the strangler pulls the other end, and death is inevitable. His hands,
he said, were coarse and clumsy, unlike the delicate Hindu hands; and
so, although they forced him to practice incessantly, he could not
learn. He said nothing about the boy, but, from what I saw of that boy
afterward, I believe that nature created him especially to be a Thug,
and have no doubt that he learned then to wield the cord with as much
dexterity as the best strangler of them all.

"His association with them had shown him much of their ordinary habits
and some of their beliefs. I gathered from what he said that the basis
of the Thuggee society is the worship of Bowhani, a frightful demon,
whose highest joy is the sight of death or dead bodies. Those who are
her disciples must offer up human victims killed without the shedding of
blood, and the more he can kill the more of a saint he becomes. The
motive for this is never gain, for they rarely plunder, but purely
religious zeal. The reward is an immortality of bliss hereafter, which
Bowhani will secure them; a life like that of the Mohammedan Paradise,
where there are material joys to be possessed forever without satiety.
Destruction, which begins as a kind of duty, becomes also at last, and
naturally perhaps, an absorbing passion. As the hunter in pursuing his
prey is carried away by excitement and the enthusiasm of the chase, or,
in hunting the tiger, feels the delight of braving danger and displaying
courage, so here that same passion is felt to an extraordinary degree,
for it is men that must be pursued and destroyed. Here, in addition to
courage, the hunter of man must call into exercise cunning, foresight,
eloquence, intrigue. All this I afterward brought to the attention of
the Government with very good results.

"Potts declared that night and day he had been on the watch for a chance
to escape, but so infernal was the cunning of these wretches, and so