Meanwhile I felt like a sacrificial victim awaiting the priestly knife. Had my hosts spared me only so that I might serve as an offering to some pagan god? So I wondered as I watched the white-bearded one gravely bending over me; watched him rubbing his hands solemnly together as though in pursuance of a religious rite. And when, after several minutes, he turned from me to smear a brown ointment on his palms, my apprehension mounted to terror, which was not soothed when he stooped down and dampened my forehead with the ointment, meanwhile mumbling unintelligibly to himself. His next step, which I awaited in the trembling helplessness of a vivisected animal, was to reach toward my clothes and examine them fold by fold; after which he drew from his pocket a sparkling object, a prism of glass, which he held up in the sunlight of the window, shedding the rainbow reflection on the opposite wall, and staring at it as though it were the key to some transcendent truth. Much to my relief, the ordeal was apparently over now; the old man turned his back upon me as though I had ceased to matter, and began sonorously to address his people. Not understanding a word, I could not be much interested; but I did observe how reverentially his audience stood regarding him, with staring dark eyes and gestures of self-abasement, while hanging on his every syllable as if it embodied divine wisdom. His first remarks were evidently cheerful or even jocular; for they evoked smiles and occasionally laughter. But soon, apparently, he turned to graver subjects; and his listeners became serious and thoughtful, as though spellbound by his eloquence. How long they remained thus I do not know; my watch having run down, I had no way of reckoning time; but it seemed to me that the speaker held forth for at least an hour. And long before he had finished, my mind had drifted to more interesting matters. I was asking myself what had happened to Damon, and whether my fellow geologists were searching the mountains for my corpse, when the old man wheeled about abruptly, and with fiery eyes pointed at me as if in accusation. In high-pitched, staccato tones, almost like a cry of agony, he uttered three sharp monosyllables, then became silent. At the same time, suppressed cries burst from the spectators. It may have been only imagination, but I thought they were eyeing me in alarm and reproach, and that they were edging away from me; and I know that, in a moment, those to the rear had crowded through the door. Soon only three or four remained, and I was left to wonder whether my rescuers were after all not the kindly mountaineers I had taken them to be, but merely superstitious savages. CHAPTER IV _THE WEAVING OF THE SPELL_