down with it, no?”

“No,” agreed Biff. “But that pool looks deep enough for a good swim. What’s stopping us?”

Nothing was stopping them. By now, they were drenched with perspiration after their steady hike, so a swim was in order. Soon they were cavorting in the cool water, which was even deeper than they had thought, and swimming close enough to the foot of the falls to catch its spray, yet avoiding the pounding mass of falling water.

As Biff climbed out, Chandra called to him from the pool:

“Maybe you go back to your American clothes, hey? Nobody we meet will guess who you are. You’ll find them in my pack.”

That was the best idea yet, for Biff was tired of his Sikh costume, particularly the bothersome turban. While Chandra and Kamuka were finishing their swim, Biff dressed in his own clothes. Then he strolled over to look at an ancient stone platform that someone had uncovered from the jungle roots.

The floor of burnt-clay bricks was set with colorful tiles that formed a broken pattern and from the six-sided shape of the platform, Biff decided it must have been a summerhouse frequented by the maharajah’s courtiers. Some of the broken tiles had been stacked at the edge of the platform, and Biff picked them up to examine them.

They looked like some form of terra cotta, though they showed no traces of a glaze. Biff was stooping to replace them, when he heard a hiss behind him. Instantly, Biff wheeled about and instinctively voiced a sharp, warning cry, even before he saw the thing that he knew would be there.

Swelling up from the rubble was a scaly, bulbous neck, with odd, heart-shaped markings that gave it the look of a face with leering eyes and grinning lips. But the creature’s own small head and beady eyes were above that puffed-out neck that came rising higher, as token of its deadly rage.

The hissing menace was a cobra, one of the most venomous snakes in India. Rearing to a height of nearly two feet, the cobra was within striking distance of Biff’s leg, and poised, ready to deliver death from its dreaded fangs!