saying: _Huzoor_, look!

[3] _Háwa_, in Canarese, is the name of Ráhu.

[4] I did not count them, but there were several dozen,
nearly all different. I have reason to believe that this
man must have been one of the disciples of a former very
celebrated snake charmer, who was known all over India.

He leaned over, and administered with his bare hand a vicious dig to a
magnificent hamadryad, that lay coiled upon itself in its open basket.
The creature instantly sat up, with a surge of splendid passion,
hissing, bowing, and expanding angrily its great tawny hood. The
_gáruda_ put his _púngi_ to his lips, and blew for a while upon it a low
and wheezy drone,--the invariable prelude to a little _jadoo_, or black
art,--which the beautiful animal appeared to appreciate: and then,
pointing with the end of his pipe to the "spectacles" on its hood, he
said, with that silky, insinuating smile which is characteristic of the
scamp: _Huzoor, dekho, namas karta_[5]:--

_Nágki phani, chánd ka dúkh
Uski badi, áp ka súkh_[6].

[5] _See, he makes obeisance._

[6] Which we may roughly render: _Hood of snake brings joy
and rue, this to moon and that to you._ In all Oriental
saws, jingle counts for much.

I did not understand his lunar allusion, but, judging that his rhyming