In the same movement, however, he raised head and shoulders to spy through the chink.  This time the bright-hosed legs were gone.  He saw clear down a brilliant lane of robes and banners, multicolored, and shining with embroidery and tinsel,—­a lane between two ranks of crowded men, who, splendid with green and blue and yellow robes of ceremony, faced each other in a strong lamplight, that glistened on their oily cheeks.  The chatter had ceased.  Under the crowded rows of shaven foreheads, their eyes blinked, deep-set and expectant.  At the far end of the loft, through two circular arches or giant hoops of rattan, Heywood at last descried a third arch, of swords; beyond this, a tall incense jar smouldering gray wisps of smoke, beside a transverse table twinkling with candles like an altar; and over these, a black image with a pale, carved face, seated bolt upright before a lofty, intricate, gilded shrine of the Patriot War-God.

A tall man in dove-gray silk with a high scarlet turban moved athwart the altar, chanting as he solemnly lifted one by one a row of symbols:  a round wooden measure, heaped with something white, like rice, in which stuck a gay cluster of paper flags; a brown, polished abacus; a mace carved with a dragon, another carved with a phoenix; a rainbow robe, gleaming with the plumage of Siamese kingfishers.  All these, and more, he displayed aloft and replaced among the candles.

When his chant ended, a brisk little man in yellow stepped forward into the lane.

“O Fragrant Ones,” he shrilled, “I bring ten thousand recruits, to join our army and swear brotherhood.  Attend, O Master of Incense.”

Behind him, a squad of some dozen barefoot wretches, in coolie clothes, with queues un-plaited, crawled on all fours through the first arch.  They crouched abject, while the tall Master of Incense in the dove-gray silk sternly examined their sponsor.

In the outer darkness, Heywood craned and listened till neck and shoulders ached.  He could make nothing of the florid verbiage.

With endless ritual, the crawling novices reached the arch of swords.  They knelt, each holding above his head a lighted bundle of incense-sticks,—­red sparks that quivered like angry fireflies.  Above them the tall Master of Incense thundered:—­

“O Spirits of the Hills and Brooks, the Land, the swollen seeds of the ground, and all the Veins of Earth; O Thou, young Bearer of the Axe that cleared the Hills; O Imperial Heaven, and ye, Five Dragons of the Five Regions, with all the Holy Influences who pass and instantly re-pass through unutterable space:—­draw near, record our oath, accept the draught of blood.”

He raised at arm’s length a heavy baton, which, with a flowing movement, unrolled to the floor a bright yellow scroll thickly inscribed.  From this he read, slowly, an interminable catalogue of oaths.  Heywood could catch only the scolding sing-song of the responses:—­