n, but the bodiless voices kept posting up the beach, and hailing
and dying away; and others following, and by the sound of them these
wizards should be angry.

"It is not me they are angry at," thought Keola, "for they pass me
close."

As when hounds go by, or horses in a race, or city folk coursing to a
fire, and all men join and follow after, so it was now with Keola; and
he knew not what he did, nor why he did it, but there, lo and behold! he
was running with the voices.

So he turned one point of the island, and this brought him in view of a
second; and there he remembered the wizard trees to have been growing by
the score together in a wood. From this point there went up a hubbub of
men crying not to be described; and by the sound of them, those that he
ran with shaped their course for the same quarter. A little nearer, and
there began to mingle with the outcry the crash of many axes. And at
this a thought came at last into his mind that the high chief had
consented; that the men of the tribe had set-to cutting down these
trees; that word had gone about the isle from sorcerer to sorcerer, and
these were all now assembling to defend their trees. Desire of strange
things swept him on. He posted with the voices, crossed the beach, and
came into the borders of the wood, and stood astonished. One tree had
fallen, others were part hewed away. There was the tribe clustered. They
were back to back, and bodies lay, and blood flowed among their feet.
The hue of fear was on all their faces: their voices went up to heaven
shrill as a weasel's cry.

Have you seen a child when he is all alone and has a wooden sword, and
fights, leaping and hewing with the empty air? Even so the man-eaters
huddled back to back, and heaved up their axes, and laid on, and
screamed as they laid on, and behold! no man to contend with them! only
here and there Keola saw an axe swinging over against them without
hands; and time and again a man of the tribe would fall before it, clove
in twain or burst asunder, and his soul sped howling.

For a while Keola looked upon this prodigy like one that dreams, and
then fear took him by the midst as sharp as death, that he should behold
such doings. Even in that same flash the high chief of the clan espied
him standing, and pointed and called out his name. Thereat the whole
tribe saw him also, and their eyes flashed, and their teeth clashed.

"I am too long here," thought Keola, and ran further out of the