That evening the people held a great celebration. An enormous bonfire was lighted in an open space between the houses; and around it gathered all the men and women of the village, lingering until late at night by a flickering eerie illumination that made the scene appear like a pageant staged on another planet. In the beginning I did not know whether the public meeting had any connection with the flight of the birds; but it was not long before this question was answered. In their agitation, the people had evidently overlooked me entirely. For once, they had forgotten politeness; indeed, they scarcely noticed me when I queried them about their behavior. And it was as an uninvited stranger, scarcely remembered or observed, that I crept up in the shadows behind the fire, and lay amid the grass to watch. In the positions nearest the flames, their faces brilliant in the glow, were two men whom I immediately recognized. One, sitting cross-legged on the ground, his features rigid with the dignity of leadership, was Abthar, the father of Yasma; the other, who stood speaking in sonorous tones, was Hamul-Kammesh, the soothsayer. Because I sat at some distance from him and was far from an adept at Pushtu, I missed the greater part of what he said; but I did not fail to note the tenseness with which the people followed him; and I did manage to catch an occasional phrase which, while fragmentary, impressed me as more than curious. "Friends," he was saying, "we have reached the season of the great flight.... The auguries are propitious ... we may take advantage of them whenever the desire is upon us.... Yulada will help us, and Yulada commands...." At this point there was much that I could not gather, since Hamul-Kammesh spoke in lower tones, with his head bowed as though in prayer.... "The time of yellow leaves and of cold winds is upon us. Soon the rain will come down in showers from the gray skies; soon the frost will snap and bite; soon all the land will be desolate and deserted. Prepare yourselves, my people, prepare!--for now the trees make ready for winter, now the herbs wither and the earth grows no longer green, now the bees and butterflies and fair flowers must depart until the spring--and now _the birds fly south, the birds fly south, the birds fly south_!" The last words were intoned fervently and with emphatic slowness, like a chant or a poem; and it seemed to me that an answering emotion swept through the audience. But on and on Hamul-Kammesh went, on and on, speaking almost lyrically, and sometimes driving up to an intense pitch of feeling. More often than not I could not understand him, but I divined that his theme was still the same; he still discoursed upon the advent of autumn, and the imminent and still more portentous advent of winter....