Part 21 (1/2)
The thing in the chest stirred its coils uneasily.
”Be silent!” commanded the fat priest. ”Would you slay little N'Yang?”
I shuddered. A great bat came in through the rift that let in the moon-glow. In the trees over the temple a gibbon wailed in his sleep like a sick child-”_Hoop-oi-oi-oi_”!
Wat Na Yang extended his arm before him in a gesture of dismissal.
”Go!” he commanded. Then he placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.
Nagy N'Yang stood up, bowed her head and went down the path the moonbeams made, went into the shadow near the door, and out.
The fat priest sat down on the chest beside me. The mottled terror in the chest was still again.
”She was wed,” the priest began, ”but on her wedding-day we claimed her.
Her husband cannot claim her. But if some one unwittingly kills the great python, she will be free. It must be some one not a friend of the husband. No one will kill the python here. She is temple-bound for life-”
The bulk inside thrilled to life again. I heard the scales rustling as the great coils rose and fell.
”Go, you!” he ordered. ”The G.o.ddess likes you not. Even if you take the girl, I can call her back or kill her by touching her flesh with a single scale from the Naga in the chest.”
He walked with me to the door. At the portal we stood for a s.p.a.ce, silent.
The tiled entrance was flooded with moonlight. In the middle of it a cobra lay, stretched out, seemingly asleep-a small cobra, deadly none the less.
”You see,” the gross priest said, pointing to the deadly serpent there.
”Nagy's spirit watches you here, too. But the girl she did not harm.”
Filled with some spirit of Western bravado I could not stifle, I stepped close to the cobra and stamped on its head.
”That for all scaly serpents!” I jeered at him. I stood on the cobra's head while it lashed out its life.
The fat yellow priest watched me, and I could see hatred and horror struggle for mastery on his face.
Coming close to me he began to talk in long, rolling sentences, of which I here and there caught a word. But I caught the sense of what he was saying.
Oh, yes-the fat priest. It was there, in front of the temple, that he put on me, in Sanskrit, the Curse of Siva, ending:
”With gurgling drops of blood, that plenteous stream From throats quickly cut by us-”
I laughed at him, threw a yellow coin at his face, kicked the dead cobra into the door of the temple-and went down the path toward the Laos girl's hut.
At the hut door she sat, silent, wonderful.
”Come!” I commanded.
”Where?” she asked.
”To Kalgai town by Salwin River,” I answered. I took her in my arms.
Yes, I took her! Why not? She was mine, wasn't she? Yes, I took her! Not down the Thoungyeen River or the road along it. Why? We feared pursuit.