Von Horn passed quickly to the low shed in which the remainder of the
eleven were sleeping. With vicious cuts from the stinging lash he lay
about him upon the sleeping things. Roaring and shrieking in pain and
anger the creatures stumbled to their feet and lumbered awkwardly into
the open. Two of them turned upon their tormentor, but the burning
weapon on their ill protected flesh sent them staggering back out of
reach, and in another moment all were huddled in the center of the
campong.
As cattle are driven, von Horn drove the miserable creatures toward the
door of the workshop. At the threshold of the dark interior the
frightened things halted fearfully, and then as von Horn urged them on
from behind with his cruel whip they milled as cattle at the entrance
to a strange corral.
Again and again he urged them for the door, but each time they turned
away, and to escape the whip beat and tore at the wall of the palisade
in a vain effort to batter it from their pathway. Their roars and
shrieks were almost deafening as von Horn, losing what little remained
of his scant self-control, dashed among them laying to right and left
with the stern whip and the butt of his heavy revolver.
Most of the monsters scattered and turned back into the center of the
enclosure, but three of them were forced through the doorway into the
workshop, from the darkness of which they saw the patch of moonlight
through the open door upon the opposite side. Toward this they scurried
as von Horn turned back into the court of mystery for the others.
Three more herculean efforts he made before he beat the last of the
creatures through the outer doorway of the workshop into the north
campong.
Among the age old arts of the celestials none is more strangely
inspiring than that of medicine. Odd herbs and unspeakable things when
properly compounded under a favorable aspect of the heavenly bodies are
potent to achieve miraculous cures, and few are the Chinamen who do not
brew some special concoction of their own devising for the lesser ills
which beset mankind.
Sing was no exception in this respect. In various queerly shaped,
bamboo covered jars he maintained a supply of tonics, balms and
lotions. His first thought when he had made Professor Maxon comfortable
upon the couch was to fetch his pet nostrum, for there burned strong
within his yellow breast the same powerful yearning to experiment that
marks the greatest of the profession to whose mysteries he aspired.
Though the hideous noises from the inner campong rose threateningly,
the imperturbable Sing left the bungalow and passed across the north
campong to the little lean-to that he had built for himself against the
palisade that separated the north enclosure from the court of mystery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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