The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 336: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XXIV THE ITINERANTS — THE COBRA Atv a little distance from the cavern, several Hindu natives, male and female, were seated upon the grass. They were in number perhaps a dozen, and it was the sight of these human beings which inspired the man with his first feeling of joy. But a little apart from the group sat a hideous-looking old Hindu, with half a dozen cobra di capellos dancing in front of him. Behind him stood a younger man, who was playing on the pipe, or flageolet, to the music of which the hideous reptiles were thus disporting. All of a sudden the old man caught up a snake in each hand, and suffered the reptiles to coil themselves up his arms; then he took up two more, which he placed around his neck; and the remaining two he encouraged to twist themselves about his legs. The hoods of the serpents were expanded, but ail the time that they twirled and coiled and twisted about the man’s half-naked form their heads and necks sustained a continuous oscillat- ing motion, evidently in obedience to the influence of the music. It was this spectacle which so speedily turned the Burker’s first feeling of joy into a cold, shuddering horror. Averting his eyes from that portion of the scene, he ex- amined more attentively the other persons belonging to the group. They consisted of young men and women, all the latter being of an exceeding beauty. These females were dressed in short white skirts, and they had bands of linen over the bosom and passing around the back, but the interval between these slight zones, or corsets, and the skirts them- selves, was left entirely bare. Their limbs were modelled to the most admirable symmetry; they were nearly all of tall figure, and their shapes were faultless. The linen bands over the bosom were so arranged, by crossing each other 307 GOMIIGDOG cS (S@)