I was
perfectly conscious... or, shall I say, I fancied I was conscious
of putting down on paper what everyone of you had before your eyes.
I had lost every notion of the place as I saw it before I began
my sketch, and as I see it now.... But how do you account for it?
Good gracious! am I to believe that these confounded Hindus really
possess the mystery of this trick? I tell you, colonel, I shall
go mad if I don't understand it all!"
"No fear of that, Mr. Y - -," said Narayan, with a triumphant
twinkle in his eyes. "You will simply lose the right to deny
Yoga-Vidya, the great ancient science of my country."
Mr. Y - - did not answer him. He made an effort to calm his feelings,
and bravely stepped on the ferry boat with firm foot. Then he sat
down, apart from us all, obstinately looking at the large surface
of water round us, and struggling to seem his usual self.
Miss X - - was the first to interrupt the silence.
"Ma chere!" said she to me in a subdued, but triumphant voice.
"Ma chere, Monsieur Y - - devient vraiment un medium de premiere force!"
In moments of great excitement she always addressed me in French.
But I also was too excited to control my feelings, and so I answered
rather unkindly:
"Please stop this nonsense, Miss X - -. You know I don't believe
in spiritualism. Poor Mr. Y - -, was not he upset?"
Receiving this rebuke and no sympathy from me, she could not think
of anything better than drawing out the Babu, who, for a wonder,
had managed to keep quiet till then.
"What do you say to all this? I for one am perfectly confident that
no one but the disembodied soul of a great artist could have painted
that lovely view. Who else is capable of such a wonderful achievement?"
"Why? The old gentleman in person. Confess that at the bottom
of your soul you firmly believe that the Hindus worship devils.
To be sure it is some deity of ours of this kind that had his
august paw in the matter."
"Il est positivement malhonnete, ce Negre-la!" angrily muttered
Miss X - -, hurriedly withdrawing from him.
The island was a tiny one, and so overgrown with tall reeds that,
from a distance, it looked like a pyramidal basket of verdure. With
the exception of a colony of monkeys, who bustled away to a few mango
trees at our approach, the place seemed uninhabited. In this virgin
forest of thick grass there was no trace of human life. Seeing the
word grass the reader must not forget that it is not the grass of
Europe I mean; the grass under which we stood, like insects under
a rhubarb leaf, waved its feathery many-colored plumes much above
the head of Gulab-Sing (who stood six feet and a half in his stockings),
and of Narayan, who measured hardly an inch less.
