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.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] The Gecco.
CHAPTER II.
The Mogul was left chained to one of the statues on the side-wall, when the fakeers betook themselves to their night’s repose: the chain by which he was fastened only enabled him to seat himself upon the floor. He could not lay his body at full length, and was therefore obliged to lean his back against the figure to which he was attached. In that position he tried for some time to sleep, but without effect; feverish and distracting thoughts obtruded. His reflections were of the most melancholy character. He was surrounded by a body of enthusiasts, into whose power he had fallen, and who would very probably doom him to some cruel death, by way of celebrating the orgies of their sanguinary superstition. Fanatics are the worst of tyrants; who, alas! too often do the work of the devil, whilst they fancy themselves working in the service of their God. In proportion as the infatuation takes possession of their minds, they become cruel towards all such as they imagine seceders from the worship of that deity of whom they claim to be vicegerents, and see no virtue but in those who, like themselves, have been inoculated with the rabies of spiritual enthusiasm. In every age of the world, in every country, and among all communities, that sort of enthusiasm which claims exclusive spiritual endowment, and pretends to supernatural communications, is the greatest bane against which pure Religion has ever had to contend. It invests her in a factitious garb that conceals while it arrays her. False zeal has driven more from the true fold than have fallen victims to the slaughter of war, the inroads of pestilence, or the devastations of famine. No one is driven into the paths of peace, or scourged into the embrace of virtue. All men are won to good by its own sweet suggestions, by gentle implorations, by the light and fragrant blessings which it offers to those who properly seek to possess them; not by those terrible denunciations which scare the timid, offend the proud, and provoke the contempt of the reckless.
The prisoner was pursuing these reflections with a melancholy sense of his present condition. He gazed round the apartment to see if he might encourage any hopes of escape. The embers yet glowing upon the stone floor, threw a sickly light around, which only rendered the remote gloom of the chamber still more murky. The fakeers, who were stretched at length near the smouldering fire, looked like so many semi-monsters under the power of enchantment. Their hard breathing, the only symptom of life which they exhibited, sufficiently indicated the intensity of their slumber, that seemed to have been rendered more profound by the horrible meal of which they had partaken just before they gave themselves up to the enjoyments of “nature’s sweet restorer.”
The prisoner, closing his eyes, tried to conjure up images before the speculum of his mind more agreeable than those realities upon which it was an agony to gaze;—finally overcome by bodily fatigue and mental exhaustion, he fell into an unquiet sleep.