SKELETON THAT WALKED

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 70, 15 December 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

SKELETON THAT WALKED

Hair-Raising Indian Episode

MIDNIGHT IN LONELY JUNGLE

Midnight in an Indian jungle through which bats flitted; a shadowed fig-tree and beneath it a living skeleton that rose and advanced toward the lone traveller.... . . This adventure, told by Edwin Arnold, is a potted thriller—a Christmas ghost story that happens'to be true.

-i OR real loneliness commend Sme to a tropical forest at midnight. It is a dead world, full of ghostly suggestion, oppressive to senses and straining to nerves. Some time an adventlire befell me at such a time and place, which, though it ended in. a laugh, was grim enough while it lasted. It was walking’back alone to my camp in an Indian jungle, about midnight, by a path seldojjji used even by natives, none of whom went that way after nightfall, and only in the daytime to scratch a shallow hole in the hillside and bury some unfortunate coblie who. was generally dug up by hyenas as soon as the funeral party turned its baek. Unpleasant things were said of the neighbourhood. But it happened to be the shortest way home for me that evening, so I followed the gloomy track. Profound darkness reigned in the shelter of the trees through which the yard-wide path turned here and there. Through this midnight gloom, intent only on. thoughts of supper in my camp three miles off, I strode along, through inky shadows and across the silvery patches, and thus presently I came to an open part of the forest where trees were bigger and scattered and more of moonlight consequently came down to the ground between them. Striding rapidly over one of these clearings, my path turned across to where a giant fig tree, a great black pile of foliage standing in the surrounding brightness, blocked the way. The path led right under its branches. I was within 30 yards of the trunk when, for the first time, I noticed something white reclining against the Stem. It was low down on the ground, looking curiously human even at a first glance, and I felt an instinctive thrill pass through me such as no common sight of the jungle would have caused. I went a little nearer; then halted suddenly and stared—for the thing was moving 1 Imagine the sahib, armed with nothing more than a rolled-up umbrella, standing alone in the dazzle of moonlight on an Indian hill-side, the black abyss of shadows swallowing up the path, and that strange object in front struggling slowly into reasonable shape. Staring, I went a few steps forward, then stopped again. Think of my astonishment when the thing slowly got upon its knees, and, still more slowly, rose to full height: the clear, perfectly outlined skeleton of a tall, well-propor-tioned man.

It was the period of one of the great Indian famines and I had seen many dead natives in my jungles. I had passed poor gaunt wretches lying by the roadside dead of starvation, and had had them decently buried when possible; but I had never seen a living skeleton before, and this one, now standing so grim and tragic in the shadow of the fig tree, was a hair-raising experience. I pulled up about 20 yards away and took a deep breath. No: I was not dreaming. It was no play of fancy, no freak of moonlight, stirred by night Winds in the foliage above. The thing had actually got on its knees and stood up; and now, as I advanced cautiously, it responded by moving its long white legs, coming down the path, still in deep shadow, a pace or two, then halting as I did. To go on was to walk right into the nr ms of the grisly object in front.

There was not a human soul within three miles, and, save a few ghostly bats Hitting about amongst the branches, or an occasion firefly trailing its weird speck of radiance across the slope, nothing moved. We stood Irresolute for a few minutes. Then a big owl flapped from the fig tree, and, with a most blood-curdling hoot, disappeared into the darkness. My supper lay beyond and hunger urged me. Spectre or no spectre, I was going on. I set my teeth, gripped the futile white umbrella, and advanced along the path another few yards. Promptly, the stranger did the same. There was no mistaking this thing now. A fine anatomical study, he would have been a welcome addition, as he stood, to the Royal College of Surgeons. We were so close now that I could, study every detail of his framework, outlined against the ebony setting beyond. I noticed how artistic it was, complete and strong: flat-spread feet on the dead grass, long leg bones, great round knee joints, serried ribs above, nicely graduated in size, pendant arms, swinging monotonously as he walked, and, to crown all, the masterpiece” of skull on top, with eyes in deep sockets that really seemed human. I even thought I caught.a flash of light in them as he came nearer and nearer. What was he going to do? We were within arms’ reach now, and the bright light brought him more clearly into detail than at any time before. I glared at him, then started, stared hard again, and, in a flash, the truth burst upon me. It was no wandering spectre from the cemetery yonder, no visitor from another world —but a living man. I had seen the same thing done before in other circumstances. It was a native fakir, or priest, on his way to a fair in the lowlands, and, to make his sanctity more impressive, he had painted every bone in his body white. He wore nothing but a loin-cloth, and, in the shadows, his dark skin had been quite invisible, Nothing had shown but that grim replica of a human structure. No wonder I had been deceived. "Oh!” I said in Hindustani when ! got my breath, “that’s what you are, is.it? What do you want?” And the thing covering his face with his bony hands and bending low to the ground in salutation, replied that “he wanted to bask in the sahib’s magnificence.” “Well,” I answered, “I wish you would not bask at this time of night; you might have frightened me. What else do you want?” And the spectre, salaaming again to the ground—the queerest looking object imaginable in his glittering pool of brightness with black shadows all about him —answered that “the sahib was the mainstay of the poor, the font of plenty, and he wanted some supper.” "Doesn’t look much as if it. would stay inside when you have got it.” I said, glancing at the shadowy void above his hip bones where his stomach ought to have been. But the wanderer shook his head and said he thought it would. “Very

City's Harbour Playground'. A new and charming glimpse of Oriental Bay and the eastern waterfront with portion of Wellington’s business area in the foreground

well,” I laughed. “Take my umbrella and come along; I am as hungry as you are.” And the skeleton, tucking my umbrella obediently under hie arm, together we marched off. This was the end of a singular adventure. When we strolled into camp, coolies ran. in temporary consternation at the sahib’s singular companion. But the hubbub ended as soon as the truth was

seen, and, in a very short time, the “skeleton” was on the veranda steps, the centre of a grinning ring of natives, a big bowl of boiled rice on his bony knees, and putting away its contents with a vigor which suggested he strove to replace in the shortest possible time, all the solid flesh in which he was apparently eo deficient.