eldest, striking at each other with their wands, seemed inclined to turn the
symbolical into a real battle. They were, however, after some trouble, caught by
four or five women and carried forcibly out of the Hall, but not until their
captors had been made to feel the weight of the magic wands. The two younger
girls, who looked as if they too would like to be “possessed,” but did not know
how to accomplish it, were easily caught and removed.
“The bands, whose strains had been increasing in wildness and in time, ceased
playing on the removal of the dancers, and the nautch, which had begun at 10
P.M., was over.
“The Raja, who had only appeared at 4 A.M., told me that one of the elder girls,
when she became “properly possessed,” lived for months on nothing but flowers,
a pretty and poetic conceit.
“As we left the Astana, and taking boat rowed slowly to the vessel waiting for us
off the river’s mouth, the rising sun was driving the fog from the numbers of
lovely green islets, that seemed to float like dew-drenched lotus leaves on the
surface of the shallow stream.^153 ”