He seized it eagerly, and was about opening it to read what was written when he noticed something else that also had fallen from the bottle.
It was a cord about two yards in length, made of the entrail of some animal, and still as strong and as flexible as when it was first made. He took it up carefully, wondering why such a thing as this should have been so carefully sealed up and preserved when so many other things had been neglected.
The cord, on a close examination, presented nothing very remarkable except the fact that, though very thin, it appeared to have been not twisted but plaited in a very peculiar manner out of many fine strands. The intention had evidently been to give to it the utmost possible strength together with the smallest size. Brandon had heard of cords used by Malays and Hindus for assassination, and this seemed like the description which he had read of them.
At one end of the cord was a piece of bronze about the size of a common marble, to which the cord was attached by a most peculiar knot. The bronze itself was intended to represent the head of some Hindu idol, the grotesque ferocity of its features, and the hideous grimace of the mouth being exactly like what one may see in the images of Mother Kali or Bowhani.
At once the cord associated itself in his mind with the horrors which he had heard of as having been perpetrated in the names of these frightful deities, and it seemed now to be more than a common one. He carefully wound it up, placed it in his pocket, and prepared to examine the manuscript.
The sun was high in the heavens, the sea-breeze still blew freshly, while Brandon, opening the manuscript, began to read.
Chapter
7
MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A BOTTLE
"BRIG 'VISHNU,' ADRIFT IN THE CHINESE SEA.
"July 10, 1828.
"Whoever finds this let him know that I, Lionel Despard, Colonel of H. M. 37th Regiment, have been the victim of a foul conspiracy performed against me by the captain and crew of the brig Vishnu, and especially by my servant, John Potts.
"Expecting at any time to perish, adrift helplessly, at the mercy of winds and waves, I sit down now before I die, to write all the circumstances of this affair. I will inclose the manuscript in a bottle and fling it into the sea, trusting in God that he may cause it to be borne to those who may be enabled to read my words, so that they may know my fate and bring the guilty to justice. Whoever finds this let him, if possible, have it sent to my friend, Ralph Brandon, of Brandon Hall, Devonshire, England, who will do more than any other man to cause justice to have its due.
"To further the ends of justice and to satisfy the desires of my friends, I will write an account of the whole case.
"In the name of God, I declare that John Potts is guilty of my death. He was my servant. I first found him in India under very remarkable circumstances.
"It was in the year 1826. The Government was engaged in an effort to put down bands of assassins by whom the most terrific atrocities had been committed, and I was appointed to conduct the work in the district of Agra.
"The Thuggee society is still a mystery, though its nature may yet be revealed if they can only capture the chief [Footnote: The chief was captured in 1830, and by his confession all the atrocious system of Thuggee was revealed.] and make him confess. As yet it is not fully known, and though I have heard much which I have reported to the Government, yet I am slow to believe that any human beings can actually practice what I have heard.
"The assassins whom I was pursuing eluded our pursuit with marvelous agility and cunning, but one by one we captured them, and punished them summarily. At last we surrounded a band of Thugs, and to our amazement found among them a European and a small boy. At our attack the Hindus made a desperate resistance, and killed themselves rather than fall into our hands; but the European, leading forward the little boy, fell on his knees and implored us to save him.
"I had heard that an Englishman had joined these wretches, and at first thought that this was the man; so, desirous of capturing him, I ordered my men whenever they found him to spare his life if possible. This man was at once seized and brought before me.
"He had a piteous story to tell. He said that his name was John Potts, that be belonged to Southampton, and had been in India a year. He had come to Agra to look out for employ as a servant, and had been caught by the Thugs. They offered to spare his life if he would join them. According to him they always make this offer. If it had only been himself that was concerned he said that he would have died a hundred times rather than have accepted; but his little boy was with him, and to save his life he consented, hoping that somehow or other he might escape. They then received him with some horrible ceremonies, and marked on his arm and on the arm of his son, on the inner part of the right elbow, the name of Bowhani in Hindu characters. Potts showed me his arm and that of his son in proof of this.
"He had been with them, according to his own account, about three months, and his life had been one continuous horror. He had picked up enough of their language to conjecture to some extent the nature of their belief, which, he asserted, would be most important information for the Government. The Thugs had treated him very kindly, for they looked upon him as one of themselves, and they are all very humane and affectionate to one another. His worst fear had been that they would compel him to do murder; and he would have died, he declared, rather than consent; but, fortunately, he was spared. The reason of this, he said, was because they always do their murder by strangling, since the shedding of blood is not acceptable to their divinity. He could not do this, for it requires great dexterity. Almost all their strangling is done by a thin, strong cord, curiously twisted, about six feet in length, with a weight at one end, generally carved so as to represent the face of Bowhani. This they throw with a peculiar jerk around the neck of their victim. The weight swings the cord round and round, while the strangler pulls the other end, and death is inevitable. His hands, he said, were coarse and clumsy, unlike the delicate Hindu hands; and so, although they forced him to practice incessantly, he could not learn. He said nothing about the boy, but, from what I saw of that boy afterward, I believe that nature created him especially to be a Thug, and have no doubt that he learned then to wield the cord with as much dexterity as the best strangler of them all.
"His association with them had shown him much of their ordinary habits and some of their beliefs. I gathered from what he said that the basis of the Thuggee society is the worship of Bowhani, a frightful demon, whose highest joy is the sight of death or dead bodies. Those who are her disciples must offer up human victims killed without the shedding of blood, and the more he can kill the more of a saint he becomes. The motive for this is never gain, for they rarely plunder, but purely religious zeal. The reward is an immortality of bliss hereafter, which Bowhani will secure them; a life like that of the Mohammedan Paradise, where there are material joys to be possessed forever without satiety. Destruction, which begins as a kind of duty, becomes also at last, and naturally perhaps, an absorbing passion. As the hunter in pursuing his prey is carried away by excitement and the enthusiasm of the chase, or, in hunting the tiger, feels the delight of braving danger and displaying courage, so here that same passion is felt to an extraordinary degree, for it is men that must be pursued and destroyed. Here, in addition to courage, the hunter of man must call into exercise cunning, foresight, eloquence, intrigue. All this I afterward brought to the attention of the Government with very good results.
"Potts declared that night and day he had been on the watch for a chance to escape, but so infernal was the cunning of these wretches, and so quick their senses, sharpened as they had been by long practice, that success became hopeless. He had fallen into deep dejection, and concluded that his only hope lay in the efforts of the Government to put down these assassins. Our appearance had at last saved him.
"Neither