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it was necessary to be assured of his neutrality.

Sir Francis frankly put the question to him.

"Officers," replied the guide, "I am a Parsee, and this woman is a Parsee.
Command me as you will."

"Excellent!" said Mr. Fogg.

"However," resumed the guide, "it is certain, not only that
we shall risk our lives, but horrible tortures, if we are taken."

"That is foreseen," replied Mr. Fogg. "I think we must wait till night
before acting."

"I think so," said the guide.

The worthy Indian then gave some account of the victim, who,
he said, was a celebrated beauty of the Parsee race, and the
daughter of a wealthy Bombay merchant. She had received a
thoroughly English education in that city, and, from her manners
and intelligence, would be thought an European. Her name was Aouda.
Left an orphan, she was married against her will to the old rajah
of Bundelcund; and, knowing the fate that awaited her, she escaped,
was retaken, and devoted by the rajah's relatives, who had an interest
in her death, to the sacrifice from which it seemed she could not escape.

The Parsee's narrative only confirmed Mr. Fogg and his companions
in their generous design. It was decided that the guide should direct
the elephant towards the pagoda of Pillaji, which he accordingly approached
as quickly as possible. They halted, half an hour afterwards, in a copse,
some five hundred feet from the pagoda, where they were well concealed;
but they could hear the groans and cries of the fakirs distinctly.

They then discussed the means of getting at the victim. The guide
was familiar with the pagoda of Pillaji, in which, as he declared,
the young woman was imprisoned. Could they enter any of its doors
while the whole party of Indians was plunged in a drunken sleep,
or was it safer to attempt to make a hole in the walls?
This could only be determined at the moment and the place themselves;
but it was certain that the abduction must be made that night,
and not when, at break of day, the victim was led to her funeral pyre.
Then no human intervention could save her.

As soon as night fell, about six o'clock, they decided to make
a reconnaissance around the pagoda. The cries of the fakirs were
just ceasing; the Indians were in the act of plunging themselves
into the drunkenness caused by liquid opium mingled with hemp,
and it might be possible to slip between them to the temple itself.

The Parsee, leading the others, noiselessly crept through the wood,
and in ten minutes they found themselves on the banks of a small stream,
whence, by the light of the rosin torches, they perceived a pyre of wood,
on the top of which lay the embalmed body of the rajah, which was to be
burned with his wife. The pagoda, whose minarets loomed above the trees
in the deepening dusk, stood a hundred steps away.

"Come!" whispered the guide.

He slipped more cautiously than ever through the brush,
followed by his companions; the silence around was only broken

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