PART VIII.
IN BENGAL.
CHAPTER I.
BEGUM SUMRO.
The next morning Hugo resumed his confession:
I hope the honorable gentlemen of the court will pardon me, and not imagine I wish to prolong this hearing, if I mention what may seem trifling details. They are absolutely necessary to render intelligible the recital of my most serious transgressions: idolatry, polygamy, and regicide—
"All of which you will prove to have been so many praiseworthy acts!" interpolated the chair.
To begin with—continued the prisoner, paying no heed to the chair's interpolation—from one of the upper windows of a tall tower that stands on the left bank of the Ganges, in the neighborhood of Benares, projects a bamboo pole as thick as a man's waist; and from it depends, by an iron chain, a large iron cage. A man is confined in this cage. His food is conveyed to him from the window of the tower, through a long hollow pipe of bamboo. The cage hangs over a large pool of water that is fed by an arm of the river, and swarms with voracious crocodiles.
It is a horrible sight, in the late afternoon, to see these ferocious brutes lift their heads from the water, and grin at the man in the cage. If he should break the iron bars which confine him in his airy prison, and attempt to escape by leaping into the pool, the hungry monsters would devour him skin and hair.
"Who is the man?" queried the chair.