Dick was startled and filled with wonderment.
“Listen!” he urged.
“Hu, ya Hu! Hu, ya Hu! Hu, ya Hu!”
These were the only words they could distinguish amid that terrible howling.
The professor had been agitated, but now he was the first to recover.
“That cry, ‘Hu, ya Hu,’ means ‘God, oh God,’” he explained. “It is the cry of the howling dervishes. Look—there is the open door of a temple, and the sounds come from within. It is shortly after midday prayer on Friday, which is the time for the howlers to do their work.”
“Well, of all howling I ever heard, that sure is about the most hair lifting,” declared Buckhart.
They were compelled to pass the open door of the temple or turn back, and they decided to keep on.
As they slipped past, they obtained a peep within the place. They saw a number of dancing, whirling, twisting, writhing men within, apparently in a perfect frenzy—stamping their feet on the floor and yelling madly, their lips covered with foam and their eyes closed. Others were stretched prone on the floor. Some were sitting about beating on drums and playing queer instruments.
That was all they saw, for they dared not linger to look into the place, had they so desired.