Our bodyguard were fine, stalwart fellows; each man had filed his two upper and two lower front teeth to a point, a custom I have elsewhere observed, and one giving the countenance a singularly wolfish look. Their long black locks were braided, and the plats were interwoven with strands of golden wire. They bore spears, and long curved knives stuck in girdles of panther skin. They carried also shields of hide, and on their feet were curious sandals that were laced to the calf with leathern strips.
The heads of the leaders were decorated with feathers held in place by a jewelled clasp, and the size of the gems sent the blood tingling through my veins.
I could now see that one man commanded this array, and I was the more sorry for that inasmuch as the steely glitter of his eye when turned our way, boded his prisoners little good. He was an old man and unlike the rest, covered from neck to heel by a flowing white garment around whose hem appeared strange characters writ in scarlet. A long gray beard fell over his breast, and his hair was bound by a plain gold fillet that crossed the forehead. In his hand he carried a short rod of ebony, and I noted with growing pain the reverence with which his followers observed his every gesture.
On a sudden, he raised his staff, and like one man the warriors halted.
We had stopped before an archway that spanned the street, and which was guarded by a gate of woven bamboo made strong by bars of iron, and bristling with points of the same metal. This gate swung on a pivot, and a man appeared who held earnest conference with our aged leader.
This newcomer looked to be about thirty years of age. I judged that he was not more than five feet tall, but the spread of his shoulders was so enormous that he might well have looked shorter than his real height. His massive arms were covered with bracelets of the precious yellow metal; his garments were striped with gold and blue. He carried no spear or buckler, but a short, straight two-edged sword hung from his side.
The talk was brief but earnest, and its import was clearly not to the satisfaction of our venerable friend. At last, with a vindictive backward glance at me, he pointed his long, bony finger at the body of the dead ape, for now I knew the kind of creature whose neck I had broken.
He of the broad shoulders looked at it and then at me again with more discernment, and I thought with no less liking than before. Then as the tide of remonstrance from him of the evil eye and white beard did not cease, the other took from a fold in his garments a thing that glistened and glittered like a molten rainbow in the fading light, a girdle whose links were gold fastening squares studded with gems that defied, in their brilliance, the noonday sun.
This he laid upon the outstretched hand of the elder, and his clamor ceased, hushed to muttered murmuring. The armed throng passed the open gate, and as they defiled before him with the jewelled girdle, each touched, with outstretched palm, the breast and forehead, and the broad-shouldered one gravely bent his head in answer to their salute.
So were we borne along through a maze of streets like to that through which we had first come.