land that lies beyond. And the
people of Nen were all outside their houses, and all stood wondering
at their own streets. For the men and women of the Wanderers had
crowded all the ways, and every one was doing some strange thing. Some
danced astounding dances that they had learned from the desert wind,
rapidly curving and swirling till the eye could follow no longer.
Others played upon instruments beautiful wailing tunes that were full
of horror, which souls had taught them lost by night in the desert,
that strange far desert from which the Wanderers came.

None of their instruments were such as were known in Nen nor in any
part of the region of the Yann; even the horns out of which some were
made were of beasts that none had seen along the river, for they were
barbed at the tips. And they sang, in the language of none, songs that
seemed to be akin to the mysteries of night and to the unreasoned fear
that haunts dark places.

Bitterly all the dogs of Nen distrusted them. And the Wanderers told
one another fearful tales, for though no one in Nen knew aught of
their language, yet they could see the fear on the listeners' faces,
and as the tale wound on, the whites of their eyes showed vividly in
terror as the eyes of some little beast whom the hawk has seized. Then
the teller of the tale would smile and stop, and another would tell
his story, and the teller of the first tale's lips would chatter with
fear. And if some deadly snake chanced to appear the Wanderers would
greet him like a brother, and the snake would seem to give his
greetings to them before he passed on again. Once that most fierce and
lethal of tropic snakes, the giant lythra, came out of the jungle and
all down the street, the central street of Nen, and none of the
Wanderers moved away from him, but they all played sonorously on
drums, as though he had been a person of much honour; and the snake
moved through the midst of them and smote none.

Even the Wanderers' children could do strange things, for if any one
of them met with a child of Nen the two would stare at each other in
silence with large grave eyes; then the Wanderers' child would slowly
draw from his turban a live fish or snake. And the children of Nen
could do nothing of that kind at all.

Much I should have wished to stay and hear the hymn with which they
greet the night, that is answered by the wolves on the heights of
Mloon, but it was now time to raise the anchor again that the captain