Then I impressed upon her that she must obey me in all things without question, and this she swore to do. Also I asked her if she could provide us with a canoe. “It is impossible,” she replied. “Dacha is clever; he has bethought him that you might depart in a canoe. Therefore, every one of them has been moved round to the other side of the island where they are kept under watch of the Savage Folk. That is why he gives you leave to roam about the place, because he knows that you cannot leave it, unless you have wings, for the lake is too wide for any man to swim, and if it were not, the Walloo shore is haunted by crocodiles.” Now, my friends, as you may guess, this was a blow indeed. However, I kept my countenance and said that as this was the case something else must be arranged, only asking casually if there were any crocodiles about this part of the island coast. She answered that there were none, because, as she supposed, the flames of the Everlasting Fires, or some smell from the smoke of the mountain, frightened them away. Next, as the torrents of rain had ceased, at any rate for a while, I suggested that we should go out, and we did so. Also I did not mind much about the weather, as to protect us from it she had brought with her for our use and her own three of the strangest waterproofs that ever I saw. These consisted of two giant leaves from some kind of waterlily that grew on the borders of the lake, sewn together, with a hole at the top of the leaves, where the stalk comes, for the wearer’s head to go through, and two openings left for his arms. For the rest no mackintosh ever turned wet so well as did these leaves, the only drawback about them, as I was informed, being that they must be renewed once in every three days. Arrayed in these queer garments we went out in rain that here we should call fairly heavy, though it was but the merest drizzle compared to what had gone before. This rain I may explain, had great advantages so far as we were concerned, seeing that in it not even the most curious woman put her nose outside her own door. So it came about that we were able to examine the village of the priests of Heu-Heu quite unobserved and at our leisure. This settlement was small since there were never more than fifty priests in the college, if so it may be called, to whom, of course, must be added their wives and women, on an average, perhaps, of three or four per man.