From Time To Time The Flame Of The Sinking Fires Leaping Up Shed Its Hot Reflection On The Dark Bronze Face, Enabling Me To Distinguish Its Sphinx-Like Lineaments And Its Shining Eyes, As Unmoving As The Rest Of The Features.

"What am I to think?

Is he simply sleeping, or is he in that strange state, that temporary annihilation of bodily life?..... Only this morning he was telling us how the initiate Raj-yogis were able to plunge into this state at will... Oh, if I could only go to sleep....."

Suddenly a loud prolonged hissing, quite close to my ear, made me start, trembling with indistinct reminiscences of cobras. The sound was strident and evidently came from under the hay upon which I rested. Then it struck one! two! It was our American alarum-clock, which always traveled with me. I could not help laughing at myself, and, at the same time, feeling a little ashamed of my involuntary fright.

But neither the hissing, nor the loud striking of the clock, nor my sudden movement, that made Miss X - - raise her sleepy head, awakened Gulab-Sing, who still hung over the precipice. Another half hour passed. The far-away roar of the festivity was still heard, but everything round me was calm and still. Sleep fled further and further from my eyes. A fresh, strong wind arose, before the dawn, rustling the leaves and then shaking the tops of the trees that rose above the abyss. My attention became absorbed by the group of three Rajputs before me - by the two shield bearers and their master.

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