It was difficult for Phil afterward to account for the influence this scene had over him. He was not within the medicine lodge. Where he lay outside the fresh cool air of the night blew over him. But he was unconscious of it. He saw only the savage phantasmagoria within, and by and by he began to have some touch of the feeling that animated the dancers and the crowd. An hour, two hours went by. Not one of the men had ceased for an instant to blow upon his whistle, nor to move slowly around and around the wooden image, always to the right. The dance, like the music, was monotonous, merely a sort of leaping motion, but no warrior staggered. He kept his even place in the living circle, and on and on they went. Perspiration appeared on their faces and gleamed on their naked bodies. Their eyes, wild and fanatical, showed souls steeped in superstition and the intoxication of the dance. Many of those in the crowd shared in the fierce paroxysm of the hour, and pressed forward upon the ropes, as if to join the dancers, but the armed guard thrust them back. The dancers, their eyes fixed on the joss, continued, apparently intending to go around the circle forever. The air in the lodge, heavy with dust and the odors of oil and paint and human beings, would have been intolerable to one just coming from the outside, but it only excited those within all the more. Phil’s muscles stiffened as he lay on the bough, but his position against one of the wooden scantlings that held the buffalo skins in place was easy, and he did not stir. His eyes were always at the slit and he became oppressed with a strange curiosity. How long could the men maintain the dancing and singing? He was conscious that quite a long time had passed, three or four hours, but there was yet no faltering. Nor did the chant of the crowd cease. Their song, as Phil learned later, ran something like this: "The Comanche goes forth to war, His arrow and bow he takes, The shaman’s blessing is on his head. His eye is keen and his arm is strong; He rides the plain like the wind; His spirit is hot as the touch of fire. The foeman fights but his strength fails; His scalp hangs at the Comanche’s belt." There were four or five verses of this, but as soon as they were all sung, the singers went back to the beginning and sang them again and again in endless repetition, while the twelve little whistles shrilled out their piercing accompaniment. The wind began to blow outside, but Phil did not feel it. Heavy clouds and vapors were drifting past, but he did not notice them, either. Would this incantation, for now it was nothing else, go on forever? Certainly the shaman, naked and hideously painted, presided with undiminished zest at this dance of the imps. He moved now and then about the circle of dancers, noting them sharply, his eye ready for any sign of wavering, whether of the spirit or the body.