manner they traversed a frightful
desert, plunged into a forest of brushwood, finally forded a stream, and
after two hours arrived at an open clearing, in the centre of which was
a hut. An ape occupied the threshold, a vampire bat hung from a
convenient beam, a cobra was curled underneath, and a black cat welcomed
them with arched back. The ape spoke Tamil freely and then marched off,
reflecting upon which circumstance, the doctor thought that it was quite
the strangest thing in the world.

The hut was the covering of a species of well, down which, with some
quakings for the safety of limbs and body, our adventurer was persuaded
to follow his guides, and they reached, at the end of a long flight of
steps, an immense mortuary chamber. There, on a bed of cocoa-nut fibre,
he found his patient, from whose mummified and hideous appearance he at
once concluded that she was entirely given over to Satan and had long
been a lost soul. As spiritually, so also physically, she was past all
human aid; indeed she seemed dead already, and he gave his medical
opinion to that effect. The countenance of this opinion was apparently
the warrant required for the proceedings which immediately followed, and
it is difficult to understand why fakirs in league with Satan--for such
we are told they were--and possessed, no doubt, both of ordinary native
and occult methods of diagnosis, could not have discovered this for
themselves, more especially as the lady, who seems to have been a
pythoness by profession, and commerced with a familiar spirit, had
already reached the ripe age of 152 years.

To shorten a long and peculiarly noisome story, the astounded doctor
ultimately beheld the dying woman revive suddenly, and crawl to the end
of the chamber, where there was an elaborate altar surmounted by a
figure of Baphomet; the fakirs crowded round her; the ape, the bat, the
snake, the cat, all appeared on the scene; a brilliant illumination was
produced by means of eleven lamps suspended from the ceiling; the woman
drew herself into an erect position; the fakirs piled resinous branches
round her; amidst invocations, mysterious chants, and yells, she
permitted herself to be burned to death, her body slowly blackening, her
face turning scarlet in the flames, her eyes starting from her head,
and so she passed into ashes.

Why was the doctor privileged to be present at these proceedings?
Because an agent of the fakirs had previously investigated his
por