But the Sun and Moon, the watchful Eyes of Night and Day, detected him,
and told Wishnu, who cast at him his discus, and cut his body from his
head: but not until the nectar was on the way down his throat. Hence,
though the body died, the head became immortal: and ever since, a thing
unique, "no body and all head," a byword among philosophers, he takes
revenge on Sun and Moon, the great Taletellers, by "gripping" them in
his horrid jaws, and holding on, till he is tired, or can be persuaded
to let go. Hence, in some parts of India, the doleful shout of the
country people at eclipses: _Chor do! chor do[1]!_ and hence, also, the
primary and surface meaning of our title: _A Digit of the Moon in the
Demon's grip_: in plain English, _an eclipse of the moon_. And yet,
legend though it be, there is something in the old mythological way of
putting the case, which describes the situation in eclipses, far better
than our arid scientific prose. I shall not easily forget, how, as we
slid like ghosts at midnight, through the middle of the desert, along
the Suez Canal[2], I watched the ghastly pallor of the wan unhappy moon,
as the horrible shadow crept slowly over her face, stealing away her
beauty, and turning the lone and level sands that stretched away below
to a weird and ashy blue, as though covering the earth with a sepulchral
sympathetic pall. For we caught the "griesly terror," Ráhu, at his
horrid work, towards the end of May, four years ago.

[1] _Let go! let go!_

[2] Though nothing can be less romantic than a canal,
gliding through that of Suez is a strange experience at
night. Your great ship seems to move, swift and noiseless,
through the very sand: and if only you could get there
without knowing where you were, you would think that you
were dreaming.