Chapter V: The Snake Charmer

Through the heavy foliage they forced their way, and had gone several hundred yards before Nick Carter suddenly stopped. As he did so, the others banged into him, just as the horrible cry broke forth once again.

“Look!” whispered Nick.

Some two hundred feet ahead, so far as they were able to calculate, a patch of greenish light, faint and elusive, darted about among the dank undergrowth.

The light seemed not to have any defined source. It was a mere blur in the blackness--hardly more than a vapor. Yet it was unmistakably there.

“Keep behind me and don’t make any more noise than you can help!” warned Nick, in a scarcely audible tone.

The soft click of the lever as he slipped a cartridge into the chamber of his rifle made itself heard, and his three companions likewise prepared their weapons for use.

As they proceeded, the ground grew more open, the trees standing farther apart. Always that pale-green light was before them, becoming stronger as they advanced.

“Here we are!” breathed Nick at last, in an awestricken voice.

He was peering from behind a huge creeper-entwined tree into a large clearing. Whether this strange ring in the midst of the forest had been made purposely by man, or whether it was merely a freak of nature, none of them could tell.

One thing was evident, however, and that was that it had been used for generations for whatever hideous rites were performed there. The ground had been beaten and stamped flat, and it was so hard that it had withstood even the fierce rains that sometimes tear up the whole landscape in India.

In the center of the ring was a shapeless lump, whose character Nick could not determine, try as he would. The green light bathed it like a curious moonlight, while the silence of the place was oppressive.

“What do you make of that thing in the middle of the clearing, Chick?” asked the detective. “It seems as if it might be----”

His sentence was cut in two by another of the unearthly shrieks which seemed to come from nowhere in particular.

“Look!” gasped Chick. “For Heaven’s sake, look!”

The shapeless lump in the center began to move--slowly and rhythmically. Suddenly, with a hoarse croak, it ceased its swaying to and fro and sprang suddenly into life.

Rearing upright, it revealed itself as a tall, nearly naked Hindu, with the lean and haggard face of what is strangely called, in India, “a holy man.”

His only clothing, besides the inevitable turban, was a loin cloth, and his long, lean arms and legs, his scraggy neck, and the fiercely burning eyes, set deeply under his shriveled forehead, gave him an eerie aspect that was indescribably terrible.

For a few moments he stood raised to his fullest height--for he had reared himself on his toes--as he took from the ground at his feet a small bag suspended from some kind of string that looked like part of a shriveled vine.

Besides the bag, which he hung around his neck, he had a collection of gruesome objects. They seemed to be withered parts of animals or reptiles, bones, and other horrors.

Beyond question they were charms of various kinds, and equally certain this wretched creature was a medicine man or dealer in “black art.”

Nick Carter knew that there were thousands of fanatics in India who practiced all kinds of strange rites. Many of them were horrible, and there were tales of murders done for sacrifices to their gods. These murders the British government had never been able to stop.

The man began to dance around in uncouth gyrations. The green light was always upon him, and the collection of strange things suspended about his body rattled horribly at each movement.

Now and then he paused in his dance to bend his ear to some object he gripped in his right hand. Through it all there was a dreadful hypnotic influence emanating from him which held Nick Carter and his companions spellbound.

For five minutes and more this continued, while Nick Carter, grasping his rifle in his left hand, fought back an almost irresistible impulse to raise his weapon and shoot the half-human creature gesticulating in the clearing.

It was just when Nick felt as if he could not stand the suspense any longer that the man turned slowly toward a certain part of the forest surrounding him and beckoned with one of his skinny hands.

For a second or two there was no response. Then the dense growth of creepers on that side parted and from it stepped a young Hindu, dressed like the medicine man, in a loin cloth and turban.

He was a finely built young fellow, and, as he had nothing on to speak of, they could see his muscles ripple under the dark skin as he came forward. They also observed that his chest was heaving, as if he had undergone some extraordinary strain.

He moved slowly and in jerks. His eyes unnaturally distended, and once or twice he made a violent effort to drag himself back, as if resisting the power of the skinny claws beckoning him forward.

Finally the young man stood in the middle of the clearing, rigid and motionless, his staring eyes still fixed on the strange man who clearly held him under a hypnotic spell.

The medicine man took from his loin cloth a small reed and began to blow on it, producing a low, crooning noise, like a bagpipe rather out of tune.

He kept this up for some little time without any result. Then, suddenly, from somewhere--seemingly from the solid ground--a score or more of ugly, venomous-looking snakes came forth and seemed to be moving to the cadences of the small reed.

“Snake charmer!” muttered Chick.

“Yes,” returned Nick, in a scarcely audible tone.

“Gee! Here’s a circus. But I’d hate to take a girl to see it,” added Patsy Garvan.

Jefferson Arnold said nothing. But he stared intently, for he believed he recognized the young man who had been drawn to the center of the ring.

“Say! What are we going to do about this?” exclaimed Patsy, in a subdued tone. “The snakes are crawling up on him.”

It was true. There was a sharp change in the melody--if it could be called that--of the pipe, and several of the snakes began to circle closely around the young man. Some of them seemed to strike in his direction, but their fangs never quite reached him.

The whole performance was one that snake charmers in India have carried on for ages, but it was none the less eerie and extraordinary to those who now saw it for the first time.

One of the snakes--the largest of the squirming collection--was halfway up the young man’s leg.

The reptile did not stop there, however. It went up to his shoulder, and finally crawled around his neck till its head was close to the victim’s livid face.

The young fellow shuddered, but did not try to shake the creature off. It looked as if his power of will had been taken from him. He could only suffer.

“Carter!” whispered Jefferson excitedly. “We’ve got to save that boy.”

“Of course we must,” answered Nick.

“I know,” rejoined Jefferson impatiently. “You can take it easily. But I _know_ him.”

“Who is he?”

“I can’t be quite sure, because it is dark, and that infernal green glow doesn’t tell much. But I believe it is Adil, the young fellow my boy engaged as a sort of body servant. He says all white men in India have a servant of that kind.”

Nick Carter’s grip tightened on his rifle.

“Keep cool, Mr. Arnold! We’ll save him!” he promised, in low, tense tones. “But we must be cautious.”

“It _is_ Adil!” came from Arnold. “I feel sure of it. Every move tells me so. I’ve half a mind to shoot that black scarecrow who is doing it all. I can do it without much trouble. Those snakes are doing just as he tells them. That big one is going to strike Adil before he gets through.”

“I don’t think so,” declared Nick. “The old fakir doesn’t mean to let that happen.”

“What’s he doing it all for?”

“I can’t tell yet,” confessed Nick Carter. “Nobody understands these men thoroughly. They may have any of a hundred reasons for what they do. This probably is merely an incantation of some sort. Or Adil--if it is Adil--may be a prisoner.”

“He is a prisoner. I’m sure of that,” rejoined Jefferson Arnold. “He would not be going through this buncombe otherwise. He’s too level-headed for that. But if this medicine man has him hypnotized, as it seems, what can the poor fellow do?”

“We’ll get him out of it,” repeated Nick. “But we must have just a little patience. The game of the snake charmer is to keep him in suspense for an hour or so, and then probably let him go--unless there is some object in keeping him that we do not see.”

“That’s just it,” quickly replied Arnold. “There may be a lot of rascals with this blackguard who is doing all the mischief. We don’t know who may be hiding behind those trees.”

“That’s so,” assented Nick Carter. “But we must wait and see. We may get a clew to the whereabouts of your son right here, if we don’t spoil it by rushing things. I could pick that snake off with my rifle, without touching the man. But it wouldn’t be safe, because the snake might bite him in its death struggle.”

This was obvious, and Jefferson Arnold nodded assent.

“Listen!” he whispered nervously. “What did I tell you? There are a lot of people among the trees.”

Proof of this was furnished by the sudden rising of a weird, not unmusical, dirgelike chant from the blackness surrounding the clearing.

The fakir straightened up to his full height again--a favorite gesture of his, it seemed--and answered the chorus with a few notes on his pipe.

Then he settled himself down to play for the snakes. Striking a plaintive minor, he brought forth more music out of the reed than either Nick Carter or any of his companions had supposed was in it. The result was that all the snakes began to move in time to the notes.

“I wish I could shoot that rascal down,” muttered Jefferson Arnold. “I feel that I owe it to poor Adil, anyhow.”

“Not yet,” whispered Nick Carter. “When we do strike, we want it to be of real effect.”

Bang!

Whether the nerve of Chick had suddenly given way under the strain, or whether he had fired by pure accident, he never could tell. All he knew was that he had pulled the trigger of his rifle before he realized what had happened.

He had not taken aim at anything in particular, but it chanced that the head of one of the whirling snakes on the ground was in the direct line of fire, and was blown off as clean as if it had been severed with an ax.

With a shriek which explained who had been guilty of the unearthly screams that had first disturbed Nick Carter’s party, the medicine man whirled around as if looking for the person who had fired. Then he put his reed to his mouth and blew a loud, steady whistle.

It was a signal to the snakes which all understood. The big snake that had been around Adil’s neck loosened itself and fell with a flop to the hard ground. The others began to dart about in all directions.

The medicine man, bewildered, made a dash for cover. But here his haste was unlucky for him. It chanced that he trod squarely upon the body of the big snake.

Probably, now that the music had ceased, the snake was no longer under the man’s control--or it may simply have been frightened.

However that may have been, it uttered an angry hiss, flung back its head and arched neck, and like a stroke of lightning, buried its poison fangs twice in the bare leg of the fakir.

With a screech of agony, he flung up his long, skinny arms, ran around stumblingly in circles, still screaming, and at last fell in a heap in the middle of the clearing.

As he did so, something that he had been tightly holding in his right hand from the beginning fell to the ground and rolled in the direction of Nick Carter.