and the slightly increased light showed me something which made
me clutch Juggins by the arm.

'"Hold hard!" I whispered as I squatted down. "What is that on the
grave?"

'Juggins hauled out his six-shooter with a tug, and, looking at his
face, I saw, what I had not noticed before, that he too was a trifle
jumpy, though why I cannot say. He squatted down quietly enough by my
side, and pressed up against me, a bit closer, I fancied, than he would
have thought necessary at any other time. I whispered to Juggins telling
him not to shoot, and we sat there for nearly a minute, I should think,
peering through the darkness, trying to make out what was the black
thing on the grave, that was making that scratching noise.

'Then the moon came out into a patch of open sky, and we saw clearly at
last, and what it showed me did not make me feel better. The creature we
had been looking at was kneeling on the grave facing us. It, or rather
she, was an old, old Sakai hag. She was stark naked, and in the clear
moonlight I could see her long pendulous breasts, and the creases all
over her withered old hide, which were wrinkles filled with dirt. Her
hair hung about her face in great matted locks, falling forward as she
bent above the grave, and her eyes glinted through the elf-locks like
those of some unclean animal. Her long fingers, with nails like claws to
them, were tearing at the dirt of the grave, and the exertion made her
sweat so that her body shone in the moonlight.

'"Juggins," whispered I, "here is some one else who wants this precious
baby of yours for a specimen."

'I felt him jump to his feet, but I clutched at him, and pulled him
back.

'"Keep still, man!" I whispered. "Let us see what the old hag is doing.
It is not the brat's mother, is it?"

'"No," whispered Juggins, "this is an older woman. What a ghoul it is!"

'Then we were silent again. Where we squatted we were hidden from the
hag by a few tufts of rank _lalang_ grass, and the shadow from the
jungle also covered us. Even if we had been in the open, I doubt whether
that old woman would have seen us, she was so eagerly intent upon her
work. For five minutes or more--I know it seemed an age to me at the
time--we sat there watching her scrape, and tear, and scratch at the
earth of the grave, and all the while her lips kept going like a
shivering man's teeth, though no sound, that I could hear, came from
them. At length she got down to the corpse, and I saw her