When securely pinioned they sewed him up in another layer of coarse cloth, and then placed him on a litter. This they carried up to the second floor, where by stout cords they tied Alcamayn’s feet to the arch in front of his cell. The body was held upright on a trap-door, and allowed to fall full length, striking the head upon the floor.
“May all who thus invert good be compelled to die head downward!” said Imos, solemnly, as the trap-door closed, and the executioners stood, blankly facing each other.
Great care was taken to preserve a semblance of lifelike proportions in the outlines of the funeral basket, to enable the spirit to manifest easily at some future time.
Four lusty tamanes shouldered the basket-covered remains and the little procession filed out of the temple inclosure.
Men, women and children turned their backs as it passed, and there was no one to receive the body when it was delivered to the priest at the judgment hall of Hirach.
Early next morning Imos announced in the Temple of the Sun that Alcamayn’s body had been refused burial.
Then the citizens went to the hall, and carried the remains down to Land’s End, opposite Point Lobos. When the strongest ebb tide was at its full, they cast it into the sea. At this point the current runs at the rate of from three to four knots an hour, and the people knew that when once washed out to the north, the body could never, in time or eternity, return again to Golden Gate Bay.
The continuous barkings and roarings of the now extinct sea-cows which congregated on the rocks in that vicinity were supposed by the populace to be wails and lamentations from the unfortunate dead whose bodies had been literally condemned as food for the fishes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
RAHULA’S DENUNCIATION OF YERMAH—AT THE FUNERAL OF ORONDO
The Azes believed that every part of a man’s body had a counterpart in the world of matter. At the moment of dissolution, the individual ego was thought to be reunited to the Absolute, if Will, which is the real body of the individualized spirit, is free from Desire. If bound by these ties, it must reincarnate again, and it was thought possible to sink so low in the scale that the life principle would contact the animal kingdom.