MALAY SKETCHES
battle. They were, however, after some trouble, caught but four or five women and carried forcibly out of the Hall, but not until their captors had been made to feel the weight of the magic wands. The two younger girls, who looked as if they too would like to be "possessed," but did not know how to accomplish it, were easily caught and removed.
The band, whose strains had been increasing in wildness and in time, ceased plying on the removal of the dancers, and the nautch, which had begun at 10 P.M., was over.
The Raja, who had only appeared at 4 A.M., told me that one of the elder girls, when she became "properly possessed," lived for months on nothing but flowers, a pretty and poetic conceit.
As we left the Astana, and taking boat rowed slowly to the vessel waiting for us off the river's mouth, the rising sun was driving the fog from the numbers of lovely green islets, that seemed to float like dew-drenched lotus leaves on the surface of the shallow stream.
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