Page:Srikanta (Part 1).djvu/108

Srikanta cremation-grounds,' he said, 'have a terror-inspiring quality all their own. One can count human skulls by the thousand there. Every night the dread goddess, Bhairavi, whose name means the Terrible One, comes with her ghostly attendants and plays with the skulls. And many a time have the resounding peals of their grim laughter stopped the heart-beats of unbelieving Englishmen and of white magistrates and judges.' He went on recounting his awful stories with such consummate art that many of us felt our flesh turn cold, though it was broad daylight and the tent was full of people. Glancing sideways I found that Piari had come up close to me and was drinking in the story-teller's words with greedy ears.

After he had finished his account of the cremation-ground the speaker looked at me disdainfully and asked, 'Well, sir, do you intend to go?'

'Of course I do.'

'You do! Well, as you please: but if you lose your life—'

'No, my dear sir, no,' I said laughing. 'If I lose my life the blame will not be yours. You needn't worry. But I will not go to an unknown place unarmed: I shall take my gun with me.'

After this, the conversation was directed against me, and, as it was becoming personal, I left the tent. The topics under discussion were hardly congenial: my aversion to killing birds coupled with my partiality for shooting ghosts; the fact that Bengalis read English and flouted the Hindu shastras; their impiousness in eating fowl and chicken; their boastfulness in word and cowardice in action; their tendency to faint with fright