Before us was only this figure and his half-dozen companions, some carrying torches and all wearing clothes of skin.

But only the one who seemed to be their leader wore the skull-cap; the rest had bare heads and long tangled hair.
The fellow was shouting gibberish at me.

His eyes were glassy, like a man who smokes hemp, and his legs were never still for a second.

You would think such a figure no better than a mountebank, and yet there was nothing comic in it.

Fearful and sinister and uncanny it was; and I wanted to do anything but laugh.
As he shouted he kept pointing with his stave up the street which climbed the hillside.
'He means us to move,' said Peter.