The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes Read Online Free PDF Page A

watch the swirling mist which surrounded us and from which came an aura of silent menace, of malign observation. So did mine and the others.
     
                  "As the silence grew and the fog seemed to form sinister shadow shapes, Bruckheller talked on and on, his voice low and grating, somehow hard to understand. I don't remember half what he said, but it went something like this:
     
                  "Many thousands of years earlier, a tribe of brown-skinned people, hunters and crude agriculturalists, had lived in this very area. But every effort they had made in their rise to higher levels of culture had been crushed and blocked. Their foe was not neighboring tribes but a malevolent species of creature unlike anything known elsewhere on the Earth, a bloodthirsty monster, or race of monsters, which preyed upon them ceaselessly. No weapons succeeding in killing the creatures, no prayers averted their wrath. Indeed, the hapless folk even made them (or it; the number was not clear) the tribal gods, but all in vain, for no sacrifice, human or animal, was sufficient.
     
                  "At last, despairing and decimated, the remnants of the people simply fled. Pursued by their awful oppressors, they somehow struggled north until at last in the great swamps of the White Nile the pursuing creatures were left behind. And the people, freed at last from a thousand years of nightmare, went on to become the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians.
     
                  "Mind you, it didn't sound then, as wild as it no doubt appears to you chaps here in the well-lit room of a building in a great city," said Ffellowes. "Please recollect that out there, in that cold mist, barely held off by the fire, knowing that something had got the missing askari (soldier), and moreover got him from out of our very midst, it was a very different matter. So that although we, Sizenby and me, were only giving Bruckheller half our attention as it were, we were still impressed.
     
                  " 'The clues are all there,' he kept repeating in that very odd voice, 'if only one takes the trouble to read them, they are all there, in the hieroglyphics, in the religion, everywhere. But only I, of all those who have seen them, realized what they actually said.'
     
                  "Just then, any doubts we might have been entertaining about nocturnal visitors were abruptly dispelled. The mist had parted a little in front of the K.A.R . soldier on my left, the one doing sentry duty on one knee at this point. Two immense yellow eyes were reflected by the firelight, eyes with slit pupils, but nothing at all like a cat's, being long and pointed at the corners. They only appeared for a half-second, but they were unpleasantly close to us. The soldier never fired but Krock's reflexes were better and he shot almost over my head, momentarily deafening me and filling the quiet night with the crash of his Winchester.
     
                  "In reply there came the most hideous cry I have ever heard. It was a coughing howl of volcanic rage, rising to a crescendo of sound and yet with a fearful shriek running quavering through it. It lasted for a moment and seemed to leave the very air tingling.
     
                  " 'That's no death cry,' said Sizenby grimly. 'That was simply annoyance. A wounded brute would have sounded quite different.'
     
                  " Yah,' agreed Krock, 'I know when I hit anyway. That one, he moves plenty quick, I can tell you.'
     
                  " 'You cannot hurt them,' rasped Bruckheller from my knee, where he still lay. He seemed to have gotten his wind back and he sounded almost amused. 'They are just as clever as you, you must realize, and they know very well what guns can do. They have lived here since the dawn of time and never yet has anyone actually seen them and escaped.'
     
                  " 'Did you see one