His long curly hair, shining with oil, escaped in disorder from his marvellously shaped top hat, and the ma.s.sive crowbar that had brought him his hard-won victory stood upright on one end, grasped in his gigantic hand. He smiled round on the gathering crowd, and the procession moved proudly up the streets till within half an hour the people following and cheering must have numbered many thousands.
We reporters rushed off to our various offices, and the streets were soon afterwards lively with newspaper-boys shouting the news and waving sheets of terrible and alarming headlines about the "escaped lion and its fearful ravages," and the "strong man who had captured it after a ghastly battle for his life."
Next day the morning papers did not publish a solitary line about the great event; but in the advertising columns of every newspaper appeared the prospectus of the travelling circus just come to town, and in particularly bold type the public were told to be sure and see Yellow Hair, the savage man-eating lion, that had escaped the day before and killed a valuable horse in a private stable where it had been chased by the terrified keepers; and, in the paragraph below, the details followed of the wonderful strong man, Samson, who had caught and caged the lion single-handed, armed only with a crowbar.
It was the best advertis.e.m.e.nt a circus ever had; and most of it was not paid for!
"Guess you knew it was all a fake?" queried the news editor next morning, as he gave me the usual a.s.signment.
It was my first week on an American paper, and I stared at him, waiting for the rest.
"That lion hasn"t a tooth in its head. They dragged in a dead horse in the night. You wrote a good story, though. Cleaned your pistol yet?"
X
THE SECRET CAVE OF HYDAS
CHAPTER I.--THE FIGHT AND THEFT IN THE MUSEUM
A tall, muscular, black-bearded, dark-eyed, beak-nosed native strolled into the Lah.o.r.e Museum, in the Punjab; he carried a ma.s.sive five-foot-long stick with a crook handle, and studded with short bra.s.s-headed nails from handle to ferrule. He sauntered about until he came to a case containing ancient daggers and swords, which arrested his attention for some time.
About a dozen other visitors were in the room, and of these a couple strolled together from one object of interest to another; they were fine stalwart natives, and each possessed a stick of ordinary size.
These two men quietly walked about exchanging opinions on the various curios until they came face to face with the solitary man gazing at the antique weapons.
"What! art thou here, thou badmash (scoundrel)?" exclaimed one of the two.
"Ah, thou son of a swine, take that!" replied the tall man, and, with a quickness which proved him to be an expert in the handling of a stick, struck the native who had addressed him a vicious blow on the head, but, the said head being protected by many folds of his puggari, the stroke merely knocked him down without doing any serious injury.
In an instant the fallen man"s friend struck at the a.s.sailant, and, the other man springing up, a fierce fight was quickly in full swing, two against one, and the noise of the sticks rattling together in powerful strokes, and the insulting taunts thrown at each other by the combatants, soon attracted the other sight-seers and the Museum attendants.
In a few minutes the fighters had been turned out of the building; they had done no damage except to themselves, and neither party would bring a charge against the other, so they scowlingly went in opposite directions as soon as they were outside.
"A family feud," said a bystander.
"Yes, I expect it is a vendetta," responded another.
These remarks, however, were very far from the truth, for the apparent enemies were the greatest friends and bound together by the most solemn vows, and in fact the realistic fight had been pre-arranged with a definite object, which was successfully attained, as indeed the Museum officials discovered later.
The day after the fracas Doctor Mullen, Government geologist, called at the Museum; he was accompanied by his son Mark, a st.u.r.dily built lad of about eighteen, who was preparing to follow his father"s profession, and with them was Tom Ellison, the Doctor"s a.s.sistant, a young man of twenty-four, tall and extremely active.
"Well, Ramji Daji, what"s this I hear about a robbery at the Museum yesterday?" asked the doctor of the a.s.sistant curator.
"Ah, Sahib, I am very sorry, but the badmashes stole those pieces of strangely carved stones you found on the Salt Range mountains, and also another piece, which was lying near them on the table here," answered Ramji Daji.
"But what in the world did they carry them off for? They can be of no value to anybody," remarked the Doctor.
"I don"t know, Sahib. There was a fight here yesterday, and some hours after we missed the five fragments of inscribed stone and one piece belonging to another set. Had they taken any of the gold or silver things we could have understood, but----" and Ramji Daji made a gesture expressive of the puzzled state of his own mind.
"There can be only two reasons for the strange theft--it is either a practical joke, or some one saw the stones who was able to decipher them--which we could not--but the joke theory seems the more probable,"
said the Doctor.
The pieces of stone referred to consisted of five irregular fragments of a slab, an inch or so thick, the largest being about seven inches long by four or five wide, and the smallest some four inches by two. These five parts would not fit evenly together, and in the Doctor"s opinion they formed about half of the original slab.
The Doctor had taken a careful rubbing on paper of the letters on the stones, and sent it to a friend for the purpose of deciphering it if possible.
"I wonder, Doctor, whether any one from the Salt Range stole the stones?
Do you remember that your tent was surrept.i.tiously searched a few nights after you had found the pieces?" remarked Tom Ellison.
"I remember my things having been ransacked, and we concluded some thief had been disturbed, but we never for a moment thought they were after the bits of inscribed slab, which, by the way, I had sent off the day before when sending for stores for the camp," he replied.
"Well, if he was after the stones he may have followed us to Lah.o.r.e and you to the Museum, when you came to take a rubbing of the lettering,"
said Tom.
"There must be a clue to something written on them, if any one took all the trouble to come so far for them," suggested Mark Mullen.
"To-morrow I hope to hear from Professor Muirson, and he will probably throw some light on the meaning of the inscription," said the Doctor.
"But come, we must get back to work, for I have to finish my report before we start into camp again in a couple of days" time," he added, and they hurried away to their own office, but at least Mark"s mind was full of thoughts concerning the stolen stones, and conjuring up all sorts of strange mysteries connected with them.
Doctor Mullen duly received from the Professor the expected letter, a part of which read as follows--
"There can be no doubt that the ruins in which you found the fragments of inscribed slab are those of a Greek settlement which was most probably founded on the Salt Range by camp followers, and possibly soldiers, of Alexander the Great"s army who were left behind on his return from India.
"I can only conclude from the rubbing you have sent me that it is not from the original inspection, but that the slab of which you have found parts was inscribed from memory at a much later period, it being made up of three languages. The original sense may or may not have been retained, and as far as I am able to understand it the incomplete wording would in English read--" ... into thy charge ... guarded ...
descendants with life ... of Hydas ... sacrifice ... the G.o.ds."
"I have made no attempt to guess at the missing words, for, as you will see at a glance, the incomplete sentences allow of a variety of renderings, thereby causing great uncertainty with regard to the original meaning."
"I wish we had the other parts of the slab," exclaimed Mark, as soon as his father had read out the letter.
"Yes, it is rather interesting. Well, we start to-morrow for the Salt Range to continue our work, and I will show you the exact spot where I found the pieces, and a diligent search there may be rewarded by the discovery of at least some of the other portion," said the Doctor; and both Mark and Tom Ellison hoped such might prove to be the case, little thinking what dangers they would be led into on account of those fragments of an old, broken slab.
CHAPTER II.--MARK MULLEN DISAPPEARS
"Now then, Mark, down you come," said Tom Ellison, as he shook the lad, who had lowered the upper sleeping-berth in the train and gone to sleep.