Around the World in Eighty Days. Жюль Верн

instruments approached. Monotonous chants were mingled with the sound of the drums and cymbals. Soon the head of the procession appeared from under the trees, at fifty paces from the spot occupied by Mr Fogg and his companions. Through the branches they readily distinguished the curious personnel of this religious ceremony.

      In the first line were the priests, with mitres upon their heads and attired in long robes adorned with gold and silver lace. They were surrounded by men, women, and children, who were singing a sort of funeral psalmody, interrupted at regular intervals by the beating of tom-toms and cymbals. Behind them on a car with large wheels, whose spokes and felloes represented serpents intertwined, appeared a hideous statue, drawn by two pairs of richly caparisoned zebus. This statue had four arms, its body coloured with dark red, its eyes haggard, its hair tangled, its tongue hanging out, its lips coloured with henna and betel. Its neck was encircled by a collar of skulls, around its waist a girdle of human hands. It was erect upon a prostrate giant, whose head was missing.

      Sir Francis Cromarty recognised this statue.

      The goddess Kali,” he murmured; “the goddess of love.”

      “Of death, I grant, but of love, never!” said Passepartout. “The ugly old woman!”

      The Parsee made him a sign to keep quiet.

      Around the statue there was a group of old fakirs, jumping and tossing themselves about convulsively. Smeared with bands of ochre, covered with cross-like cuts, whence their blood escaped drop by drop—stupid fanatics, who, in the great Hindu ceremonies, precipitated themselves under the wheels of the car of Juggernaut.