The valley of the pythons was in flames and the travelers seemed lost, Jody was terrified, more of the flames than of the terrible animals. Blake understood that the worst storm was certainly better than perishing in the flames.

Only Kaj kept his courage and his mind cold, because nothing would stop him, he wanted to reach his beloved Liling and nothing would stop him, not even the flames.

A very bright light, which suddenly came out among the tall, almost dry brushwoods that covered the bottom of the valley, had risen, coloring the sky red.

It was a real curtain of fire, several meters high, which the night wind descending from the very high mountains revived. It threatened to invade the whole valley. How flushed the three wondered.

The fire was blazing and expanding with such prodigious rapidity that it was feared that it would close the way to the three friends and close them in a burning circle before they could reach the exit or that ravine.

The pythons that dozed on the rocks or under the grasses, awakened by the crackling of the plants, rose from all sides, raising their fierce tails, as if they still could not understand the nature of the danger that threatened them.

«Follow me!» shouted Kaj, who had promptly recovered «Remember that whoever falls is a dead man!»

«I suspected those damned savages would be ambushing us somewhere», said Blake.

All three had rushed towards the exit of the valley, running like antelopes, glancing around for fear of seeing some python swoop on them. Waves of hot smoke from time to time enveloped them, while myriads of sparks circled above them and gusts of burning ash fell.

The reptiles, finally realizing that they were about to be hit by the fire, had set in motion, hissing angrily and writhing desperately to gain more ground, all enormous in size.

The three Jody men, luckily for them, as well as being robust had good legs and kept reptiles at a distance.

«Sooner! Sooner!» Kaj repeated ceaselessly, preceding the other two «The fire gains ground quickly!»

And indeed the immense curtain of fire was advancing faster and faster, devouring everything in its path. Several pythons had now been joined and writhing in the flames. A sickening smell of burning flesh wafted through the air.

Finally, with a last effort, they managed to reach the mouth of the ravine. The flames were only a few steps away and it was a real miracle if they did not fall asphyxiated by the smoke that hit them and blinded them.

A narrow gorge opened in front of them, between two very high mountains and where they could see only huge boulders bare of all vegetation, when two shots rang out behind them, followed shortly after by two others.

Kaj cried out and stopped putting a hand to his right ear.

«Hit it?» Blake asked, joining him.

Instead of answering, he turned quickly, pointing to a puff of smoke rising on top of a rock overlooking the valley of pythons and human forms in the background.

Two shots rang out again, arousing the echo of the mountains, then a human being broke away from the rock, circled several times on itself, and soon fell into the chasm of fire.

«I hit him!» Blake shouted, starting to run again, while Kaj held up his bleeding ear. running, squeezing his ear.

«Where did they hurt you?» Jody asked from behind him.

«It is nothing! Run! Later, when we get behind those rocks», he replied without stopping.

That wild ride lasted about ten minutes, then the three friends, having passed a curve, stopped behind a boulder so high as to put them under cover from any shot.

«So?» Blake asked, turning to the pearl fisherman.

«Bah! It is nothing. The ball simply removed my right earlobe. Painful wound perhaps, which gives a lot of blood, but not at all dangerous. If the ball had reached two centimeters and even less forward, my head would have burst like a coconut.»

«It is necessary to stop the bleeding. Jody, stand guard on the top of the boulder, the first man you see appear, shoot him like a tiger.»

«I promise not to miss it, Mr. Blake», replied the machinist.

As the good young man climbed onto the boulder hiding inside a crack, the Englishman removed a piece of canvas from his saddlebag and bandaged Kaj's injured ear, saying:

«Yes, a few centimeters ahead, and you, my poor Kaj, would no longer be in the number of the living. You are lucky to have two good ears!»

He bandaged the wound, after washing it with a little water from the flask, then said:

«Did you see the man you hit well?»

«Unfortunately no. Anger blinded me at that moment.»

«Yet he was a man, wasn't he?»

«I don't doubt that.»

«Do you think he was one of those damned savages? They must have been the ones who set the herbs on fire.»

«If they were savages they would have shot us with arrows, albeit poisoned.»

«I'd be curious to clarify this mystery.»

«Let's think about beating it for now, Mr. Blake. On the peaks of the high mountains those scoundrels will not dare to attack us and not even ...»

A cry from the driver interrupted his sentence:

«Legs, friends!»

«What's still there, Jody?» Blake asked.

«The pythons advance.»

«Weren't they all burned?»

«It doesn't seem like it, Mr. Blake», replied the driver, «on the contrary, I see a lot of them advancing, those damned beasts!»

Jody, who saw the reptiles approaching quickly, making leaps, slid along the cliff, falling at the feet of his two friends.

«We have just a minute to escape.» he warned.

«And did you see those who fired on us?» Kaj asked.

«No, too bad.»

«Hurry up then!» Blake yelled.

A short distance away you could already hear the screeching whistles of rock pythons, which the fire had driven out of the valley. The men left the cliff that had protected them and resumed the race through the gorge, leaping across the boulders that blocked their pass and crossing the crevasses that they surpassed with no little effort.

Around midnight, panting and exhausted, they stopped on the top of a hill that dominated the pass and which, having not very steep sides, had allowed climbing.

«That's enough.» said Blake, who was not used to those long runs «I'm not a runner and I can't take it anymore.»

«I ask no more of you, Mr. Blake.»

«Did the pythons stop?» Jody asked.

«The march is not their forte and as soon as they have found a safe place they will have resumed their sleep.»

«And we will do the same. Up here we will not be in danger of being surprised. Or at least I hope.» Blake sighed.

«And then we won't be imprudent to fall asleep all!» Kaj specified «I who am the most resistant will mount the first quarter guard. Take a rest.»

Jody cut some branches from a small tamarind growing a short distance away, while Kaj went around the small hill, then sat on a boulder from which he could dominate the passage below, taking care not to light the fire so as not to signal to those mysterious enemies the camp.

The night was calm and serene and the silence was broken only by the distant roar of the waterfall. Towards the valley of the rock pythons there was still some reddish glow and a few jets of sparks, which the wind blew through the darkness like a gust of shooting stars.

The fire, which could no longer find food, quickly went out. At midnight Kaj, having noticed nothing suspicious, woke Jody and at three Blake took over, without anything extraordinary had happened.

Even those mysterious enemies never showed up again. Had they climbed up the mountain sides or had they drifted away? Or, taking advantage of the darkness, had they already passed silently under the hill, escaping the vigilance of Kaj and his two companions?

They were very worried about the direction those strangers had taken, even ignoring their intentions but, shortly after sunrise, the three friends set off again through those high mountains, eager to reach the monastery.

It took them three days to cross those scrub-covered peaks, always haunted by the fear of falling into some ambush, and finally they reached the valley, closed on one side by the central chain of the island and on the other by the Mahowilla River.

They were approaching the kingdom of Candy, on whose nearby mountains stood the monastery, where Liling was located. The country became populated. Large villages, inhabited by Candians, arose, especially along the river and on the sides of the mountains, therefore splendid pagodas for the most part in ruins, then remnants of large cities that disappeared perhaps for thousands of years.

Ceylon, like neighboring India, is full of grandiose rubble. It is not uncommon to find in the midst of the thickest forests colossal ruins, palaces and pagodas of superb architecture, buried under a chaos of plants for who knows how long, and also statues still laminated with gold.

Eleven days after leaving the python valley, Kaj had led his companions to the site of the monastery. They had finally arrived at their destination.