to boot, to take her away, or disturb her tranquillity of celestial—what shall I call it?—I am lost for a name!
"Presently both the girls joined the mystic sensuous-magic dance; and one of them seized me suddenly by the arm and draped me to the central vessel, saying. 'Look, Sahib, look!' I did so, but instead of a black mass of seething boiling gum, I beheld a cauldron bubbling over with the most gorgeously pink-tinted froth that imagination ever dreamed of: and while I stood there marvelling at the singular phenomenon—for even bubble took the form of a flower.—lotus, amaranth, violet, lily—Rose!—the old Sheikh drew nigh and said, 'Sahib, now's the time!' pointing to the bundle containing the empty shell and the one already half filled. Acting on the suggestion, I held forth the empty shell; into which the girl ladled about a gill of the contents of the swinging vessel; and the Sheikh produced two perfectly clean ovoid glass plates, over which he poured respectively the contents of the two shells, and held both over the fire for a minute, till dry. and then handing them to me, said, 'Look, and wish, and will, to see whatever is nearest and dearest to your heart!' Internally I laughed, but he took the two shells, and while he held them, I looked into the hollow face of the glass which was covered with the singular substance first handed to me, and gazing steadily about half a minute.—the mystic-dance going on meanwhile,—I willed to see my home and people in far-off Albion; but nothing appeared. The old man smiled. 'Now look at the other one, which is a true Bhatteyeh—full of divine light and imperial power, and you will—'Before he finished, I glanced into the other, and—scarce hoping that the Western reader will credit me with anything loftier than a vivid imagination, fired almost beyond endurance, by the lascivious surroundings in the midst of which I was. I nevertheless clearly and distinctly affirm, on the hitherto unsullied honor of an English gentleman, and a colonel in Her Majesty's service, that I saw a wave of pale, white light, flit like a cloud-shadow over the face of the mysterious disk, and in the centre of that light a landscape, composed of trees, houses, lands, lowing cattle, and forms of human beings; each and every item of which I recognized as the old familiar things of
