He carried no
torch, but a long stave with which he belaboured the heads of those who
were too tightly packed to flee.

It was the most eldritch apparition you can conceive. A tall man
dressed in skins, with bare legs and sandal-shod feet. A wisp of
scarlet cloth clung to his shoulders, and, drawn over his head down
close to his eyes, was a skull-cap of some kind of pelt with the tail
waving behind it. He capered like a wild animal, keeping up a strange
high monotone that fairly gave me the creeps.

I was suddenly aware that the crowd had gone. Before us was only this
figure and his half-dozen companions, some carrying torches and all
wearing clothes of skin. But only the one who seemed to be their
leader wore the skull-cap; the rest had bare heads and long tangled
hair.

The fellow was shouting gibberish at me. His eyes were glassy, like a
man who smokes hemp, and his legs were never still for a second. You
would think such a figure no better than a mountebank, and yet there
was nothing comic in it. Fearful and sinister and uncanny it was; and
I wanted to do anything but laugh.

As he shouted he kept pointing with his stave up the street which
climbed the hillside.

'He means us to move,' said Peter. 'For God's sake let us get away
from this witch-doctor.'

I couldn't make sense of it, but one thing was clear. These maniacs
had delivered us for the moment from Rasta and his friends.

Then I did a dashed silly thing. I pulled out a sovereign and offered
it to the leader. I had some kind of notion of showing gratitude, and
as I had no words I had to show it by deed.

He brought his stick down on my wrist and sent the coin spinning in the
gutter. His eyes blazed, and he made his weapon sing round my head.
He cursed me--oh, I could tell cursing well enough, though I didn't
follow a word; and he cried to his followers and they cursed me too. I
had offered him a mortal insult and stirred up a worse hornet's nest
than Rasta's push.

Peter and I, with a common impulse, took to our heels. We were not
looking for any trouble with demoniacs. Up the steep, narrow lane we
ran with that bedlamite crowd at our heels. The torches seemed to have
gone out, for the place was black as pitch, and we tumbled over heaps
of offal and splashed through running drains. The men were close behind
us, and more than once I felt a stick on my shoulder. But fear lent us
wings, and suddenly before us was a blaze of light a