Page 68 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES

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 who looked as if too would
younger girls, they
"
like to be possessed," but did not know how to
accomplish it, were easily caught and removed.
The band, 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 who had told
Raja, only appeared at 4 A.M.,
me that one of the elder when she became
girls,
"
properly possessed," lived for months on nothing
a and
but flowers, pretty 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.