Surely you are mistaken. I don't see anything
but trees."
"It is too dark to see the village. Besides, the huts are so small,
and so hidden by the bushes, that even by daytime you could hardly
find them. And there is no light in the houses, for fear of the spirits."
"And where is your witch? Do you mean we are to watch her performance
in complete darkness?"
Sham Rao cast a furtive, timid look round him; and his voice, when
he answered our questions, was somewhat tremulous.
"I implore you not to call her a witch! She may hear you. ..... It
is not far off, it is not more than half a mile. Do not allow this
short distance to shake your decision. No elephant, and even no
horse, could make its way there. We must walk. ... But we shall
find plenty of light there.... "
This was unexpected, and far from agreeable. To walk in this gloomy
Indian night; to scramble through thickets of cactuses; to venture
in a dark forest, full of wild animals - this was too much for Miss X - -.
She declared that she would go no further. She would wait for us
in the howdah, on the elephant's back, and perhaps would go to sleep.
Narayan was against this parti de plaisir from the very beginning,
and now, without explaining his reasons, he said she was the only
sensible one among us.
"You won't lose anything," he remarked, "by staying where you are.
And I only wish everyone would follow your example."
"What ground have you for saying so, I wonder?" remonstrated Sham Rao,
and a slight note of disappointment rang in his voice, when he saw
that the excursion, proposed and organized by himself, threatened
to come to nothing. "What harm could be done by it? I won't insist
any more that the `incarnation of gods' is a rare sight, and that
the Europeans hardly ever have an opportunity of witnessing it;
but, besides, the Kangalim in question is no ordinary woman. She
leads a holy life; she is a prophetess, and her blessing could
not prove harmful to any one. I insisted on this excursion out
of pure patriotism."
"Sahib, if your patriotism consists in displaying before foreigners
the worst of our plagues, then why did you not order all the lepers
of your district to assemble and parade before the eyes of our guests?
You are a patel, you have the power to do it."
How bitterly Narayan's voice sounded to our unaccustomed ears.
Usually he was so even-tempered, so indifferent to everything
belonging to the exterior world.
Fearing a quarrel between the Hindus, the colonel remarked, in a
conciliatory tone, that it was too late for us to reconsider our
expedition. Besides, without being a believer in the "incarnation
of gods," he was personally firmly convinced that demoniacs
existed even in the West. He was eager to study every psychological
phenomenon, wherever he met with it, and whatever shape it might assume.
It would have been a striking sight for our European and American
friends if they had beheld our procession on that dark night. Our
way lay along a narrow winding path up the mountain. Not more
than two people could walk together - and we were thirty, including
the torch-bearers. Surely some reminiscence of night sallies
against the confederate Southerners had revived in the colonel's
breast, judging by the readiness with which he took upon himself
the leadership of our small expedition. He ordered all the rifles
and revolvers to be loaded, despatched three torch-bearers to march
ahead of us, and arranged us in pairs. Under such a skilled chieftain
we had nothing to fear from tigers; and so our procession started,
and slowly crawled up the winding path.
It cannot be said that the inquisitive travelers, who appeared
later on, in the den of the prophetess of Mandu, shone through
the freshness and elegance of their costumes. My gown, as well
as the traveling suits of the colonel and of Mr. Y - - were nearly
torn to pieces. The cactuses gathered from us whatever tribute
they could, and the Babu's disheveled hair swarmed with a whole
colony of grasshoppers and fireflies, which, probably, were
attracted thither by the smell of cocoa-nut oil. The stout Sham
Rao panted like a steam engine. Narayan alone was like his usual
self; that is to say, like a bronze Hercules, armed with a club.
At the last abrupt turn of the path, after having surmounted the
difficulty of climbing over huge, scattered stones, we suddenly
found ourselves on a perfectly smooth place; our eyes, in spite
of our many torches, were dazzled with light; and our ears were
struck by a medley of unusual sounds.
A new glen opened before us, the entrance of which, from the valley,
was well masked by thick trees. We understood how easily we might
have wandered round it, without ever suspecting its existence. At the
bottom of the glen we discovered the abode of the celebrated Kangalim.
The den, as it turned out, was situated in the ruin of an old Hindu
temple in tolerably good preservation. In all probability it was
built long before the "dead city," because during the epoch of the
latter, the heathen were not allowed to have their own places of
worship; and the temple stood quite close to the wall of the town,
in fact, right under it. The cupolas of the two smaller lateral
pagodas had fallen long ago, and huge bushes grew out of their altars.
This evening, their branches were hidden under a mass of bright
colored rags, bits of ribbon, little pots, and various other talismans;
because, even in them, popular superstition sees something sacred.
"And are not these poor people right? Did not these bushes grow
on sacred ground? Is not their sap impregnated with the incense
of offerings, and the exhalations of holy anchorites, who once
lived and breathed here?"
The learned, but superstitious Sham Rao would only answer our
questions by new questions.
