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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.
Here he rummaged about in the dark until he had found the two phials he
sought. The noise of the monsters upon the opposite side of the palisade had
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