102 SPORTING IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



guests, and singing of rather an uproarious description, and 

 prose hyperbole, had usurped the place of more sober con- 

 versation, a romantic ensign, who had lately joined, offered to 

 wager a dozen of claret that he would ride alone to the Parsee 

 hill, enter the tower, and return with the skull of some 

 defunct fire-worshipper, which he would place upon the mess- 

 table, as a proof of his having accomplished his foolish and 

 sacrilegious adventure. The bet was soon accepted by 

 another budding warrior of the Honourable East India Com- 

 pany, and a servant dispatched for his horse (a quiet Arab), 

 which, with the usual docility and amiability of the race, 

 permitted his tipsy and foolish master to mount him in 

 rather an unusual manner, and at a very unusual hour, and 

 gallop away in the prescribed direction. 



A considerable time elapsed since his departure, during 

 which the festivities of the evening were carried on as usual, 

 when he suddenly entered the mess-room, pale as death, 

 his eyes starting from their sockets, and his whole appear- 

 ance that of one deranged. The lower part of his dress was 

 covered with some indescribably fithy substance. He made 

 a few steps towards the table, arid fell to the ground vio- 

 lently convulsed, and was carried off to his quarters by his 

 servants. 



The following morning, he was labouring under the effects 

 of fever in its worst form, and in the lucid intervals from 

 delirium explained to me and several others, that, having 

 entered the Parsee tower with the intention of picking up 

 and carrying away one of the numerous skulls, always dis- 

 tinguishable in the day time scattered about on the grating 

 he trod upon a half-decayed corpse, into which he abso- 

 lutely sank up to the knees, and that the horror of his posi- 

 tion, just visible by the struggling light of the moon, the 

 dreadful effluvia, and all the ghastly objects around him, 

 maddened his brain, and caused him, by one strong effort, 



