They passed through dry grass without rustling, neither stumbling nor crowding one another, but all so governed by one all-absorbing thought that they acted in absolute unison.

That the thought was food did not, even in their starving state, make them forget the crowning need for silence.
We with our leather boots made more noise than all they together.
We passed along the lake shore for half a mile, until suddenly the chief, looking tall as a stripped tree in the pale uncertain light, threw up an arm and waved it in a circle.

Instantly the whole tribe vanished.

It was as if a puff of wind had blown them; or as if they had been figures thrown on a screen by a magic lantern and suddenly switched off at the performer's whim.

Then the chief continued forward, we marching more carefully.
Now he turned to the half-right and followed a narrow track across a neck of land that jutted out into the lake.