You should have seen that Israelite’s face, however, when “Scotty” came round to be measured next day; and when he found that a five-foot long tape wouldn’t meet round his new customer’s waistcoat he nearly had a fit. However, he made the suit (but not for forty shillings) and exhibited it in his window afterwards: a good advertisement for him—and for us.
I was greatly struck by the number of Indians in South Africa. They seem to be everywhere, and amongst them were some fairly clever conjurors; but nothing very much out of the common. Indeed, I am personally of opinion that the cleverness of the Indian conjurors has been very much overrated.
In saying this I do not speak without knowledge, for when I was in Colombo, Ceylon, where some of the cleverest conjuring fakirs are supposed to be, I made it my business to investigate the claims of quite a number of them.
Some of the more marvellous tricks attributed to them I have no hesitation in saying are mere inventions, or hoaxes, bred of the credulity of too-easily-impressed Europeans. To this latter class belongs the famous boy and rope trick, of which everybody has heard, but which nobody, in my opinion, has ever seen.
There are two versions of this alleged conjuring trick. One story makes the fakir throw a rope into the air, where it remains suspended; if one may use the term, when there is presumably nothing up aloft for it to remain suspended from. The fakir then orders a small boy to climb the rope, which he does, afterwards drawing it up after him and vanishing with it into space, to presently reappear from somewhere behind the audience at the bidding of his master.
Such a trick, performed after this fashion, would be quite wonderful enough, in fact seemingly unexplainable. But there is another, and in a sense even more wonderful version of the same trick, which has been frequently described in print by people who say they have seen it done.
According to this story the fakir uses, not a rope, which presumably might be climbed supposing the upper free end were attached to anything strong enough to hold it, but a ball of thin twine, such as grocers use. This the conjuror throws up into the air, retaining the free end of the twine between his thumb and forefinger. The ball mounts higher and higher, growing gradually smaller and smaller as it mounts upwards and unravels, until it becomes a mere speck in the upper air, and ultimately vanishes altogether. Lastly the fakir releases the lower free end, and the string remains vertically suspended in the air as far as the eye can follow it.
The fakir next begins to tug violently at the string as if to try and recover the vanished ball, but it refuses to yield an inch, and in affected rage he speaks a few words to a boy he has with him. The little fellow approaches in feigned reluctance, his eyes dilated with terror; but, being urged on by curses and blows, he presently seizes the twine with both hands, and begins to climb up it.
Up and up he ascends, growing gradually smaller until he is a scarcely discernible speck, apparently hundreds of feet from the ground. Then he too vanishes as completely as the ball has done. The fakir waits a few minutes, as if expecting the boy to return. Then he begins calling to him to come down. There is no answer, and the fakir flies into a pretended rage, takes a knife between his teeth, and himself climbs the string, vanishing in his turn as the boy had previously done.
While the spectators are waiting in dumb amazement, wondering what is going to happen next, a distant shriek of pain and horror is wafted down from above. The next moment something round and red comes hurtling downward from the sky. It is the head of the boy severed from the body, with quivering muscles and flowing blood, to prove that it is no figment of the fancy.