th gray brows, the large,
deep mouth gapes immoderately, and reptiles have made their nest between
the lips of stone; by the light of the moon, a hideous swarm is
there dimly visible. A broad girdle, adorned with symbolic ornaments,
encircles the body of this statue, and fastens a long sword to its right
side. The giant has four extended arms, and, in his great hands, he
bears an elephant's head, a twisted serpent, a human skull, and a bird
resembling a heron. The moon, shedding her light on the profile of this
statue, serves to augment the weirdness of its aspect.
Here and there, enclosed in the half-crumbling walls of brick, are
fragments of stone bas-reliefs, very boldly cut; one of those in the
best preservation represents a man with the head of an elephant, and the
wings of a bat, devouring a child. Nothing can be more gloomy than these
ruins, buried among thick trees of a dark green, covered with frightful
emblems, and seen by the moonlight, in the midst of the deep silence of
night.
Against one of the walls of this ancient temple, dedicated to some
mysterious and bloody Javanese divinity, leans a kind of hut, rudely
constructed of fragments of brick and stone; the door, made of woven
rushes, is open, and a red light streams from it, which throws its rays
on the tall grass that covers the ground. Three men are assembled in
this hovel, around a clay-lamp, with a wick of cocoanut fibre steeped in
palm-oil.
The first of these three, about forty years of age, is poorly clad in
the European fashion; his pale, almost white, complexion, announces
that he belongs to the mixed race, being offspring of a white father and
Indian mother.
The second is a robust African negro, with thick lips, vigorous
shoulders, and lank legs; his woolly hair is beginning to turn gray;
he is covered with rags, and stands close beside the Indian. The third
personage is asleep, and stretched on a mat in the corner of the hovel.
These three men are the three Thuggee chiefs, who, obliged to fly from
the continent of India, have taken refuge in Java, under the guidance of
Mahal the Smuggler.
"The Malay does not return," said the half-blood, named Faringhea, the
most redoubtable chief of this homicidal sect: "in executing our orders,
he has perhaps been killed by Djalma."
"The storm of this morning brought every reptile out of the earth," said
the negro; "the Malay must have been bitten, and his body ere now a nest
of serpents."
"
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