Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/274

 whimper miserably when their elders spoke of the Grandfather of many Stripes.

An old crone, shivering in her unlovely nakedness, beat her long, pendulous breasts with palsied hands, and whimpered plaintively, "E ke-non yeh! E kě- nou yel!" 0 my child! O my child!-which in ahnost every vernacular of the East is the woman's ery of lamentation; and a young girl who squatted near her pressed softly against her, seeking to bring her comfort. The hard tears of old age oozed with difficulty from the eyes of the hag as she rocked her body restlessly to and fro; but the girl did not weep, only her gaze sought the face of Laish, the Ant. She was a pretty girl, in spite of the dirt and squalor that disfigured her. Her figure was slim and lithe, and though her face was too thin, it had the freshness and beauty of youth, and was crowned by an abun- dance of glossy hair with a natural wave in it. Her dark eyes were lustrous and almost too large, but instead of the gayety which should have belonged to her age, they wore the hunted, harassed expression which was to be marked in all the inhabitants of this unhappy camp.

Laish seemed to swallow something hard in his throat before he turned to Ka' and said, "What shall we do, O Grandfather?"

"Wait till dawn," the old chief grunted in reply. "Then shift camp upstream, always upstream."

The Sakai pressed in more closely than ever around the fires, and the two scouts emptied the contents of their rattan knapsacks onto a couple of large banana