issing heap of snakes, apparently
tangled together in an angry mass. And then the twenty-four priests
shoulder one another as they stoop and with both hands grab up as many
snakes as they can hold in their fingers, and suddenly separating, turn
and face towards the edge of the rock, running with all their might,
thrusting the snakes into the faces of any unlucky tourist or visitor
who may be in the way.

There is a rush for the edge of the rock. Those who line up there see
the lean figures of the priests leaping down the wild trail. Their forms
can hardly be distinguished as they reach the desert and are dimly seen
to be kneeling in prayer over the snakes as they let them go, down to
the great plumed snake to beseech him to send rain, rain, rain, on the
corn and melons of his children up here.

The rest of the ceremony is purification. The priests come panting and
sweating up the rock. On the edge of the snake priests' kiva the women
bring out huge jars of mysterious brown liquid. The panting figures
kneel there in the now desert twilight and drink great draughts of this
liquor. Kneeling about over the rock they disgorge from their mouths
what they have been drinking. The merciful darkness is closing in
swiftly over this disgusting scene, participated in, however, in all
reverence by the priests and gazed upon in astonishing seriousness by
the spectators, for is it not all a part of the painful crucifying of
the flesh that these poor creatures have been subjecting themselves to
for centuries in their blind but constant desire to find God, the God of
the rain, the rain, the rain.

Gradually the priests disappear down into the kiva where a feast has
been prepared for them by the women. The great festival, which will not
occur again at Oraibi for two years, is over.

Paul sees Masters standing by him. In the dim light he realises with a
start as he looks up, that the tears are rolling down over Masters's
face.

"Oh, the people! How long will they seek after God in these ways! Oh,
for the power to open their eyes to see him as He is!"

Through the growing darkness groups of tourists and visitors pass,
choking the narrow paths between the houses, crowding into the trail
down to the wagons at the foot of the rock. Among the confusion of
chattering voices and exclamations one shrill voice of a girl penetrates
through to the hearing of Masters and Paul.

"Wasn't it the greatest thing you ever saw? and oh, how picturesqu