CONCERNING SNAKES.

He was a most venerable-looking old Muhammadan with a flowing grey beard, dignified with all the dignity of the East. Not even his dirty white puggaree, or his still dirtier heterogeneous collection of garments, consisting mainly of a seeming multiplicity of shirts, jauntily surmounted by what had once evidently been a Sahib's waistcoat of gorgeous hue, a dhotie, and a pair of carpet slippers in the last stages of decay, could hide the presence that was his birthright as a Follower of the Prophet. I found him seated cross-legged under the porch at the foot of the veranda steps as I came out of my bungalow on my way across to Katchery.1 Two hours before my Chaprassi had told me that a tamasha-wala 3 was waiting outside and asking permission to show me his conjuring tricks; but I had sent a message saying that I was too busy to see him, and had promptly forgotten him. With true Eastern patience and persistence, however, he had waited on, doubtless discovering the hour that I usually went to court, and obtaining permission to seat himself in full view on the drive by means of a small gratuity to my Chaprassi, his reward coming as I ran down the veranda steps and found him successfully blocking the way. Beside him were two large open baskets, carefully covered over with cloths that had once been white, and a small bundle tied up in a red and white duster. In front of him in a semicircle were five little baskets, round and flat, a piece of string attached to the top of each. Between his knees rested a quaint little drum, painted in scarlet and yellow, which he proceeded to beat loudly as I approached.

'Salaam, Sahib, Salaam,' he said without rising, but bowing his head almost down to the ground as he sat.

A Chaprassi, suddenly roused to officiousness, ran forward to remove the obstruction he had doubtless condoned, if not permitted, and I was about to pass on saying that I had no time to see him just then, when by chance I caught sight of his eyes fixed unblinkingly upon me. They were, I think, without exception, the most curious eyes I have ever seen. I had been several years in India and had heard much of Indian jadu, but never before had I looked into an Indian's eyes that riveted the attention with • Conjurer.

1 Office or court,

• Orderly.

• Magic.

anything of the magnetic force of this old man's. Set in his wrinkled brown face, they seemed the colour of the brightest gold. Out of the darkness of his skin they gleamed with a sparkling glitter that reminded me curiously of a tiger's into which I had once looked at quarters much too close to be pleasant. They had the same horrible fascination as if they held one against one's will, and they inspired the same uneasy feeling that if one gazed long enough into them one would lose one's personality and sink into nothingness. One felt as one looked into them that if ever any man possessed mesmeric influence it was the owner of those glittering, red-gold eyes.

It was, doubtless, only a matter of a few seconds that the old man's eyes held mine, but it was long enough to give me an uncanny sensation such as I have seldom experienced. I felt as if in the midst of a very common-place morning's work I had been suddenly brought up against something altogether unusual and mysterious. It seems an absurd thing to have to set down in cold print, but I was conscious that something was happening, yet not quite sure, even in the blazing Indian sunlight, that what I saw was not a delusion of the imagination. The drum that had been throbbing monotonously under his supple fingers ceased abruptly, and after what seemed a moment's hesitation his hands moved stealthily upwards. With his eyes still fixed upon mine he slowly unbuttoned the gorgeous waistcoat, and out from under each of his armpits a snake uncurled itself. With rapid sinuous movements they glided from either side round behind the man's neck, and changing places wriggled back under the waistcoat, which he quickly but with the same stealthy movements rebuttoned. It was all over in a moment, and though I seemed to have seen what I have described it was as if I had seen it in a glass darkly,' and as I looked down at the old man beating his drum again exactly as he had been a few seconds before, I felt that I could not be absolutely certain that I had really seen anything at all.

With a quick jerky movement of his head that released my strained attention, the old man took his eyes from my face and, leaning forward, quickly lifted the lid of each of the five baskets that stood in a semicircle in front of him. From each with the same uniform movement, almost as if they were worked by mechanism from within, rose a cobra. Curled up inside, each one filled its basket to the fullest extent, and as the lid was lifted uncurled itself to the height of about a foot, and, expanding its head, stood,

if it can be called standing, swaying gently from side to side, facing the old man, the rest of their bodies still coiled up in their baskets. The jadu-wala was making a soft hissing sound through his teeth, and gently passing to and fro in front of them a short coloured stick that he had produced from somewhere out of his voluminous clothing. The five snakes, all exactly alike and raised the same height from the ground, with their evil fangs darting and quivering as if they longed to strike, swayed ceaselessly from side to side as if top-heavy or mesmerised by the slowly waving wand. Then, as quickly and as deftly as he had removed the lids of the baskets, the jadu-wala replaced them, the cobras submitting to be pressed down with the lids over their heads and curling themselves up again in the confined space allotted to them without the smallest protest.

The last cobra covered up, the old man looked up at me. The change that had come over his expression was startling. In place of the tense eager look and the glittering compelling eyes there was a bland and childlike smile, deprecating and subservient, while the eyes seemed to have softened into nothing more arresting than a weak, unnoticeable light brown.

'Where are the other two snakes?' I asked him, pointing to his waistcoat, beneath which they had seemed to disappear.

'The other two snakes, Sahib ?' he answered with delightfully simulated surprise and incomprehension. 'Poor jadu-wala only having five snakes, all five being here,' and again he quickly lifted the five lids and shut them down again. All the five snakes were certainly there. But that by no means proved that there were not two more.

'The two that crawled out of your waistcoat and back again,' I said where are they?'

'Out of my waistcoat, Sahib ?' he queried again with his innocent smile. There being nothing here,' and with that he opened his waistcoat and pulled at his shirts, slapping them and pressing them close against his chest. Rising up, he shook himself and offered to let me search his person myself. But it was not necessary. It was obvious that whatever may have been there before, there was nothing there now.

Nothing here, Sahib. Nothing,' he repeated, re-adjusting his costume and sitting down again.

Then he buttoned his waistcoat and patted himself on each side of his chest and looked up at me with his bland and deprecating smile.

'Never any snakes here, Sahib,' he said.

'Never any snakes there!' I exclaimed, the surprise and incredulity, altogether without dissimulation, being in my voice this time.

'Never any snakes here, Sahib,' he assured me. Then, looking up into my face with a smile of almost injured innocence, he laughed softly as at some absurd and impossible idea. It was an excellent bit of acting. In spite of myself it increased my doubts as to what I had actually seen.

To my further surprise, when I asked him to do the trick again he stoutly denied all knowledge of it. No snakes had ever crawled out of his waistcoat. It must have been the Sahib's imagination. Nothing I could say would move him. He was most anxious, however, to show me other tricks. I pulled out my watch. He had already delayed me some ten minutes, and I was due to take my seat in court in just two minutes more.

'I can't stay now,' I said.

'Then I will return when the Presence pleases,' he said quickly, determined not to be baulked of his show.

Suddenly I remembered that I had a dinner-party on that evening. Watching him might be a welcome relief from the ordinary desultory after-dinner conversation of a small moffussil1 station for those who did not play bridge.

'I have a burra khana 2 on to-night,' I told him, and if you will come here at nine o'clock and give a good performance before my guests, I will give you some backsheesh and a chit.'

The old man leaned forward eagerly.

' And some whisky?' he added quickly. His eyes glowed again with their curious glittering light, and there was nothing of the bland and childlike in the pathetically keen old face that looked up into mine.

Now whisky and all strong drink are anathema to the true Muhammadan. The Koran strictly forbids indulgence in them to the Followers of the Prophet. But when I expressed my surprise at his request, Kia karega, Sahib, kia karega?' was all he said, spreading out his hands deprecatingly. I am old and feeble, and the roads I travel are long. Kia karega?'

Then, as I shook my head at him reprovingly, be added, unexpectedly, 'Moreover, Sahib, did not Hafiz love the flowing

1 Country.

3 Letter of recommendation.

2 Big dinner.

4. What can I do?'

bowl, and was he not buried in Shiraz as a good Mussulman after all?'

Be not sad, whatever change
O'er the busy world may range ;
Harp and lute together bring
Sweetly mingling string with string.
Unto Hafiz, Boy, do you

Instant bring a cup or two:

Bring them, for the wine shall flow,
Whether it be law or no !'

The quotation from the old pleasure-loving Persian poet in the soft, mellifluous Persian tongue, fell glibly from his lips as if he had used it often before in self-defence; but I had no time to stay and point out to him that, admirable as Hafiz might be as a poet, his greatest admirer would hardly select him as a type of Muhammadan virtue, and I hurried off to court, the old man promising that he would not fail to turn up at nine o'clock that evening.

It was considerably past that hour when we came out of the dining-room after dinner, and the old tamasha-wala was already waiting for us in the veranda, where he had carefully disposed himself and his chattels. As I had expected, an Indian jadu-wala quite failed to entice the confirmed bridge-players away from the card-table, and when we had settled them to their game, eight of us remained, three ladies and five men. Seating ourselves in the dimly lit veranda, five of us were more or less in a semicircle, with three of the men slightly behind. The old man's curious eyes were at once noticed and commented upon. He had so arranged the light from the little native chiraghs 1 placed on the ground beside him that it fell full upon his face, leaving everything else as much as possible in shadow. That he was considerably above the average of Indian travelling conjurers was evident from the first tricks he displayed. They were much the usual stock-in-trade, but they were excellently done, and his manner was perfect. The mango trick, consisting of the planting of a mango-stone in a flower-pot and the gradual growth of the tree, shown at various stages, until it reached the height of about two feet; the extraordinary production of a pair of pigeons and a couple of rabbits from nowhere in particular

1 Lamps.