ttery market, on the banks of
the Niger. The milling throngs here were largely women. Elements of half
a dozen tribes and races were represented.

Homer Crawford stood a moment. He ran a hand back over his short hair
and looked at her. "I don't know," he muttered. "Now I'm sorry we
brought you along." He leaned on his staff and looked at her worriedly.
"You're not very ... ah, husky, are you?"

She laughed at him. "Get about your business, sir knight. I spent nearly
two weeks living with these people once. I know dozens of them by name.
Watch this cat operate, as Abe would say."

She darted to one of the over-turned pirogues which had been dragged up
on the bank from the river, and climbed atop it. She held her hands high
and began a stream of what was gibberish to Crawford who didn't
understand Wolof, the Senegalese lingua franca. Some elements of the
crowd began drifting in her direction. She spoke for a few moments, the
only words the surprised Homer Crawford could make out were _El Hassan_.
And she used them often.

She switched suddenly to Arabic, and he could follow her now. The drift
of her talk was that word had come through that El Hassan was to make a
great announcement in the near future and that meanwhile all his people
were to await his word. But that there was to be a great meeting before
the Mosque within the hour.

She switched again to Songhoi and repeated substantially what she'd said
before. By now she had every woman hanging on her words.

A man on the outskirts of the gathering called out in high irritation,
"But what of the storming of the administration buildings? Our leaders
have proclaimed the storming of the reactionaries!"

Crawford, leaning heavily on the pilgrim staff, drifted over to the
other. "Quiet, O young one," he said. "I wish to listen to the words of
the girl who tells of the teachings of the great El Hassan."

The other turned angrily on him. "Be silent thyself, old man!" He raised
a hand as though to cuff the American.

Homer Crawford neatly rapped him on the right shin bone with his
quarterstaff to the other's intense agony. The women who witnessed the
brief spat dissolved in laughter at the plight of the younger man. Homer
Crawford drifted away again before the heckler recovered.

He let Isobel handle the bulk of the reverse-rabble rousing. His bit was
to come later, and as yet he didn't want to reveal himself to the
throngs.

* * * *