CHAPTER I.
About noon, under the scorching beams of a tropical sun, a young Mussulman was on his way towards the Mewat hills, accompanied by a party of fakeers. His hands were bound behind him with his turban, and he had nothing on his head but a silk skull-cap to resist the intense rays which shot from the cloudless heavens in an uninterrupted stream of glowing light. His black hair, which was long and bushy, fell over his shoulders and temples; thus supplying a natural protection against the influence of the solar fires, which were almost insupportable. He was urged onward by his companions at a rate which the excessive heat rendered extremely distressing, though to them it appeared mere matter of pastime. Accustomed as they were to undergo the severest bodily inflictions, what to him was positive torture was to them a relaxation from it.
Every one of his companions was perfectly naked, and each bore the marks of having submitted to the torturing process of some dreadful penance. Their limbs were sunken and fleshless, the skin shrivelled and discoloured by the severity of those torments to which their bodies had been exposed. Their nails protruded and curved into a point over the fingers and toes, like the claws of a beast of prey. Their hair, matted with the filthy accumulations of years, hung over the backs of these Mahomedan Nazarites, like the locks from a Medusa’s head, and was frequently so thick as to shroud them in a capillary veil, revolting to more than one sense, and agreeable to none. They were armed with huge clubs, the heads of which were charged with iron. These they used with considerable dexterity, being in the habit of employing them in the jungles for the purpose of destroying small game, upon which they frequently feasted with a gluttonous zest that would have shamed even the Roman Apicius.
“Ay,” said one, eyeing their prisoner with a look of Satanic triumph, “naked men know how to fight. Devotion is their shield, which all the outcasts from Paradise shall never be able to pierce.”
“I am in your power,” replied the captive; “but beware how you exercise your momentary ascendancy. Your foul revolt will not escape its due punishment: in spite of your devotion you will suffer the penalty—torture me for a false prophet else. Success has turned your brains. The war waged by enthusiasm is like a sudden burst of the tempest, which crushes the oak in its impetuous sweep, but quickly passes away; the surrounding plain springs out into renewed luxuriance and beauty, and thus smiles at the impotence of the hurricane.”
“Hold, blasphemer!” cried a huge gaunt devotee, the bones of whose joints were heard to clatter as he wielded his fleshless arms with the most extravagant gesticulations; “bend the knee to those holy men who have defeated the sons of darkness, and are about to place upon the throne of the Moguls a queen who shall close the dynasty of Timour, and fill the world with the children of the faithful,—for you are all aliens from the true stock.”
The prisoner turned from this filthy saint with an expression of disgust, and allowed him to rail at the Emperor and all his faithful subjects till he foamed like a gored bull with the frantic energy of his vociferations.
They now entered upon a scene of desolation not to be witnessed without deep emotion, which naturally follows wherever the melancholy consciousness arises that a vast addition has been made to the sum of human misery. For leagues, as they proceeded onward, nothing was to be seen but deserted villages; the whole country having been laid waste, and bearing the appearance of “a land not inhabited.” The jungles had been fired; and for miles the ashes left by the devouring element, and the charred trunks of trees, which had for centuries lifted their sturdy limbs amid the feebler growth of the forest, showed how terrific had been the conflagration. Not a shrub, not a blade of grass, not a single trace of vegetation, was anywhere visible; and as the stranger cast his eyes over the scene of devastation, he could not help expressing his indignation against the perpetrators of such wanton outrage.
“Ay,” said one of the enthusiasts; “we take care not to provide forage for enemies; they who visit the stronghold of the fakeers, must make up their minds to take a hungry journey. If ever you live to see your friends, you will have strange news to tell them, believe me. When holy men seize the sword, and fight in carnal battles, no mortal arm can resist them. We have taught your sovereign what it is to oppose Heaven’s vicegerents. He is already tottering on his throne. You shall see and know more anon.”
The ogre-like being who spoke had taken so much opium during the journey thus far, as to have reached that pitch of excitement to which, when a fakeer arrives, he can submit to bodily tortures altogether incredible. His eyes glared with the glassy radiance of incipient madness. Though the heat was intolerable, and the earth steamed with the intensity of the sun’s rays, like exhalations from a caldron, he leaped about, and threw himself into a thousand contortions, until his body was covered with a tawny scum from the severity of his exercise. After he had fatigued himself by these violent antics, he took a number of large needles, and having passed them through the flesh in several parts of his body, threaded them with silks of various colours, and then strutted before the party with the pride and bearing of one conscious of having performed an act for which he should receive the homage of his companions, who treated him with a reverence evidently very flattering to the spiritual vanity of this mad visionary. Having at length relieved himself from the needles, he drew the silken strings through the wounds, and then attaching to each a small pointed instrument, exceedingly sharp, turned himself round until the rotation became so violent that the outline of his figure was scarcely distinguishable. When he ceased, his body was covered with gashes and reeking with blood.
After six hours of continued travelling, with scarcely a pause, the party arrived at the foot of a small hill, which had evidently been spared from the devastation that exhibited so sad a prospect in the surrounding country. The prisoner, though overcome by the excessive fatigue of so arduous a journey, was not allowed to pause, but compelled to proceed up the ascent. About midway a considerable ruin was disclosed, upon which the last rays of the sun slanted, as it was sinking behind the low hills that skirted the distant plain. The entrance was lofty, and encumbered with fragments of pillars, which time or violence had thrown down. Within was an extensive area; on every side of it were gigantic sculptures, representing the history of some Hindoo superstition, which had been greatly mutilated by the zeal of pious Mahomedans. This building was a dilapidated choultry, and had been converted into the vestibule of the abode of an old crone, bending beneath the weight of years, and mistress of inexhaustible treasures.
In this hall, Bistamia, which was the hag’s name, was engaged in preparing the evening meal for her beggarly dependants—a thing she invariably did with her own hands. During the culinary process she appeared to mutter certain incantations over the smoking viands, which consisted of the most revolting ingredients.
When the stranger was brought before her, she eyed him with that haggard, feeble scowl peculiar to wicked old age, in which is exhibited the will, but not the power, of the demon. Her deformed and decrepit body was bare to the waist, and presented a loathsome image of living mortality.
What an antidote to the vanity of youth and the pride of beauty! Her white locks streamed over her brown, withered shoulders, exhibiting one of those repelling contrasts which the eye cannot gaze upon without instinctively closing. Her skin hung from her like the dewlap of a sacred bull, but flaccid and bloodless, as if the principle of life were withdrawn from it. The nails of her fingers had grown into claws, and seemed as if they could distil poison, like those of the Egyptian lizard.[40]
“Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red,”
and her whole appearance seemed to speak “variety of wretchedness.” She approached the stranger, eyed him with a look of intense malice, and said—
“Who are you, son of a dog? How came you within these walls?”
“I am,” replied the stranger, “an officer of the imperial army, who, upon the issue of an unsuccessful encounter with your insurgent fanatics, have fallen into their hands. How I came within these walls, they will best explain to you.”
“Hah! an enemy! You shall soon learn how we treat enemies when they profane our sanctuary. Would you save your life!”
“I have no desire to die.”
“Ay, the burden of every coward’s song. Fall down, then, at our feet, and hail us Queen of the Moguls.”
“The Moguls were never ruled by women.”
“Say you so? We shall see. Bind him to yonder statue.”
Her order was speedily executed, and the hag began to prepare the last dish of the evening’s refection. This was a medley, fit only for the stomachs of ghoules or devils. It happened to be a certain day of the moon, and on this day the same mixture was always placed before her retainers. The first thing she ordered to be brought, when about to make her infernal stew, was the trunk of a human body, which had been conveyed for this very purpose from the scene of slaughter. She deliberately cut large pieces from the fleshy parts; these she divided into small squares, with slow, calculating precision, and then placed them severally in a human skull that stood beside her. Having covered them with a layer of herbs that had been gathered under certain influences of the moon, she took from a covered basket a hooded snake, from the jaws of which the poisonous fangs had been previously extracted, and placed it alive in the skull. To this she added the legs of a frog, the tail of a lizard, the head of a bat, and the claws of an owl. Having placed the skull, with its contents, in a capacious earthen vessel, in which there was a sufficient quantity of water to complete the dressing, she put it upon the fire, and watched it with eager anxiety, muttering to herself a sort of mystical chant during the entire period of the cooking. The smoke ascended in volumes from the flame over which this disgusting mess was hanging, and soon filled the whole chamber with a thick and suffocating cloud.
The mode of hanging the earthenware vessel over the blaze was as remarkable as any part of the singular process. Two fakeers stood on either side of the fire, an iron bar resting upon the shoulders of each, from which the mysterious stew was suspended above the flame.
When sufficiently dressed, the skull was taken from the earthenware receptacle; its contents were put upon square pieces of plantain leaf, and the portions placed before each fakeer present, who devoured them with a greediness that made the prisoner’s heart leap up to his throat.
The idea of those wretched enthusiasts was, that this abominable meal would have the surprising effect not only of rendering them fearless in the day of battle, but of inspiring their enemies with such terror that they would not dare to approach them; that, moreover, it would cause them to become invisible when engaged with their foes, who would thus fall an easy prey to persons so supernaturally endowed.
A portion of a mess which had been previously prepared was offered to the prisoner; but he rejected it with disgust, and partook only of some plain boiled rice, which somewhat refreshed him after so long and toilsome a journey.
When they had concluded their evening’s repast, Bistamia retired from the scene of this extraordinary carousal, and the fakeers, flinging themselves upon the bare ground, without the slightest covering, were soon hushed in profound repose. The opium, in which they had indulged to excess, rendered their sleep so heavy that it seemed like the deep slumber of death. The flames, by which the chamber had been illumined, subsided by degrees, and the gloom of silence and darkness gradually succeeded.