Lifting my head, I peered very cautiously over the top of the rock. A large canoe was approaching the landing steps, or rather, where these had been, for now, except the topmost, they were under water because of the flood. On the rock itself four priests, clad in white and wearing veils over their faces with eyeholes cut in them, which made them look like monks in old pictures of the Spanish Inquisition, were marching towards these steps. As they reached them, so did the canoe. Next, from its prow was thrust a tall woman, entirely draped in a white cloak that covered both head and body, who from her height might very well be Sabeela. The priests received her without a word, for all this drama was enacted in utter silence, and half led, half carried her to the stone post between the fires, where, so far as I could see through the mist—that night I blessed the mist, as we do in church in one of the psalms—no, it is the mist that blesses the Lord, but it does not matter—they bound her to the post. Then, still in utter silence, they turned and marched away down the sloping rock to the mouth of the cave, where they vanished. The canoe also paddled backwards a few yards—not far, I judged from the number of strokes taken—and there floated quietly. So far all had happened as Dramana told us that it must. In a whisper I asked her if the priests would return. She answered no; no one would come on to the rock till sunrise, when Heu-Heu, accompanied by women, would issue from the cave to take his bride. She swore that this was true, since it was the greatest of crimes for any one to look upon the Holy Bride between the time that she was bound to the rock and the appearance of the sun above the horizon. “Then the sooner we get to business the better,” I said, setting my teeth, and without stopping to ask her what she meant by saying that Heu-Heu would come with the women, when, as we knew well, there was no such person. “Come on, Hans, while the mist still lies thick; it may lift at any moment,” I added. Swiftly, desperately, we clambered on to the rock, dragging the dead woman after us. Staggering round the nearer fire with our awful burden, we arrived with it behind the post—it seemed to take an age. Here by the mercy of Providence the smoky reek from the fire propelled by a slight breath of air, combined with the hanging fog to make us almost invisible. On the farther side of the post stood Sabeela, bound, her head drooping forward as though she were fainting. Hans swore that it was Sabeela because he knew her “by her smell,” which was just like him, but I could not be sure, being less gifted in that way. However, I risked it and spoke to her, though doubtfully, for I did not like the look of her. To tell the truth, I rather feared lest she should have acted on her threat that as a last resource she would take the poison which she said she carried hidden in her hair.