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Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades. Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and their women.
At first the voice sounded like a distant call, musically sweet and low; the kind of note that we can imagine the Indian snake-charmers to use when the cobra raises its winged head in obedience to the pipe's resistless charm. Every ear was strained to hear; mine with the rest. So much preparation, so much faith must result in something. What was it to be?
The Nautch girls retired, and the "Nautch," as such an occasion is called, was ended. "Perhaps you have seen snakes enough for one day," said Lord Tremlyn; "but I thought you ought to see the performance of the snake-charmers. We will have it here instead of in the open street; and it is quite different from the show you witnessed this forenoon."
A man with a dip-net in his hand stood on a bamboo raft, on which was a basket like those the snake-charmers use in India, to receive his fish. The birds were about the size of geese. They dived into the water, and brought up a fish every time. They have a ring or cord on their necks so that they cannot swallow their prizes, and they drop them into the dip-net.
"Muttering a few words and crooning to it after the manner of snake-charmers, it presently became lethargic, and he seized it by the neck and poured a few drops from an earthen bottle down its throat; then he dropped its tawny coils into its cage again, and placed the cage in front of me. Soon the serpent roused. It glided frantically about its cage; like a trail of molten gold was its color.
Three Hindu snake-charmers leaped wildly in and out among the throng, flinging about dark, crooked sticks for snakes. There began to be a strange, deserted air about the house. Nobody knew what to do, where to go! "Can anything have happened to the family?" "Have they gone to Egypt?" whispered one. No ushers came to show them in.
Is it not because the modern imagination does not fear to picture the ghastly forms of vampires, ogres, ghouls, snake-charmers and jinns prowling about graveyards, that it can give to its fairies that incorporeal shape, that purity of essence, of which the heathen nymphs fall so far short?
A veiled woman would pass on an ass, preceded by black eunuchs, who cleared a passage for her by the free use of their sticks. Acrobats, having spread a carpet on the ground, juggled and performed skilful tricks before a circle of silent spectators. Snake-charmers unrolled their living girdles. A glittering, dusty, noisy, chattering crowd!
The snake-charmers usually perform other tricks, such as swallowing nails and sticking an iron bar in their eyes; and they wear their hair long like women, which gives them a very wild maniacal look. Three of the mamelukes and ourselves went to Wedyen, a town and date-wood about eight miles from Toser, to the left. The date-grove is extensive, and there are seven villages in it of the same name.
He declares he has not got the money, and that he cannot pay them, though they cut him to pieces. As he has collected a great portion of the tribute of the people, one cannot much pity the lying rogue. We were amused with the snake-charmers.
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