Our experiment was made on that verandah in the presence of the family of the landlord – a half-caste Portuguese from the south – my friend and myself and two freshly-imported Frenchmen, who laughed outrageously at our superstition. Time, three o’clock in the afternoon. The heat was suffocating, but notwithstanding, the holy man – a coffee-coloured, living skeleton – demanded that the motion of the pankah (hanging fan worked by a cord) should be stopped. He gave no reason, but it was because the agitation of the air interferes with all delicate magnetic experiments. We had all heard of the "rolling-pot" as an agency for the detection of theft in India – a common iron pot being made, under the influence of a Hindû conjurer, to roll of its own impulse, without any hands touching it, to the very spot where the stolen goods are concealed. The gossain proceeded otherwise. He first of all demanded some article that had been latest in contact with the contents of the valise; a pair of gloves was handed him. He pressed them between his thin palms, and, rolling them over and over again, then dropped them on the floor and proceeded to turn himself slowly around, with arms outstretched and fingers expanded, as though he were seeking the direction in which the property lay. Suddenly he stopped with a jerk, sank gradually to the floor and remained motionless, sitting cross-legged and with his arms still outstretched in the same direction, as though plunged in a cataleptic trance. This lasted for over an hour, which in that suffocating atmosphere was to us one long torture. Suddenly the landlord sprang from his seat to the balustrade, and began intently looking towards the river, in which direction our eyes also turned. Coming from whence, or how, we could not tell, but out there, over the water, and near its surface, was a dark object approaching. What it was we could not make out; but the mass seemed impelled by some interior force to revolve, at first slowly, but then faster and faster as it drew near. It was as though supported on an invisible pavement, and its course was in a direct line as the bee flies. It reached the bank, disappeared again among the high vegetation, and anon, rebounding with force as it leaped over the low garden wall, flew rather than rolled on to the verandah and dropped with a heavy thud under the extended palms of the gossain. A violent, convulsive tremor shook the frame of the old man, as with a deep sigh he opened his half-closed eyes. All were astonished, but the Frenchmen stared at the bundle with an expression of idiotic terror in their eyes. Rising from the ground the holy man opened the tarred canvas envelope, and within were found all the stolen articles down to the least thing. Without a word or waiting for thanks, he salaamed low to the company and disappeared through the doorway, before we recovered from our surprise. We had to run after him a long way before we could press upon him a dozen rupees, which blessings he received in his wooden bowl.