oat and filled with water.

Now, however, it was dry and all about its surface were dotted numerous
camp-fires round which men were moving, also some women who appeared to
be engaged in cooking food. At a little distance too, upon the
further edge of the moat-like depression were a number of white-robed
individuals gathered in a circle about a large stone upon which
something was stretched that resembled the carcase of a sheep or goat,
and round these a great number of spectators.

"The priests of Lulala who make sacrifice to the moon, as they do night
by night, save when she is dead," said Ayesha, turning back towards
me as though in answer to the query which I had conceived but left
unuttered.

What struck me about the whole scene was its extraordinary animation and
briskness. All the folk round the fires and outside of them moved about
quickly and with the same kind of liveliness which might animate a camp
of more natural people at the rising of the sun. It was as though they
had just got up full of vigour to commence their daily, or rather their
nightly round, which in truth was the case, since as Hans discovered,
by habitude these Amahagger preferred to sleep during the day unless
something prevented them, and to carry on the activities of life at
night. It only remains to add that there seemed to be a great number
of them, for their fires following the round of the dry moat, stretched
further than I could see.

Scrambling down the crumpled wall by a zig-zag pathway, we came upon the
outposts of the army beneath us who challenged, then seeing with whom
they had to do, fell flat upon their faces, leaving their great spears,
which had iron spikes on their shafts like to those of the Masai,
sticking in the ground beside them.

We passed on between some of the fires and I noted how solemn and
gloomy, although handsome, were the countenances of the folk by whom
these were surrounded. Indeed, they looked like denizens of a different
world to ours, one alien to the kindly race of men. There was nothing
social about these Amahagger, who seemed to be a people labouring under
some ancient ancestral curse of which they could never shake off
the memory. Even the women rarely smiled; their clear-cut, stately
countenances remained stern and set, except when they glowered at us
incuriously. Only when Ayesha passed they prostrated themselves like the
rest.

We went on through them and across the moat, climbing its further s