“Yes; and with much violence. For days a great double-headed dragon hung directly over the sun, as if it would fall down over and obscure the light. Its long body flickered with every current of air and the mountain divide, running north and south from ocean to ocean, heaved and shook responsive to it. This went on for many days; then the dragon was seen to back away into space; but it went very slowly, as if the sun held it transfixed. Clouds and darkness followed, and the waters lay over the tops of the trees, by the last accounts.” “Thou wert not eye-witness?” “Not in all the district. My labor was in the south. The waters did not oppress me.” “Thou art newly come from our brethren in Zuni? Is it well with them?” “The hotah has blown steadily one whole lunation, parching the surface dry as a desert. Years of patient artifice made water plentiful, but the sources have hidden in the earth, and every green thing is withered and dead. Windows fall out of the houses, doors refuse to hang, and are much too small for the openings. Man and beast suffer frightfully. An ashy hue overspreads the countenance. The eyes, lips and throats become parched and painful; then the only hope was to smear themselves with grease.” “And wert thou obliged to treat thy body so?” asked Yermah, mindful of Orondo’s habit of exquisite cleanliness. “Yes; and to a liberal coating of olive oil do I owe my life doubly. The evil omen overhead warned me of impending danger to us all, and my fealty to thee made me hasten homeward.” In answer to Yermah’s grateful look, he continued: “Coming through the narrow pass in the mountains lying south, I went always ahead of the tamanes to spy out the best places. One morning I found myself in close proximity to a grizzly, ravenously hungry. I had neither time to retreat nor to defend myself before the bear was upon me. I fell flat on my face, and lay motionless while he smelt me all over. The oil both puzzled and disturbed him, for he made off into the woods and left me to win back courage as best I could.” “This animal eats no flesh he hath not killed,” said Yermah, “but thou art fortunate to escape a blow from its powerful paw, or a crushing squeeze.” “He was very hungry; and I was glad to be thoroughly saturated with oil, even if I did imagine it was rancid,” observed Orondo, naïvely. For the first time in many days, Yermah laughed. “Nevertheless, thou art justly called the fearless one,” he said. “The same heat and distress lies everywhere in the south, and there is a faint, luminous mist, dry as the hotah itself, which makes the sun look like blood. It deposits whitish particles upon everything, very like a cottony wood fiber. Near the sea it disappears although the dry wind prevails. All of the testimony confirms the report that a brilliant rainbow surrounded the moon at the time the mist came.” Both men lapsed into silence, and profound depression came back to Yermah.