Now sounds a hurried noise, much clatter and scuffling, as the Snake priests approach. They burst into the plaza as if determinedly answering a call to battle. They are headed by the most robust of the clan, large powerful men. With rigid faces, fixedly staring, their elbows set as runners, they stride down the plaza. The crowd massed at the far end is always in the way. The Snake priests must go to the farthest end of this shelf on their first round, after which they shorten each lap until four have been completed. The crowd must fall back. It has no license to be there at all, and there is nothing in Snake-clan etiquette signifying change because curiosity has come out of the East. Their rushing single-file of men is projected straight at the narrow end of the shelf. Finding that it was impossible to fix such a throng in place, I would station two guards at that point to warn and part the spectators. Just what would happen if the whites did not yield is problematical. I recall that once the head-man of the dancers took me in the side with his elbow. He did not stop to apologize. It was two hundred rapidly moving pounds meeting much less than that. I did not completely recover from the blow until the dance was over. A head-on crack like that might propel one over the cliff. These Snake priests are nude to the waist, their upper bodies daubed in black, with the lightning sign traced in white. Their hair is disheveled and streaming, and crowned with red feathers. About their eyes are reddish smears, and a circle of white is thickly painted about each mouth. They wear ornamented kilts of knee-length, and moccasins; and with some show of uniformity each man packs all the trumpery the clan has adopted as part of its regalia. They have armlets and bracelets of silver, and necklaces of many strands—beads and bone and turquoise. From the rear of each belt dangle one or more handsome fox-skins. Fastened just below the right-leg knee are curious clappers made of tortoise shells. Thus, as they stride tumultuously about, there sounds above the dry rattling of the Antelope gourds all the hurried clatter of this moving harness. Each time they pass the kisi they stamp fiercely on the board. It gives back a hollow sound. And perhaps the snakes of former spectacles know that they will soon be wanted on deck. “All hands aloft!”