Legendary & romantic tales of Indian history

by Hobart Caunter

“Alas! my boy,” said the old man, “there is little doubt but your suspicions respecting the end of that poor girl are correct. The strictness of the Guebres in maintaining the purity of their women is so severe that even the slightest suspicion subjects them to certain death. The power of inflicting summary punishment upon offenders of this kind is in the hands of the parent, and pardon seldom passes from the domestic tribunal for those sins to which death is awarded. The poisoned bowl has sent that innocent victim to the land of shadows, where our spirits shall everlastingly wail or rejoice.”

The son concurred in the probability of this having been the fact, as he recollected the swollen and blackened state of the corpse. The conversation becoming painful, he relapsed into his former mood of silent abstraction.

It happened that among the property which the merchant had put on board the vessel was a large royal tiger, so fierce that it was placed in an iron cage, secured at the stern. The merchant had purchased it some short time before he quitted Surat, intending to present it to the King of Ghizny, who, as he had ascertained, possessed an extensive menagerie, and was particularly fond of collecting wild beasts. The tiger had been caught in a trap, and never, therefore, having been tamed, was excessively ferocious.

They had been but a few days on their voyage, when the weather began to assume a threatening aspect. The sun was overcast, and the heat became almost suffocating. Not a breath of air stirred. The water had a gentle swell, and was as smooth as a mirror; but there was a dull greenish tint on the surface, which looked like a skin in the human body tinged with the morbid hue of disease. Not a ripple agitated the lazy mass, which undulated with a slow sluggish movement as if its natural principle of motion were impeded. The vessel laboured through the glassy but ponderous waters with a lumbering uneasy roll, that rendered it difficult to maintain an easy position either within or without the cabin.

The haze thickened and lay upon the sea, which it shrouded with a thin vapoury veil, through which, when the clouds rolled from before his orb, the sun occasionally glared with a fiery and portentous glow. The Hindoo sailors were silent and looked grave, seating themselves by the ribs of the vessel and looking into the sky with a foreboding gloom that did not much tend to cheer the heart of the venerable merchant. They appeared, however, to take no precautions against the approach of a hurricane.

The boat had been under easy sail the whole day, and she was now left almost to take her own course. The navigators began to chew opium and to lie listlessly upon their rugs, as if anxious to put themselves in a state of enviable oblivion as fast as possible. The man at the helm fastened it in a certain position, and followed the example of his companions. Soon after noon the wind freshened; the sun more frequently looked from behind his curtain of dusky vapours, scattering through the mist a red ochreous glow upon the sluggish waters. Clouds, deepening in intensity as they gathered, rose rapidly from the horizon, and overspread the heavens with their rolling masses, which seemed to hang over the sea like a pall.

The sun at length went down in darkness. Some of the clouds upon the horizon, as he sank behind them, were tinged with a dull fiery tint, resembling the hue of hot iron immediately after the first red heat has subsided. The wind was now blowing a gale, and the wrack flew over the heavens as if the winged messengers of the skies were hurrying to collect the elements for the work of devastation. The vessel was old and leaky; her seams opened to the assaulting billows, which had now cast off their sluggishness, and hissed and foamed around her with a fierce activity of motion that darkened the countenances of the native seamen, and appalled the two passengers. The merchant looked upon the troubled heavens, and his heart sickened. The fearful presentiment of death passed over his excited mind with the fierce rush of the whirlwind. He dropped upon his knees: his prayer was incoherent; it was broken by the frightful images presented to his mind. The son was less agitated. His late sorrows had softened the terrors of the scene, and the memory of that hapless girl who had died—and perhaps a death of agony—for his sake, who now appeared about to follow her to the last home of the blessed, subdued his alarms. He soon grew calm. In proportion as the peril increased, he braced his mind to meet the coming shock, but the poor old merchant was fearfully excited. He had looked forward still to years of enjoyment in his native land, to which he was attached by a link as strong as human sympathy could forge. He continued to pray, but his aspirations seemed not to rise beyond his lips: they were stifled in the terrors which gave them their first impulse, but crushed them in the soul as they struggled to get free.

With the darkness the hurricane rose to a climax. The booming waves, gleaming with that pale phosphorescent light which seems to make the gloom of a tempestuous night only more hideous, broke over the vessel’s bow, heaving into her undecked hull a body of sparkling water that threatened every moment to swamp her. Still she rushed onward through the foaming ocean, leaping over the billows with a sort of convulsive energy that shook every timber in her frame, and opened her seams to the assailing element. The tiger roared, dashing from one side to the other of his cage, which he threatened every instant to shake in pieces. His howlings were continued with scarcely any intermission, and added another feature of terror to the storm.

The Hindoo sailors were perfectly passive. The vast quantities of opium they had swallowed stupefied them so completely that they appeared utterly unconscious of the surrounding peril. The vessel was allowed to take her own course, and she was urged towards the shore. The rudder was torn from her stern, and she lay like a huge log upon the convulsed bosom of the ocean. Not a hope of escape remained. She was nearly filled and on her beam ends. She rocked and heaved under the lashings of the storm, like a creature in the throes of death. Her sails were rent, and fluttered in the gale in thin strips, clattering amid the roar of the tempest to the answering groans of the masts, that bent and quivered like the tall thin stalk of the young bamboo.

Midnight passed, but the storm did not abate. The air was loaded with pitchy masses of rolling vapour, which hung so low that the vessel’s masts almost seemed to pierce them as she rose upon the circling crests of the billows; they spread like a pall over the Heavens. There was no light but what arose from the sea, and the intense darkness rendered the aspect of the tempest still more terrific. During the whole night it continued without intermission. The dawn revealed a wide expanse of waters agitated into frightful commotion; the wind howling through the air with a vehemence that seemed at once to shake the earth and convulse the sea; the Heavens overspread with an interminable tract of deep blue vapour which the eye could not penetrate. The vessel now began to reel and stagger under the weight of water which she had frequently shipped from the heavy seas that had dashed over her. She laboured with difficulty through the rolling surges.