B883 <=> B885 [BTG XLI The bokharian dervish, p. 884]

“’And this constatation so greatly interested me that I then gave all my attention to the investigation of this alone and entirely ceased to occupy myself with the said zimbal.

“’Then it so chanced to happen that my queer friend also became very much interested in the same thing, and together we began to investigate this fact which had so astonished us both.

“’Only after several days did my friend and I notice that we were neglecting our main work, and therefore we decided from that day to devote half our time to finishing the zimbal and the other half to the said investigations.

“’And indeed we very soon managed to carry out both of these tasks of ours in such a way that one should not hinder the other.

“’Soon the mechanical zimbal devised by us was ready; it was entirely satisfactory to us and I must say turned out to be something of the kind of the “new Greek hand organ” but with quarter tone sounds and a little larger in size.

“’It was set in action by turning, by which the little hammers struck the corresponding strings; and this correspondence was obtained by means of bundles of flattened reeds in which we had made dents, into which during the turning the ends of the little hammers fell and set the corresponding strings vibrating.

“’For each separate sacred melody we prepared a separate bundle of these flattened reeds fastened together, and they could be changed at will according to the melody required.

“’When we finally handed over our original zimbal to our Sheikh and told him what interested us most of all at that moment, he not only gave us his blessing to leave the monastery for a while for our purpose to occupy ourselves with the question which interested us, but even put at our disposal a large sum of money from the resources accumulated in the monastery.