The other interesting native of India who sat beside him, smoking hempseed and bhang in a handsome hubble-bubble, which had snake-like coils covered with red and gold-coloured thread rising from a stem of silver, shaped like a trumpet, was Ferishta Lodi, the Khond, whose attire consisted of little more than the amount indulged in by his Hindoo friend; but, unlike the puny latter, he was a man of powerful and muscular frame, great in stature, and terribly hideous in face and figure. He was rather pale-complexioned, for a Khond; but his visage bars description, for ugliness of contour and expression,—it was that of a tiger, but a tiger pitted with small-pox, the few wiry bristles of his moustache that stuck fiercely out from his long, upper lip, the fiery carbuncular red of his eyes, with two long and sharp side tusks, completing the illusion or resemblance.
Looking wonderfully handsome by contrast to those two men, Zohrab lounged between them, propped against the wall by a soft cushion; his bright steel cap, his beautiful Persian sabre, and gilded pistols lay near him; he had a long cherry-pipe stick in his mouth, and close by was a flask of Cabul wine, in which, natheless the wise precepts of Him of Mecca, he was indulging, greatly to Mabel's apprehension, somewhat freely.
"And so, Ferishta," said he, "the infernal Kuzzilbashes are in search of me too, you say?"
"Yes—aga; three rissallahs, at least."
"From where?"
"Shireen's fort."
"And led by whom?"
"The Khan Shireen in person."
"But how know you that they are after me?"
"Because I heard Shireen say, when he met Mohammed Saleh near Baber's tomb, that had he not been certain that the false plotter was Overhearing Zohrab, he might imagine that an evil spirit, like Sakkar, had assumed his shape and voice, to delude them both, and the Feringhee woman too. But that is all bosh; for who believes in such things now?"