“I am the Prophet’s messenger,” said a voice below. “I have a commission to the prisoner: refuse me admittance, and the curse of God’s vicegerent be upon you!”
“If the Prophet’s curse is breathed from the lips of one of his holy messengers, say who that messenger is.”
“The fakeer of the valley, over whose reverend head ninety-six years have rolled; whose fasts and penances have gained him one of the high stations in Paradise, to which he will be exalted when the angel of death shall waft him from the shores of time to that unknown land where the harvest of eternal joys shall be reaped.”
“I know that voice, and shall heed the injunctions of so holy a man; but you must ascend alone: and I have no choice but to obey the orders imposed upon me, which are, to examine the person of every one admitted into this fortress. If it were the Prophet himself, I should be obliged to subject him to the scrutiny.”
“Examine me as you will, but let me see your prisoner. I come a messenger to him from God’s Prophet, and must perform my mission. Obedience is man’s heritage; resist the divine will at your peril. Lower the rope, that I may ascend.”
The prisoner was amazed at this announcement of a visitor—an accredited minister of the Prophet too; but, upon reflection, he thought it might be the friendly interposition of some one who wished to break his bonds, and release him from a captivity as odious as it was undeserved.
The reverence formerly entertained for some of the fakeers was sufficient to prevent any surprise at the readiness with which the soldier upon guard consented to admit him into the fortress. The man who demanded admittance was well known to all the country as a troglodyte saint, inhabiting a cavern hollowed out of the earth in the valley immediately beneath the fortress, and whose severe mortifications had elevated him to such a degree of sanctity as to render his intercession with the Divinity a sure pledge of pardon. He was held to have immediate communion with Heaven; no one, therefore, ventured to gainsay anything insisted upon by this holy man. He always bore about him the sacred filth of his long penance; and the very odours from his body, which was foul with the unwashed incrustations of years, were supposed to be redolent of that paradise where, as he maintained, a place was reserved for him at the right hand of Allah’s inspired minister.
Shortly after the dialogue just mentioned, the door of our captive’s chamber was unclosed, and the fakeer stood before him, accompanied by one of the garrison. The holy man was quite naked, so that nothing could be concealed about him. Although the skin hung loose upon his long narrow countenance, like shrivelled parchment drawn over the bones of a skeleton, nevertheless there gleamed from underneath his sharp projecting brows a pair of eyes which appeared as if they had concentrated the rays of the midday sun, lancing them at intervals from orbs that seemed to glare with the intense lustre of those potential fires which light the throne of Eblis. He was perfectly straight; but his head had sunk upon the shoulders, where it seemed to rest, giving to the upper part of his figure an aspect of hideous deformity. His arms were long, fleshless, and so stiff that he could not bring the joints even to a curve. He was a living skeleton.
The prisoner gazed upon him in silence, but did not utter a word. The fakeer stood still for a moment; then opening wide his gaunt, bony jaws, which displayed a black toothless chasm, and giving a sudden jerk of the head, a ring dropped from his mouth upon the floor. He now shook from his long bushy hair a single blossom of the rhododendron, and a small bit of panel, upon which was rudely scratched the form of a dove escaping from the talons of a hawk. They both fell beside the ring. Pointing emphatically to the three several objects he quitted the cell, and immediately gave the signal to be drawn up. The soldier who had accompanied him remained behind, gathered up the things which the holy visitor had cast upon the floor, showed them severally to the prisoner, though he held them at a distance, and asked him what was the communication intended to be conveyed?
“I am not read in the lore of sages,” replied the youth; “neither do I understand the mysteries of vaticination. You would probably make a better interpreter.”