The Way of Power

large! I resolved to begin at the beginning and study some of their doings before I probed their reason. Fate threw in my way a connection by marriage, a naval man, who on board his ship at Bombay had had a visit from a wandering Hindu who offered to show a sight the sahibs could never have seen before. He agreed, and standing a great brass vessel of water on the deck the man stood off at a great distance and in the sight of many people beckoned, and the water rose snake-like in the jar and crept over the edge and slipped down the side a bright snake of water, and so along the deck until he halted it with a sign, released it with a beckon, and so on until it crept to his feet and there dissolved into a pool of common water, leaving the jar empty.

I asked, "How did you explain it?" and the captain answered, "I couldn't. It couldn't have happened, but all the same he made a lot of us see it."

"But that kind of mass-hypnotism could be almost as wonderful as the reality," I suggested. "A really ter