FUTTEHPORE SIKRI. 
173 
cotton ; yet not without a reverend Brahmin, who 
would be able to protect them against ghostly evil, 
and also a band of the city tcliokedars (watchmen) 
to guard them against danger to their bodies. The 
night having closed in with heavy clouds betokening 
a storm, the party thought it advisable to carry 
torches, lest in the unusual darkness of the night they 
should be unable to discover the cotton, or to distin- 
guish by their characteristic features the beings of the 
three different worlds, should they meet with either. 
They lit their torches therefore, and having armed 
themselves with swords and weighty clubs of bamboo 
shod with iron, they set forth upon their search in 
silence, composing a party of about twenty. Scarcely 
a word was spoken on the road, except by the 
Brahmin, who alone preserved a face unmoved by the 
fear of supernatural danger ; each appeared absorbed 
in his own speculations, except when occasionally the 
exclamation of one or more of their number called 
the attention of the rest to a solitary pillar, or a dis- 
membered stump of wood, assuming all the terrors 
of ghostly animation in the fluctuating glare of the 
ruddy torch-light. As they journeyed onward the 
wind rose and moaned among the blackened walls and 
towers of the tottering ruins; now and then a heavy 
drop of rain fell hissing upon the flaring torches, 
and the inky clouds appeared to gather from all 
quarters of the heavens ; but the natives of India 
q 3 
