Absorbed
in the examination of the altar, we did not notice the absence
of the colonel, till we heard his loud voice in the distance
calling to us:
"I have found a secret passage.... Come along, let us find where
it leads to!"
Torch in hand, the colonel was far ahead of us, and very eager to
proceed; but each of us had a little plan of his own, and so we
were reluctant to obey his summons. The Babu took upon himself
to answer for the whole party:
"Take care, colonel. This passage leads to the den of the glamour....
Mind the tigers!"
But once fairly started on the way to discoveries, our president
was not to be stopped. Nolens volens we followed him.
He was right; he had made a discovery; and on entering the cell
we saw a most unexpected tableau. By the opposite wall stood two
torch-bearers with their flaming torches, as motionless as if they
were transformed into stone caryatides; and from the wall, about
five feet above the ground, protruded two legs clad in white trousers.
There was no body to them; the body had disappeared, and but that
the legs were shaken by a convulsive effort to move on, we might
have thought that the wicked goddess of this place had cut the
colonel into two halves, and having caused the upper half instantly
to evaporate, had stuck the lower half to the wall, as a kind of trophy.
