Never did a thief with a rich booty in view, or a wooer having an assignation with his lady, wait for sundown more eagerly than I did that day.  Hour after hour I sat upon the house-top, watching the Black Kendah carrying off the dead killed by the hailstones and generally trying to repair the damage done by the terrific tempest.  Watching the sun also as it climbed down the cloudless sky, and literally counting the minutes till it should reach the horizon, although I knew well that it would have been wiser after such a night to prepare for our journey by lying down to sleep.

At length the great orb began to sink in majesty behind the tattered western forest, and, punctual to the minute, Simba, with a mounted escort of some twenty men and two led horses, appeared at our gate.  As our preparations, which consisted only of Marut stuffing such food as was available into the breast of his robe, were already made, we walked out of that accursed guest-house and, at a sign from the king, mounted the horses.  Riding across the empty market-place and past the spot where the rough stone altar still stood with charred bones protruding from the ashes of its extinguished fire—­were they those of our friends the camel-drivers?  I wondered—­we entered the north street of the town.

Here, standing at the doors of their houses, were many of the inhabitants who had gathered to watch us pass.  Never did I see hate more savage than was written on those faces as they shook their fists at us and muttered curses not loud but deep.

No wonder! for they were all ruined, poor folk, with nothing to look forward to but starvation until long months hence the harvest came again for those who would live to gather it.  Also they were convinced that we, the white magician and the prophet of their enemy the Child, had brought this disaster on them.  Had it not been for the escort I believe they would have fallen on us and torn us to pieces.  Considering them I understood for the first time how disagreeable real unpopularity can be.  But when I saw the actual condition of the fruitful gardens without in the waning daylight, I confess that I was moved to some sympathy with their owners.  It was appalling.  Not a handful of grain was there left to gather, for the corn had been not only “laid” but literally cut to ribbons by the hail.

After running for some miles through the cultivated land the road entered the forest.  Here it was dark as pitch, so dark that I wondered how our guides found their way.  In that blackness dreadful apprehensions seized me, for I became convinced that we had been brought here to be murdered.  Every minute I expected to feel a knife-thrust in my back.  I thought of digging my heels into the horse’s sides and trying to gallop off anywhere, but abandoned the idea, first because I could not desert Marut, of whom I had lost touch in the gloom, and secondly because I was hemmed in by the escort.  For the same reason I did not try to slip from the horse and glide away into the forest.  There was nothing to be done save to go on and await the end.