ars of Hans caught the sound of
groans. We searched about and in a clump of reeds near the foot of the
mound, found an old woman with a great spear wound just above her
skinny thigh piercing deep into the vitals, but of a nature which is
not immediately mortal. One of Robertson's people who understood the
language of these swamp-dwellers well, spoke to her. She told him that
she wanted water. It was brought and she drank copiously. Then in answer
to his questions she began to talk.

She said that the Amahagger had attacked the village and killed all who
could not escape. They had eaten a young woman and three children. She
had been wounded by a spear and fled away into the place where we found
her, where none of them took the trouble to follow her as she "was not
worth eating."

By my direction the man asked her whether she knew anything of these
Amahagger. She replied that her grandfathers had, though she had heard
nothing of them since she was a child, which must have been seventy
years before. They were a fierce people who lived far up north across
the Great River, the remnants of a race that had once "ruled the world."

Her grandfathers used to say that they were not always cannibals, but
had become so long before because of a lack of food and now had acquired
the taste. It was for this purpose that they still raided to get
other people to eat, since their ruler would not allow them to eat one
another. The flesh of cattle they did not care for, although they had
plenty of them, but sometimes they ate goats and pigs because they said
they tasted like man. According to her grandfathers they were a very
evil people and full of magic.

All of this the old woman told us quite briskly after she had drunk the
water, I think because her wound had mortified and she felt no pain. Her
information, however, as is common with the aged, dealt entirely with
the far past; of the history of the Amahagger since the days of her
forebears she knew nothing, nor had she seen anything of Inez. All she
could tell us was that some of them had attacked her village at dawn and
that when she ran out of the hut she was speared.

While Robertson and I were wondering what we should do with the poor old
creature whom it seemed cruel to leave here to perish, she cleared up
the question by suddenly expiring before our eyes. Uttering the name of
someone with whom, doubtless, she had been familiar in her youth, three
or four times over, she just