“Is it not a dog?” he asked, surprised.
“I don’t think it is,” I said. “Anyhow, give me your box of matches and we’ll go back and see. It gets me, somehow.”
The marea was dark and empty when we returned; the sorcerer was gone. The dance was taking new life—it roared like a forest fire, down there at the end of the village. There was not a soul in sight as we got under the marea and struck our matches to look.
It was not a dog. It was the girl who had been so fascinated with the Marquis’ dancing a few hours earlier. She was crouching on the ground like a sick monkey, her head on her knees, moaning in a cold, frightened sort of way as if she did not expect that any one would hear or heed.
“Hold! the little beautiful!” cried the Marquis. I got him by the slack of his trousers just in time. He was springing forward to catch her in his arms and console her—a kind and a manly impulse, no doubt, but one that, I judged, might cost the little creature dear.
She did not even notice him. She went on softly wailing like a thing that was doomed to die and knew and feared it. In one slight brown hand she held something that was half wrapped round her waist, half torn loose. I struck another match and looked at it. It was a red and yellow waist-belt, with a piece cut out. The gap was just about the size of the piece of red-and-yellow stuff we had seen in the sorcerer’s bag.
She would not listen when we spoke to her; she only drew away and shivered. I judged it best to leave her, for the present at all events. We crept along under the piles, walking half doubled up, till we were out in the moonlight once more. The street was still quiet, but the ugly little man with the bat-like ears, who had been so angry earlier in the evening, was coming up toward the house. He seemed to hear the crying: he turned half round as he passed, and shook his spear at the marea, glaring at the little, crouching shadow below.
Then he looked at us and deliberately spat toward the Marquis; turned, went on and entered another house.
“That throws some light,” I said. “Mark, I reckon that the girl has been too much struck with that beautiful performance of yours, and that the ugly little man is her lover and doesn’t like it. I rather think he has complained to his brother, Mo, and got him to puri-puri her, and she’s half mad with fright.”
“What is puri-puri?” asked the Marquis, looking grave.