The continuance of my dangerous position eased my task in some respects, and custom makes many things bearable. Practice had taught me to sit still for hours, immovable like a statue, perhaps just moving my lips as if in silent prayer, while the spies sent to Bokhara to find me out, freely discussed my identity, and speculated upon the enigma of my nationality and my faith. The danger of growing red or pale, or of betraying my internal struggle by a look, had long since ceased for me. I had so thoroughly accustomed myself to my character of pseudo-Dervish, that the emotions connected with the pious demeanour of those individuals came quite spontaneously to me. When my companions of the Steppe consulted the oracle of stones or sticks about the issue of our dangerous campaign through the Khalata desert, I stooped down as curious as the rest, and watched the configuration of the stones or sticks as anxiously as the superstitious natives. They had even assigned to me a greater power of divination than to any of the others, and hearkened diligently to my explanation. When, arrived at the grave of the native saint, Bahaeddin, near Bokhara, we performed the customary prayers, I could hold out with my fellow-travellers from eight in the morning till late at night. I prayed, sang, shouted aloud, groaned, and raved in pious contrition with the best of them. I wonder even now whence I procured the uninterrupted flow of tears which I shed on those occasions, and how I could play my part in this comedy for hours together without betraying the slightest emotion or perturbation. I must confess that Nature has endowed me with a fair dose of mimicry, a quality which Napoleon III. once in a conversation commended me for. From my earliest youth I had learned to imitate the outward expression of various kinds of people; thus I had accustomed myself to wear alternately the mask of Jew, Christian, Sunnite, and Shiite, although any form of positive religion was objectionable to me. I believe, however, it was not so much my mimetic faculty as the instinct of self-preservation and the consciousness of ever-present danger which enabled me to bring my venturesome experiment to a satisfactory end. The fear of death is at all times a hideous beast, which glares at us and shows its teeth, and although one may get used to its presence in course of time, and even become blunted and hardened, yet this monster, fear of death, never quite loses its influence over us, and if we are blest with a strong nervous system, we can in the face of it do almost impossible things.