tand stark naked in the presence he conceded
us a clout apiece torn from a filthy length of calico that some one had
tossed in a corner. And he tore another piece of filthy red cotton cloth
in halves, and divided it between us to twist around our heads. King
laughed at me.

"You look like a fine, fat Bengali," he said.

The Mahatma called to one of the servitors to bring ashes in a brass
bowl. We watched him rake them out from under the fires, shake water on
them, and mix them into paste as casually as if the business were part
of his regular routine. The Mahatma took the bowl from him and plastered
King and me liberally with the stuff, making King look like a scabrous
fanatic, and I don't doubt I looked worse, having more acreage of
anatomy. Last of all he put some on himself, but only here and there, as
if his sanctity only demanded a little piercing out. Then he raised a
flagstone in one corner of the chamber that swung easily on pivots set
in sockets in the masonry, and led the way again.

We were evidently in a system of caves that had been quarried into shape
centuries before the Christian era. They seemed originally to have been
bubbles and blow-holes in volcanic rock, and to have been connected
together by piercing the walls between them. There was certainly no
intelligible plan attached to their arrangement, for we went first up,
then down, then sideways, losing all sense of elevation and direction.
But we passed through at least three score of those connected
blow-holes, and the air in some of the higher ones was so foul that
breathing it made you weak at the knees. Nevertheless, in every single
one there was an anchorite of some kind, engaged in painful meditation.
In each cave was an infinitesimal lamp made of baked clay and fed with
vegetable oil that provided more smoke than flame, and the walls and
ceiling were deep with the soot of centuries.

Following the Gray Mahatma's example King and I took handfuls of the
soot and smeared it on our breasts, stomachs and faces, to mingle with
the ashes in a mask of holiness. By the time we had finished that there
was not much chance of any one mistaking us for anything but two
half-crazed aspirants for sanctity.

I could not possibly have drawn a tracing of our own course, for it was
rank bewildering; but we emerged at last under the stars by the side of
a great stone tank. It might have been a bathing pool, for along each
side steps disappeared into the water.