King laughed at me.
"You look like a fine, fat Bengali," he said.
The Mahatma called to one of the servitors to bring ashes in a brass bowl.

We watched him rake them out from under the fires, shake water on them, and mix them into paste as casually as if the business were part of his regular routine.

The Mahatma took the bowl from him and plastered King and me liberally with the stuff, making King look like a scabrous fanatic, and I don't doubt I looked worse, having more acreage of anatomy.

Last of all he put some on himself, but only here and there, as if his sanctity only demanded a little piercing out.

Then he raised a flagstone in one corner of the chamber that swung easily on pivots set in sockets in the masonry, and led the way again.
We were evidently in a system of caves that had been quarried into shape centuries before the Christian era.