few seconds, to disappear
under the water.

"She is a fiend, she cannot be a woman!" exclaimed the colonel, seeing
the head of the witch immersed for the sixth time in the water.

"Hang me if I know!" grumbled Mr. Y----, nervously pulling his beard.
"The only thing I know is that a grain of her cursed rice entered my
throat, and I can't get it out!"

"Hush, hush! Please, do be quiet!" implored Sham Rao. "By talking you
will spoil the whole business!"

I glanced at Narayan and lost myself in conjectures. His features, which
usually were so calm and serene, were quite altered at this moment, by a
deep shadow of suffering. His lips trembled, and the pupils of his eyes
were dilated, as if by a dose of belladonna. His eyes were lifted over
the heads of the crowd, as if in his disgust he tried not to see what
was before him, and at the same time could not see it, engaged in a deep
reverie, which carried him away from us, and from the whole performance.

"What is the matter with him?" was my thought, but I had no time to ask
him, because the witch was again in full swing, chasing her own shadow.

But with the seventh goddess the programme was slightly changed. The
running of the old woman changed to leaping. Sometimes bending down to
the ground, like a black panther, she leaped up to some worshipper, and
halting before him touched his forehead with her finger, while her long,
thin body shook with inaudible laughter. Then, again, as if shrinking
back playfully from her shadow, and chased by it, in some uncanny game,
the witch appeared to us like a horrid caricature of Dinorah, dancing
her mad dance. Suddenly she straightened herself to her full height,
darted to the portico and crouched before the smoking censer, beating
her forehead against the granite steps. Another jump, and she was quite
close to us, before the head of the monstrous Sivatherium. She knelt
down again and bowed her head to the ground several times, with the
sound of an empty barrel knocked against something hard.

We had hardly the time to spring to our feet and shrink back when she
appeared on the top of the Sivatherium's head, standing there amongst
the horns.

Narayan alone did not stir, and fearlessly looked straight in the eyes
of the frightful sorceress.

But what was this? Who spoke in those deep manly tones? Her lips were
moving, from her breast were issuing those quick, abrupt phrases, but
the voice sounded hollow as if coming from beneath