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112 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