Adam came quickly to the conclusion that there was for
him some compensation that the others did not share; and he soon believed
that that compensation was in one form or another the enjoyment of the
sufferings of others. Thus the black had a never-failing source of
amusement. Lady Arabella's cold nature rendered her immune to anything in the way of
pain or trouble concerning others. Edgar Caswall was far too haughty a
person, and too stern of nature, to concern himself about poor or
helpless people, much less the lower order of mere animals. Mr. Watford,
Mr. Salton, and Sir Nathaniel were all concerned in the issue, partly
from kindness of heart--for none of them could see suffering, even of
wild birds, unmoved--and partly on account of their property, which had
to be protected, or ruin would stare them in the face before long. Lilla suffered acutely. As time went on, her face became pinched, and
her eyes dull with watching and crying. Mimi suffered too on account of
her cousin's suffering. But as she could do nothing, she resolutely made
up her mind to self-restraint and patience. Adam's frequent visits
comforted her. CHAPTER XI--MESMER'S CHEST


After a couple of weeks had passed, the kite seemed to give Edgar Caswall
a new zest for life. He was never tired of looking at its movements. He
had a comfortable armchair put out on the tower, wherein he sat sometimes
all day long, watching as though the kite was a new toy and he a child
lately come into possession of it. He did not seem to have lost interest
in Lilla, for he still paid an occasional visit at Mercy Farm. Indeed, his feeling towards her, whatever it had been at first, had now
so far changed that it had become a distinct affection of a purely animal
kind. Indeed, it seemed as though the man's nature had become corrupted,
and that all the baser and more selfish and more reckless qualities had
become more conspicuous. There was not so much sternness apparent in his
nature, because there was less self-restraint. Determination had become
indifference. The visible change in Edgar was that he grew morbid, sad, silent; the
neighbours thought he was going mad. He became absorbed in the kite, and
watched it not only by day, but often all night long. It became an
obsession to him. Caswall took a personal interest in the keeping of the great kite flying. He had a vast coil of cord efficient for the purpose, which worked on a
roller fixed on the parapet of the tower. There was a winch for the
pulling in of the slack; the outgoing line being controlled by a racket. There was invariably one man at least, day and night, on the tower to
attend to it. At such an elevation there was always a strong wind, and
at times the kite rose to an enormous height, as well as travelling for
great distances laterally. In fact, the kite became, in a short time,
one of the curiosities of Castra Regis and all around it. Edgar began to
attribute to it, in his own mind, almost human qualities. It became to
him a separate entity, with a mind and a soul of its own. Being idle-
handed all day, he began to apply to what he considered the service of
the kite some of his spare time, and found a new pleasure--a new object
in life--in the old schoolboy game of sending up "runners" to the kite. The way this is done is to get round pieces of paper so cut that there is
a hole in the centre, through which the string of the kite passes. The
natural action of the wind-pressure takes the paper along the string, and
so up to the kite itself, no matter how high or how far it may have gone. In the early days of this amusement Edgar Caswall spent hours. Hundreds
of such messengers flew along the string, until soon he bethought him of
writing messages on these papers so that he could make known his ideas to
the kite. It may be that his brain gave way under the opportunities
given by his illusion of the entity of the toy and its power of separate
thought. From sending messages he came to making direct speech to the
kite--without, however, ceasing to send the runners. Doubtless, the
height of the tower, seated as it was on the hill-top, the rushing of the
ceaseless wind, the hypnotic effect of the lofty altitude of the speck in
the sky at which he gazed, and the rushing of the paper messengers up the
string till sight of them was lost in distance, all helped to further
affect his brain, undoubtedly giving way under the strain of beliefs and
circumstances which were at once stimulating to the imagination,
occupative of his mind, and absorbing. The next step of intellectual decline was to bring to bear on the main
idea of the conscious identity of the kite all sorts of subjects which
had imaginative force or tendency of their own. He had, in Castra Regis,
a large collection of curious and interesting things formed in the past
by his forebears, of similar tastes to his own. There were all sorts of
strange anthropological specimens, both old and new, which had been
collected through various travels in strange places: ancient Egyptian
relics from tombs and mummies; curios from Australia, New Zealand, and
the South Seas; idols and images--from Tartar ikons to ancient Egyptian,
Persian, and Indian objects of worship; objects of death and torture of
American Indians; and, above all, a vast collection of lethal weapons of
every kind and from every place--Chinese "high pinders," double knives,
Afghan double-edged scimitars made to cut a body in two, heavy knives
from all the Eastern countries, ghost daggers from Thibet, the terrible
kukri of the Ghourka and other hill tribes of India, assassins' weapons
from Italy and Spain, even the knife which was formerly carried by the
slave-drivers of the Mississippi region. Death and pain of every kind
were fully represented in that gruesome collection. That it had a fascination for Oolanga goes without saying. He was never
tired of visiting the museum in the tower, and spent endless hours in
inspecting the exhibits, till he was thoroughly familiar with every
detail of all of them. He asked permission to clean and polish and
sharpen them--a favour which was readily granted. In addition to the
above objects, there were many things of a kind to awaken human fear. Stuffed serpents of the most objectionable and horrid kind; giant insects
from the tropics, fearsome in every detail; fishes and crustaceans
covered with weird spikes; dried octopuses of great size. Other things,
too, there were, not less deadly though seemingly innocuous--dried fungi,
traps intended for birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, and insects; machines
which could produce pain of any kind and degree, and the only mercy of
which was the power of producing speedy death. Caswall, who had never before seen any of these things, except those
which he had collected himself, found a constant amusement and interest
in them. He studied them, their uses, their mechanism--where there was
such--and their places of origin, until he had an ample and real
knowledge of all concerning them.