her up and their mingling breath sounded like a fierce hurricane. Chandrashekhar came and stood planting his feet on the hood of a huge serpent, and at once the serpents slipped away like the subsidence of an inundation. Again she found a mountain-like fire burn in an immeasurable pit, the flames shooting up to the skies and herself being consumed in it. Just at this moment Chandrashekhar came and sprinkled a handful of water on that mountain of fire, and instantly the fire went out; a cool breeze then sprang up, a clear bubbling stream issued from the pit, on its brink the flowers burst in bloom, on the water big lotuses blossomed and Chandrashekhar stood on them and was drifted along. Anon she found a huge tiger come and take her up a hill in its mouth; Chandrashekhar came and taking up a flower from his pot of worship threw it at the tiger; forthwith its head was severed and the tiger expired. Shaibalini found that its face resembled Foster’s.
Towards the close of night, it seemed to Shaibalini as if she was dead, yet conscious. The ghouls flew up the dark skies with her corpse. They caught her up by the hair and flew across vast regions of black clouds and lightning fires. Aerial fairies peeped out of the cloud—billows and laughed at her. Luminous sky-roving goddesses riding on golden clouds, their golden figures decked with garlands of lightning and tiaras of stars fixed; round their forehead covered with black tresses, glided along, and the air fouled with the contact of Shaibalini’s sinful body obscured their brightness. Terrible sky-dwelling ogresses reclining their inky bodies against huge masses of black clouds gambolled in vortices of furious hurricanes and with their mouths watering at the sight of the putrid-smelling corpse of Shaibalini hurried up with outspread jaws to swallow it up. Glowing
