The fight was to come before the feast.
For an hour the clatter and tumult of voices hovered about the two cages.

Men appraised the fighters and made their bets, and Grouse Piet and Henri Durant made their throats hoarse flinging banter and contempt at each other.

At the end of the hour the crowd began to thin out.

In the place of men and women half a hundred dark-visaged little children crowded about the cages.

It was not until then that Miki caught glimpses of the hordes of beasts fastened in ones and twos and groups in the edge of the clearing.